Before answering you will have to understand and be aware of how the system works along with all the metaphysical laws and rules of the game called life.
How does the system work or how?
The 1st thing you must understand and realize, is the constant dialog that you have between “you” and “yourself” called thought. According to some experts they say we make 72,000 thoughts in 24 hours. I do not know how they came up with this number, but the point I want to make here is that the numbers are very big.
The2nd thing to realize is to notice the quality of your thoughts. What do I mean? Well when you start observing your thoughts you will find our that 99% of the time, the thoughts that you are generating are negative. You either bring up thoughts from your past or you go into the future and start making all kinds of negative scenarios. That is one of the big reason why you are not enjoying your life. In order to understand it fully try being idle without doing anything, just sitting still on a chair, no TV or anything else and see how long you will last. That is why we always try to keep ourselves busy with something (doing the dishes, watch TV etc.) because we cannot stand to be alone with ourselves.
Try it, do not just try to understand it only intellectually. This is how you help yourself, by feeling the actual pain which makes you dissatisfied
Why is that true? How are thoughts affecting your happiness and your health?
- Every time a thought is generated, a feeling or a sensation is expressed somewhere on your physical body. This is how life works. That is why when you have negative thoughts, or you are worried about the future you do not feel good because these thoughts are expressed on your body. Do not take my word for it, try it. The next time you think of something that is fearful where is this fear expressed on your body? In your stomach, right? Try it with other thoughts and feelings and see where they are expressed on your body
- You are not living in the present. What does that mean? To be in the present means not only to be aware of your body but also of your surroundings. You could be sitting on a nice beach and instead of enjoying the scenery, the nice smell, the fresh breeze and feel all these in your body what do you do? You live and feel all the negativity that is coming from your memories or in other words your hard disk instead of enjoying the actual real life. Realize that things coming from memory are not real, they are just repeated event of life events that happen in the past. So, when do you intend to start enjoying your life? Playing these negative videos in you head is stopping you from enjoying the real life. Basically, what I am saying is that you are living from your head instead of being in the now. That is why when you go out in bar with music you feel nice because you concentrate on the environment by feeling it in your body, like the nice music thus stopping the internal dialog which goes on between you and your self (thoughts). But you do not have to go out to stop your negativity to feel good. You can do it right now or any time. Happiness is a state of mind, it is inside of you not outside of you. So, stop looking for happiness outside of yourself
Can we stop these thoughts? No, it is not possible
Can we improve the quality of these thoughts? Of course, we can. May be on my next blog
Suffering is part of life, that is how we expand. You are where you are now because of that suffering. Life is a giant school that we came here to learn and expand. Suffering works the same way we feel pain in our body, telling us that there is something wrong that needs proper attention.
What is the purpose of this suffering?
Life problems and suffering are giving you a message for you to understand that what you are currently doing is not correct and you need to change or correct the belief system inside of you. We are always trying to find an excuse and blame other persons for our sufferings. This NOT TRUE. You and you alone are responsible for all that is happening to you. Everything is happening for a reason. Even what we call luck. There is no such thing. You create your own luck. Life is always mirroring to you what you need to change. For example, if you go for interview and all future employers are rejecting you, this means that you are rejecting yourself. What the hell are you talking about? How can I reject myself? The reason you can not see the truth is because you are using logic. You must understand that you can cheat yourself as how you really feel inside of you. The psychological is completely different from the logical. Both must be developed in parallel. That is why we say this person is eccentric, because that person developed his or her logical part much more than the psychological creating this imbalance.
So, who is doing the suffering?
You are doing your own suffering by not living in the now or be in the present. Instead you are Living off from your memories, or whatever was previous stored on the hard disk of your head. For example, let us say your boss made you very upset. So, when you go back home you start playing this video scenario with your boss over and over again and again and each time you do that the more upset you get. Who is playing this video in your head? Your Boss or you? Your boss at the meantime could be out in a bar enjoying himself. Right? Holding the anger feeling in your body does not help you, it just deteriorates you more and more. By the way where do feel the anger in your body? Check
How can we reduce and deal with this suffering? The key is to interrupt these thought patterns in order to stop them
- Deep and comfortable breaths work nice because it brings your awareness in the present by feeling your body, thus stopping negativity
- As soon as you catch yourself playing negative videos in your head just take that video and throw it. You then replace your thought by asking positive questions like “what can I enjoy doing or enjoy thinking about right now that make feel happy”. It is going to be difficult at the beginning but eventually it will become natural to you. Nothing is given without effort. You do not go to the gym and exercise in the morning and expect to see your muscles grow by the afternoon. The reason that replacing negative thoughts with positive thoughts works is because whatever is coming up is always comes from the surface of your subconscious mind.
- You accept what is. This means that you welcome the “feeling” which is expressed on your body and which is generated of course by your thought. Do not try to fight it or push it away, because this is called resistance. And believe whatever you resist not only it persist, but it become worse. This work also with the pain. If you try to resist, it will become worse. How is possible to accept and like pain and suffering? Please note that I am not saying to accept the logical meaning of the event (right wrong, good bad), we care less about that. What we care is the “feeling” that you actually feel in your body. That is where you work. (more of these in the future)
As it is getting late and tomorrow I will have to get up early for work I want to believe that you will try all the above things and put them into use. I hope that this was valuable to you as it is to me.
Until next time Good night.