Dilbert may be my source of office humor, but rarely has it produced a true philosophical gem to share and absorb. Today was the day. I swiped this one straight from this morning's paper.
All too often our minds are so busy being upset or feeling wronged in some way that we don't realize that really, the environment in which we are a part is basically the same. No one is chasing us. The electricity still works. The sun still wakes us through those beautiful white plantation shutters. Good days and bad days, as Dilbert's confidant says, are only in our mind.
There's a science behind why our brain has been trained to focus on the negative. It's purely part of our reptilian brain's defense -- it's our way to ensure our survival. These aspects of our neurological network still exist within us. Studies, however, have proven that we can affect this old, outdated circuitry and rewire ourselves to be more content. Mindfulness is a big part of that. Mindfulness takes us out of the idea of anxiety (which typically involves worrying about the future) and depression (focusing on what we've done in the past). In the moment, we are not being chased. We can address what's right in front of us, rather than what may be coming along in the future. And no matter how hard we might want to, we cannot change the past.
Some are, as I understand now, beyond the point of upset or negative. This is usually when the system, the body, has been completely wiped out of it's seratonin. Perhaps it's producing more cortisol with the rigors of a busy work schedule, no help, no vacation, no end in sight. There is stress beyond reckoning. There is the feeling of being pinned down to an endless Groundhog Day.
When I find myself there, I go back to my practice. Maybe my hip joint is too inflamed to practice yoga, but I breathe. I sit, and I breathe and I try not to think. I look at the day one hour at a time. There is no one chasing me. I have food and a place to sleep. I have aches and pains, but they won't ruin me. I remember that I have love. It may be an incredibly stressful time, but I live for knowing that there is always love.
Are you lying comfortably in a warm cozy bed thinking about your problems? If so, your problems are not real. They are seductive fictions of the ego caused by failing to live in the present. If you stay instead in the now, when you do encounter the situation you were mulling over, you will bring present moment awareness to the situation and right action will follow because you are truly aligned with the way things are. If instead you had played out how a problematic conversation (or the like) might go and planned how you would respond, you read things into the conversation that are not truly there and react from the story weaved by the ego rather than reality. Your writing about whether problems are outside oneself or coming from within reminded me of Tolle's test. I love your writing! I've read it all and am excited to see what's next!
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