I noticed upon waking this morning that I almost immediately began worrying, and I was able to bring myself back into the present of the body, which was a relief. It’s frustrating that my habitual tendency is to worry, because I know it just causes suffering, but I feel like it was a small win today to recognise that and make an effort to respond skilfully using some of the practices I have been taught.
Afterward I reflected on how the mind really does create (our interpretation of) reality and if we can become more aware of our habitual thought patterns and do the work of editing them, we can change (the way we perceive) reality, and by changing that perception we may as well have changed reality because the state of our perceptions determines our happiness and wellbeing more than the state of reality actually does.
This is my current understanding of what people mean when they say our thoughts create (our) reality: our perceptions are more real than reality itself. I understand this is something taught in Buddhism … “mind is the forerunner of all states” and “perceive all dharmas as dreams” … but I’m curious to know what the modern psychology and neuroscience says about this.
It could be the difference between happiness and suffering, because whether we are happy or suffering depends on our relationship with / interpretation of events, does it not?
So my affirmation today: remain mindful as much as possible, and know that awareness of thought patterns empowers me to choose how I feel; negative thought patterns do not have to be allowed their habitual free reign.
upon reflection during this post, it turns out there was a reason I have always eaten the cupcake first ~ photo by Chanhee Lee on Unsplash ~
I’ve been prioritising what I call “happiness habits” lately and it’s doing me well. I have a routine of rituals I do each morning, and a few other must-do’s each day, but otherwise I’m trying to refrain from having expectations other than this in my day. The situation with our co-tenant persists, which makes it hard to do much each day. Sometimes if all I can manage to maintain is my meditation practice I am happy.
I was talking to Nikki the other day about how much a regular practice of compassion meditation is helping me cope with our situation, and we talked about how such foundations must be built before anything else, and I really appreciate that.
I’m proud of having got myself to a place where I’m actually feeling pretty good among the pretty shitty situation we’re in with our co-tenant. I made the affirmation this morning that
I will keep up with observing the basics and not have majorly high expectations of myself to do a lot more
because I understand that’s where we start to go wrong in our culture: we try to achieve all this stuff because we think we need to prove ourselves, but in doing so we neglect the practices of being that would have us feeling worth without having to prove ourselves;
all motivation/intention must come from a place where we already recognise our inherent worth, otherwise that motivation will become tainted by the wish to be validated by others and we’ll be chasing this forever without satisfaction because no amount of external validation can fill the void where our self-worth should be;
anything we achieve to supplement our self-worth is going to suck worth out of the worth-economy, whereas anything we achieve from a sense of inherent self-worth is going to contribute worth.
I wrote about something similar recently, in a post called “on self-esteem as a precursor for achievement …” where I mentioned how societal expectations drive a lot of us to be always achieving, never satisfied to just exist and accept ourselves for our inherent worth.
I didn’t go into how we might cultivate that sense of inherent self-worth, but I’d like to drop a few thoughts here because a big part of the narrative shift I’m contributing to with Kokoro 心 Heart is about internal self-talk, which is where our sense of worth (or lack thereof) begins.
I believe the path to a sustainable and harmonious future on this planet is paved by creating a culture of individuals who are internally sustainable and harmonious. Because individuals create culture as much, if not more, than they are influenced by culture. We are culture, and the future is determined by the state of our present.
One way we can begin to create that culture of internally healthy individuals is by looking at our own self-talk. For me, there are some essential meditation and contemplation practices that are indispensable in healing my negative self-talk, and they are:
mindfulness
(self-)compassion
(self-)forgiveness
gratitude
I spend some time each day reflecting on and practising these, and sometimes I find it hard to justify the time because I feel like I should be achieving something else … anything else, just not wellbeing.
But that’s absurd, and there’s a logic to be understood here: no amount of external achievement can satisfactorily supplement the sense of worth that comes from laying the foundation of these practices first; so the foundational practices need to come first, and are justified on these grounds.
Anything extra I can do, after I have done these exercises, is just the cream on top. If I have a really productive day, that’s just a cherry on top of the cream. Please excuse the shonky metaphor, but without that foundational cupcake we’re left with just a handful of whipped cream and a slimy glacé cherry.
The understanding we live by is arse-about in Western culture: we live for the external, and neglect the internal. But the internal is all that exists. This is a fundamental aspect of the narratives we need to change in ourselves and thereby our culture.
The worksheet guides you through asking, What sort of things did you think, feel and do before, during and after the emotional episode?
Then there are some prompts for self-care and emotional first-aid you can try, and some reflection questions about things like, What are you grateful to have learnt from this experience.
I’m proud of this resource because it has helped me a number of times already when I needed to change the narrative around some event that was emotionally distressing. The worksheet is inspired by the work of Guy Winch, which was my introduction to this practice.
connection in parenting — obviously important, difficult to achieve
We spoke to a parenting coach today through an organisation called ReachOut, and it was very helpful — she validated and confirmed a lot of what we’ve been learning about some changes we’d like to make in our approach to parenting, as well as gently challenging some of those ideas.
For example, I had started to understand and experiment with using “I” statements if I want to intervene with Zane’s behaviour. Say, “I don’t like it when you swing the cat by her tail,” instead of “Don’t do that!” This is more of a boundary statement than a disciplinary action or a criticism.
We were advised recently by our counsellor that discipline is not my role: I am not his bio-father, Zane is therefore not individuating from me but from Nikki, his bio-mother; and my attempts at discipline without much of a relationship through other interactions were mostly just contributing to conflict.
The coach agreed that using “I” statements is a healthy way to assert a boundary without crossing … well, the boundary between discipline and boundary-setting. But after talking about where my relationship is at with Zane, the coach encouraged me to pull back even from making “I” statements at this stage, until Zane and I have got our relationship into a condition where boundaries will be respected.
I’ve restarted my formal meditation practice today. It was nice to sit still on the cushion and give some time to just enjoying the breath and allowing thought to fall away before it takes hold.
I’ve been taking a break from maintaining all such habits since I quit my job a while back. I let myself go a bit because I just wanted to relax and go easy on myself with the routine and discipline. I’d been planning to get back to a more regular practice a few weeks ago, but then things blew up with our housemate and that destabilised us for a while.
That’s okay.
It’s all okay.
It has to be, or else despair sets in and there’s nothing more paralysing for me than despair. It’s worse than fear for me, which at least has a kind of energising power.
The work I’m doing now, since I quit my complicity in traditional exploitative employment, is here on this blog and internal, intrapersonal, work. I’m fortunate to live in a country that has welfare benefits, and I’m choosing to redirect that benefit to the investigation of our culture and the internal environment that creates that culture. I consider it a form of tithing.
What better service can I offer the community than investigating the true nature of reality? By sharing any insights I come across I hope to contribute to the work of changing the narrative around what we consider valuable at the heart of our culture: the acquisition and hoarding of material wealth, which divides us into haves and havenots, creates discord and harms the habitat of our planet; or the realisation of wisdom that unites us in the common journey toward equality, harmony and sustainability.
Of course we all need a degree of material wealth to survive long enough to conduct these investigations, and we can’t all depend on the welfare system forever. To that end, I am beginning to monetise this blog a bit, with affiliate links to things like books I can wholeheartedly recommend. Here’s one, in the spirit of trying this on for size — a fiction-ish memoir account of the ancient search for what the author calls Quality: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig.
I’ve always felt a bit suss about marketing and advertising, but I’ll try to make sure the way I do it here is not grubby. All recommendations will be as much on theme as possible, and nothing I wouldn’t buy myself. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a classic of philosophical ficto-memoir that has inspired my own metaphysical adventures endlessly, and is one of the few books I’ve read more than once.
I’ve got other income streams in mind, such as meme-coasters and other “merch”, as well as social enterprise ideas that will take a bit more time to materialise. I also want to produce a little chapbook of my published and unpublished writing, so stay tuned.
If this sounds like something you’d like to follow and get involved with and support, there are some links below.
Meanwhile, may your psychospiritual wellness be complete and your contribution valued. I’m looking forward to a bright future, and I’m excited and happy to be stepping into my purpose of compassionate communication about metaphysical adventure.
Nikki put this on the stereo as I was finishing the draft of this post (it’s Ben Harper’s “With My Own Two Hands”, in case the embed doesn’t work):
Very appropriate, and from an album I can highly recommend: Diamonds on the Inside by Ben Harper [link].
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Kokoro 心 Heart 