Whew, I had to quote this verbatim from a JRE podcast episode, #543, Sam Harris is who Im quoting, the guest on the show... and of course he is absolutely spot on. Timestamp: 25: 50 begins... https://youtube/watch?v=w8Q6CWv7IXo Your life is entirely dependent upon your mind. This is not to say that external circumstances dont matter. There are people who can be genuinely happy and at peace in terrible circumstances; subjectively terrible circumstances, and there are people who have everything who are miserable, and so the fact that the delta is that big, and uncoupled from external circumstances, shows you that you are almost entirely dependent on the character of your thoughts... the mechanism is the difference between being lost in thought, and recognizing thoughts for what they are. Most people are thinking every moment of their lives and arent aware of it, or they may have an abstract idea that theyre thinking every moment of their lives, but theyre not aware of the automaticity and the relentlessness of the conversation theyre having with themselves.. (I had a profound experience of this when I was about 21, and truly got beyond it a year or two later). To be identified with the next thought that arises in consciousness is to be its mere prisoner, you are then identical to whatever subjective state, emotional state, mood state it dictates, so if its a self-critical thought, or a fearful thought, or a hateful thought, that is the character of your consciousness in that moment, and until you can break that spell, until you can see thoughts as thoughts, just arising and passing away in consciousness, you see no alternative, theres just no basis for an alternative, and youre as miserable as your thoughts demand.
Posted on: Tue, 23 Sep 2014 17:05:40 +0000
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