Get out of the way and let the universe go about its business

Remember Carly Simon’s “You’re so vain, you probably think this song is about you”? Well, the way the self sees things, it was about you . . . we are an “it’s all about me” global culture. This pattern of behavior arises when the mind draws on impressions from the past to offer an unneeded reference point in order to interpret our experiences in the present.

We come into this world with a clean slate of innocence. Our memories are nonexistent and empty. We begin to form beliefs about the world around us almost immediately. The self becomes our own when, at around the age of four, we begin to develop an ego and a conscience. When the parental shouts, admonitions and shame based labels, which used to be outside us, suddenly begin to be acknowledged as our internal critical voice. We take ownership of those noises and the process of personalization has begun.“Quit Looking For Imaginary Issues”

As we evolve, every sensory experience we have gets stored as an impression on the psyche. Then some stuff that we didn’t experience, but think we did (snubs, injustices and other products of our imagination) gets stored as impressions as well. These impressions are stored in the filing cabinets of the brain as memory and used to form a self image of who we are.

These stored impressions are useful as coping vehicles in helping us to make sense of our world. These impressions are labeled and judged by the ego, while being internalized. Punishment from a parent easily gets labeled and impresses as “I am bad”. Every small nuance of life becomes emotional drama, and we are constantly accepting ownership about what is good or bad, ok or not ok, correct or incorrect. “It’s all about me”. Our finely tuned antennas scan our environment – constantly looking for ways to personalize everything.  If it is raining outside, our self talk sounds like: “why did it have to rain on my parade”? If we spot a weed in the yard, “of all the yards, why do those weeds settle here”? Drug companies know this vulnerability well and use it to their advantage. All they have to do is run a new advertisement for a new drug for some obscure illness and doctors’ phones are flooded with people wanting appointments, certain they have contracted the new illness.

Whenever you personalize, you put distance between you and other humans and all of nature. You’re becoming separated from your natural state of being in harmony with everything and everybody. Harmony becomes an enemy; you strengthen your own separateness, and play right into the ego’s need for “me-ness”. The ego becomes addicted to personalization. Your focus becomes fixated on what is happening in your own particular life to the exclusion of seeing the larger picture. We fail to see life events and circumstances through the wisdom of the larger picture; the needy and greedy nature of the mind ensures disharmony surrounds the personalized “I”.

Many of us genuinely believe the delusion that other people cause our feelings. The idea that someone else made you feel anything is dysfunctional thinking. For example, let’s say you are walking along a familiar street . . . You see someone you know on the other side of the street . . . You smile and wave. The person makes no response . . . just doesn’t seem to notice you and walks right past without any sign of recognizing your existence.

If we’re feeling in a low mood that day, our self-talk word machine may tell us that the person deliberately ignored us and begin worrying that we’ve lost yet another friend. Our mind is likely to spin off, ruminating about what we did to upset the friend. Even if we had not been feeling very discontented at the start, this sort of self-talk can make us feel worse the longer it goes on. If the self-talk says we’ve been ignored, this may evoke anger. If it says we must have upset the person in some way, we may feel guilty. If it says we’ve probably lost a friend, we may feel lonely and sad.

The reality of the situation is likely to be that it has nothing to do with you, your friend was mentally fixated on some personal problem and their mind had shut down all sensory acuity in an attempt to focus on the problem du jour. So everything has the potential to cause emotional hurt. The mind, without editing, draws its own conclusion about every experience. This way of personalizing happenings in daily life leads to pain and suffering.

The mind can be retrained to stop personalizing external circumstances and experiences. We want the world to be all about us when we have not consciously realized the truth of who we are. This mental pattern never finds its conclusion. It is a way of thinking that must be seen for what it is and, in the awareness, it will drop automatically. Thus, it can be transcended, not resolved.

When we let go of personalizing our world, we’ll find a calmer non-judgmental mind with less stress. Rather than experiences happening to you that form judgmental impressions, you begin to allow them to simply happen. Your connection with experiences can be impersonal and not raise a response from you consciousness. You come to realize that “what is” is going to go about its business, without any editorializing from you.  You will soon begin to notice order and a natural harmony to all things. All that is required is a shift in perspective through removing personal prejudice. Do not buy the idea that your experiences are all about you.

Personalizing is a prison . . . its solitary confinement.

No related posts

Not My Thouths

Will the Real Me Please Stand Up?

Mom and dad have separate realities. They (along with coaches, clergy, teachers, scout leaders, peers, and many others) feed us impressions, which form our belief systems and operating values. Mommies and daddies in other parts of the world are feeding different beliefs systems and values (shoulds) than ours. Every Mommy and Daddy is different; therefore, no two children see exactly the same reality or sets of shoulds. Then, we get all upset over the fact that they do not see the same things on their screen as we do.

These impressions and experiences are stored in the filing cabinets of the brain as memory. Throughout my life, every experience I encounter gets stored as an impression (slides in the slide projector). Then some stuff that I didn’t encounter, but think I encountered (snubs, injustices and other products of my imagination) also get stored as impressions

When I awaken in the morning, it takes a few seconds for my senses to get into motion. As the psyche begins to realize that I am  in a conscious state, the dispatcher (ego) will begin to retrieve slides from the memory bank and present them onto the screen as “reality”. We recognize the images on the screen as “thoughts”.

Now it is important that we recognize these thoughts are just impressions that others have fed to us about what a good little American, Catholic, White, Upper Middle Class, Baby Boomer, Male needs to think or do to get the love and approval of mommy and daddy and all the other humans that we encounter.

None of these impressions have anything to do with truth . . . they are simply the beliefs and values of those (good intentioned) folks who have had a hand in our upbringing. Not only are they not true, but by the time we retrieve them, the slides are so old and dysfunctional that the image on the slides has become faded and scratched. As a result, the psyche fills in fantasies of its own, which have nothing with truth or reality. The real Gary gets covered up by layer upon layer of impressions that were given to him by others.

The problem stems from the fact that I grant complete authority to the ego and accept everything that it throws onto the screen as “Reality”. It is not. In fact, it is a complete distortion of reality. Then the ego slaps labels on everything and starts judging everything and paints this picture of this frightening hostile world.

Because I have nobody to tell me differently, I walk around all day believing all that nonsense that appears as images on the screen (thoughts).  I’m walking around all day creating my reality from these out of date, whacked out thoughts.

So later in the day when I get the urge to go outside and spend time with nature, the old should machine cranks up and starts feeding thoughts like “a good father and provider should be busy earning a new car for the family”. In that instant, I experience “suffering”. That suffering takes the form of fear. Fear that I’m not living up to all those shoulds. The fear eventually convinces me that there is something wrong with the real me and “I’m defective”.

The real Gary has to keep giving up what he wants to be, do, or believe as long as he listen to the thoughts of the ego and gives into the fear. Then one day a spiritual teacher plants the impression “Nothing really bad happens to you if you don’t listen to those thoughts . . . there is nothing to fear. You always have been safe and you always will be”. Hmm . . . for the first time since I was an hour old, I begin to see the unfiltered reality. A whole new world opens up and finally the real Gary springs to life, unafraid.

I’m just starting to get to know him . . . and he would like to get to know the real you.

Letting Go of Detrimental Thinking

Worrying About My Worries . . .

Letting Go of Wants

Making a Living off of Adsense

Wall Street bailout and your thoughts