Minds think their survival, which is really the body’s survival, depends on them knowing all they can about you and your weaknesses so they can save you from future failure. One of their favorite tools for knowing the future is comparison. Comparison is how the mind secures its position as “safe” and “enough.” To a
I had a falling dream the other night. My son and I were crawling across a steel beam that was about two feet wide and 1000 feet off the ground. We were doing it together, inch by inch, very slowly and very carefully. Our deaths were highly probable and we knew it. As we inched
I recently spoke to an amazing group of Rewilding Guides in Angus & Rohini Ross’ Rewilding Training Program. The question that kicked off our discussion was: “Is awareness enough?” What’s not enough to realize freedom, is awareness of some pattern or experience that still looks like “me” or “mine”. This often happens in therapy and
Since you were about eighteen months old, thought has been masquerading as you. It began labeling and naming things and people, including a very special label called “me”. Anything felt to be arising around “your” particular bodymind became you and yours, me and mine. Sensations felt in the body were called “my feelings”. Thoughts in
The worries and concerns that flash in awareness–and they truly are just a flashing reflection of images, sounds, and sensations–are unique. Sometimes they talk about your health or the health of loved ones. Sometimes about money. Often about something being missing, you not measuring up or needing something you appear to not have. Around this
In the name of protection and survival, minds look for unsettled business they can resolve on your behalf. When you’re lying in bed, unable to sleep, your mind could create any number of happy memories, but it focuses on problems it can solve, as Matthew’s mind was doing. It replays misunderstandings and has conversations with
A woman in the LSBC graduate community recently shared an insight she had from the movie Divergent. The characters in the movie are put into simulations where they face their worst fears and need to escape. The protagonist, who is “divergent,” is aware that the situations aren’t real. Everyone else is completely bought into the
On one level, it definitely appears as if we’re responsible for saying and doing the right things, we have some degree of free will, and we make choices throughout life that matter. And on another level, you have to wonder: How do we do all that? If we have free will over our actions, why
We have a lot of discussions in The Little School of Big Change about how change happens. Not how our mind generalizes and narrates change, and not a comparison of how things used to be versus how they are now. But about how change actually happens. This feels like a question I should be able
Here’s something crazy to think about. Every single thing you know about your identity, and every single thing you know about your life, is rooted in the past. Who are you? You can only answer that question–using words and descriptions, anyway–by referring to the past. You’re a sister or brother or so-and-so’s child? How could
