“In your attachment to your suffering, it is easy to turn your back on the open door.” Does this make sense to you? Do you believe you are attached to suffering or that suffering is attached to you?
As Shakespeare said, thinking makes it so. When you think, your energy follows the thoughts making the thought appear to be real. For example, thinking about what you’ve lost or can’t get, about your pain, being middle-aged, changes in your body, being alone, will direct your energy to a frequency of suffering in your sense of things or your body and mind. You are not surprised by it because it makes sense to you to feel bad when thinking about these things. And so you continue to think the same way, perceive the same way and next thing you know you are depressed or anxious. You believe the suffering you feel to be real. It makes sense to you, so you don’t ask different questions or change your perspective or see a way out when one appears for you. Working with me offers some ways out.
Without getting deep into a discussion about what is real and what is an illusion of our made-up mind, I’ll skip to the truth on which we can all agree. When you are focusing your energy on thoughts that bring you down, you suffer mentally, emotionally and physically, and you won’t likely notice what is present around and inside of you. You’ll miss the door.
The door is an opening to an opportunity to receive, serve, experience, help, learn, and grow. Think of the open door as the beauty or Truth of the moment. The present is known when you are conscious of the entirety that moment. Think of Eckart Tolle or Ram Dass and their message – be here now.
Being conscious of the moment is mindfulness. In this space of mindfulness, you are free from suffering. Being in the present moment may feel pain on some level, but suffering is a choice you make moment to moment. It is a function of your thinking, history and memories, future worries and current perceptions.
Suffering results from a resistance to what is actually occurring in the present without attaching the experience of it to memories, worries, experiences, ideas, beliefs and so on. Each moment is a new beginning and a chance to have a fresh experience of life.
The moment does not last long and therefore, it’s easy to slip back into suffering thoughts. This forms an attachment to suffering. Raising your level of consciousness is one key to non-attachment.
Open doors waiting for you don’t sound an alarm or flash a neon light. They open because you become aware of their energetic vibration. When you energetically match the door it opens. Are you matching with doorways opening to suffering or to joy?
When you think about something from only one perspective, you are attaching to that thought, and your energy is too. Thinking is where your energetic life force goes, so you believe your thoughts are accurately representing the situation. The more you think about it, the more you attach to it. Eventually, you can confuse attachment with truth or fact.
What you are attached to unconsciously is running your life more than you realize. Becoming aware of attachments is part of awakening, which means expanding in consciousness. In an aware state of being you can choose to embrace the moment as it is, without judging or resisting it.
You’ll feel free when reveling in your openness to being fully alive moment to moment. From this viewpoint, you are better able to see and match the doors to opportunities that each moment presents. It will be your choice at that point because your attachment causes a blind spot.
Are you attached to suffering thought? What suffering have you come to accept as part of life? Can you think about it from a different perspective? Of course, you can. Let me help you do that.
PET Brain scan photo courtesy of http://www.valleyhealth.com/images/image_popup/c7_pet_depression.jpg
Kimberly Wulfert, PhD, Licensed Psychologist & Coach in Ventura & Ojai California, virtually
Are you seeking personal growth and transformation? If you are holding back and blocked from within, feeling anxious, fearful, unfulfilled, trapped, indecisive, invisible, or yearning for the release of your natural self and breaking through blocks to creative or business success, let my help you. My mindfulness-based approach may be just what you need to turn things around. The methods I use have proven their value as seen in current research on mindfulness, meditation, and neuroscience when combined with psychology. I bring 35+ years of training & work as a psychotherapist to this cutting edge work I now exclusively offer.
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