ON DISCOVERING WHO WE ARE II

Strange weather! It didn't cool off last night. It is still 55.9 F, but the temperature is dropping. According to the forecast, it will drop all day and it supposed to snow tonight. It was Sunny when I first got up, but now it is cloudy and windy. We are coming off a three day siege of rain. I took my rain gauge in when the temps were falling below freezing, so I am not sure how much rain we got, but I think it rained at least an inch last night.

Before I go to bed, I sit at the computer for about an hour, read a few things and play solitaire. Last night as I was sitting here, I felt something on my hand, I looked, there was a mosquito biting me. I squished it with my finger, then felt kind of bad that I unceremoniously killed this [perhaps] last intruder of the season. Mosquitoes on November 17^th, that is a record in my experience. I remember seeing one in October once, when I was out in the woods.

Discovering who are, should be an exciting adventure, once we rid ourselves of all our preconceived ideas from all the isms on the planet. Certainly some of the ideas must be valid; the core of religions do contain truth. Any idea we hear, read about etc. must feel right. It must be free of fear and resonate when we contemplate it. Each one of us must to this with all the thoughts we have about 'who we are'. If we do accept something, that turns out to not be true, we will know; that is good, that is learning. We can accept an idea, knowing that our acceptance may be temporary, we can avoid belief.

In our journey of discovering who we are, we must first accept who we are. Or, at least, who we think we are. Many of us on a spiritual journey, have traveled through the phase of 'positive thinking'. I certainly promote positive thinking, as opposed to negative thinking. Yet, it can cause a war in the mind, in the beginning stages. Most writers, on the subject, have some kind of diet they propose, where one attempts to have only positive thoughts. This is an excellent exercise, as it helps us see, just how prevalent our negative thoughts are. None of my sources recommended continuing this experiment, without going into the second phase, which was discovering how/why these thoughts were being generated.

We can not stay in the first stage because it amounts to suppression and creates a war between the conscious and subconscious parts of the mind. A war which the subconscious will win. Having a thought and letting it go, is what we want to do. Having a thought, and finding it intolerable or too icky and attempting to push it out of our minds, doesn't work. It will just be submerged, to our subconscious, and come back, more powerful, with several friends. There is an art to having a negative thought, looking at it, turning it over and letting it go, without attaching feelings to it. Attaching feeling gives it power and assures that it will return.

We address the question, why do we have these recurrent negative thoughts? In our growing up, we pass through a continuing stream of negative experiences, caused by the judgements of our caretakers, and all our social systems. We were hurt, embarrassed, abused, used and exploited. Our world was very imperfect. We make it through this gauntlet, only by suppressing some of the feelings of these experiences. These suppressed feelings, if not thought about and dealt with, become encysted as thought generators.

The key is forgiveness. When we forgive our transgressors, we release ourselves from these thought generators. Forgiveness, is more than just going through the motions, it is seeing that the perpetrator was, also, trapped in their drama and there is a knowing that we cannot really be hurt any way.

We will eventually realize, that we are not our bodies and we, also, are not our minds. At least, not our minds, as the collection of thoughts, that we associate with ourselves. I am getting ahead of myself. There will be more on this in a later blog.

What I want to talk about now, is the acceptance of who we are, with all of our supposed blemishes. When we went through the first positive thinking phase, we were comparing ourselves to an ideal that we incorporated from our culture. It wasn't a real person. We are what we are. In the Eastern meditation traditions, there is a stage where we learn to view our mind from outside our mind. From a point of oneness, we see our separate selves, without judgement.

Accepting of ourselves, means giving up all judgement of ourselves. We can't love ourselves, and judge and evaluate ourselves, at the same time.

I will be writing more about this. I am on this journey, with you, and I can't get ahead of myself.

Love and Peace, Gregg