Fear can get triggered by running into a scary person we haven’t seen in years for whom we have unresolved feelings, having an accident, being in an earthquake, surviving a war, over-hearing an uncomfortable conversation between strangers in a store, noticing a disturbing photo, seeing a violent movie.
Without a willingness to stay and look at the thoughts, even though they are so full of fear, they just repeat themselves and keep flashing the images. We have nightmares, trouble sleeping.
Yesterday I watched a science fiction movie. There was one theme I found very disturbing, one set of “bad guys”. They really creeped me out.
So, what thoughts are present that I can work with? I know the only way to deal consciously with these thoughts is through identifying them, identifying what I’m resistant to, to what I am against.
- there is horror and violence in this world
- the sickness and terror some people experience through war, torture or violence is unbearable
- people shouldn’t make violent and depressing movies
- the capacity for evil is just as great as the capacity for good, this is terrifying
- I can’t stop thinking about that scene, that situation
- I am driving myself crazy, my mind is not being helpful
- I need to shut my mind down
Through inquiry, I ask myself the question “who would I be WITHOUT the thought that I need to shut my mind down?” Who would I be without the thought that I need to avoid any violent images and scary movies and never think about frightening moments in my life or terrible things that have happened to humans throughout history?
I notice I’m afraid that if I didn’t have the thought that I need to shut my mind off, my mind would just run rampant like a runaway train going bonkers and heading for a dreadful destructive ending. If I really didn’t have the thought that this mind needs to calm down, slow down, shut itself OFF of the nightmare images….then I’d have them all the time 24/7 and life would be hell.
I would NEVER find peace.
Really??! I look again. Am I sure the mind is only interested in turning up the volume on violent imagery? In nightmares? In torturous thoughts? That left to its own devices without being SHUT DOWN, it would explode with constant stressful thinking without end?
Not the most positive attitude towards the mind.
Here’s the mind, being itself, trying to work out the weirdness of violence (or whatever it’s doing) and then another thought, part of the same mind, that it should stop itself and shut itself down.
Kind of harsh, I notice. Kind of violent.
I love realizing that if I didn’t WANT to shut my mind off, it might calm down all by itself. That it would recognized all the images are not real.
Just maybe, the mind is always heading towards balance and a resting place. Maybe that is its natural condition, and I don’t have to worry that MY mind is some sort of monster of self-torture that I have to fight against.
I realize I’ve had the thought often that I need to shut something down. This has been my thought about other people, events, ideas, circumstances. I’m afraid that if I didn’t have the thought to control something I don’t like, that I would be totally passive and lie down on the ground in apathy or despair. Plus, the thing that needs to be shut down would go crazy multiplying itself and going completely OUT of control.
But living the turnaround, I find, is much easier. “I do NOT need to shut my mind down.”
I let it be as it is. This is only Thinking. Being afraid at the moment.
Stephan Bodian in his book Wake Up Now writes about this mind and its apparent busy thinking. He writes that Tibetan master Thrangu Rinpoche said “The reason you find nothing….when you look for your mind, is that the nature of your mind is insubstantiality, emptiness.”
Phew. The mind is insubstantial. Very changeable, twisting and turning and getting revved up then slowing down. That’s what it does.
And what if you did not believe that you NEED to shut another person down (like to stop communicating with them, for example) or that you need to shut down a possible bad event happening in the future, or that you need to shut down any chance of losing money, losing your job, losing credibility?
How relaxing it is not to have to apply that kind of lock-down energy towards anything. I enter the I-Don’t-Know reality.
Humility, beauty, love, peace and joy appear. I picture the violence, I see the images of people I’m afraid of or hurt by, I see “terrible” experiences, and I move beyond all these, strangely, by not being so terrified of them, by not being against them. I see that I am not just my Mind. There is something else broader here.
There is a place inside me that is not bothered at all, that doesn’t need to shut down anything. Spirit, mystery.
“Whatever you fight, you strengthen, and what you resist, persists.”~Eckhart Tolle
As Adyashanti says, “let everything be the way it is.” Just leave it alone and allow it to be exactly the way it is. Those people who bug you, that situation you keep remembering, those weird science fiction monsters that eat people when they’re still alive. Even your precious, busy mind.
Leaving everything alone is better than the alternative. And more grown up, more successful, more peaceful in the end. Try it and see.
Love, Grace