Your Thoughts Are So Powerful They Can Kill You
When you realize the magnitude of this, it's quite profound, isn't it?
We tend to believe our thoughts.
We might even carry out a heinous act based on our thoughts. In fact, we think WE ARE our thoughts and emotions.
By saying "I am angry", I am identifying with my emotion.
Although, we wouldn't say this, whether we know it to be true or not, because it would sound ridiculous, a more appropriate description would be "I feel anger arising in my body".
Believing our thoughts causes us to act on them and take them to be 'real'. But if I'm the one that knows the emotion, can I be that which I know?
If you investigate you will see, that You are the knower of the anger, the anger doesn't know you. You know your thoughts, your thoughts don't know you.
Every experience you have is you, the subject, witnessing an object (thoughts, experience, people, your body, a car, food, etc..) You are the sentient, conscious, observer of these objects. As the observer, YOU remain unchanged by your experience, it is the thoughts that change, not you the witness. You, as the witness, never change.
If you can embody this profound truth you will no longer feel limited by your fears and desires.
So this all sounds good but I don't experience this now, so what should I do?
Meditate.
If you can successfully experience yourself free of thought then you will see that the thoughts are objects known to you. You cannot be what you know. When meditating repeat the phrase "I am awareness” and it will be revealed to you. Just try it.
Meditation will reveal who you really are, the awareness that knows the objects. (I will write more on this in another post). You will see that there is nothing missing, and the happiness you’ve been seeking in objects and experience has been right there all along and is YOU.
When you meditate on this over and over you will soon see the benefits. You won’t be emotionally triggered by your thoughts as you were before. Your thoughts and belief patterns will become objects known to you like watching a movie on a screen. You can then begin to evaluate them, are they in harmony with moral laws of the universe (more on this in another post), and my values of peace and happiness? Or am I unwittingly choosing belief patterns that are causing me to suffer?
It makes room for creativity, allowing you to come up with optional ways of viewing any situation. Taking a view that doesn't cause suffering; forgiving, forbearance, tolerance, patience.
By observing my thoughts I realize that they are not me and that 'I" the conscious observer have the power to choose my response to my experience. For many years of my life I didn't know that I could choose what thoughts I should act on (repeating thoughts is also an act). Reflection, or self-inquiry helped me to see that I was making unconscious decisions to believe my thoughts and feel limited by them. Once I knew I could chose a different way of viewing my experience or just completely let go of beliefs, and choose beliefs that were in harmony with my value of leading a peaceful existence, the self-imposed limited thoughts began to disappear. This is what scientist refer to as neuroplasticity (more on this in another blog), the ability to re-shape the neuronal networks in the brain simply by what we do and what we think.
But like anything else this requires practice. Being able to objectify your thoughts won’t come right away unless you already have somewhat of a peaceful existence or have a prayer or meditation practice already.
In my functional medicine practice, I help people identify and fix the root cause to health issues. One of the biggest contributor to lack of health is our subconscious programming. The internal dialogue that we may or may not be aware of. Some of the sickest people are those who were abused, either verbally or physical, sexually molested, or repeatedly told they weren't good enough. When we have these fear based thoughts, we trigger a part of the brain that stimulates the body's stress response. A physical state that results in a catabolic, or breakdown mode, where digestion, the immune system, the reproductive system, etc… are suppressed.
Years and years in this situation results in us aging faster than we should be.
It's a silent killer, because we don't know it's happening and we take the signs like, digestive system problems, pain and inflammation in the body, weight gain, headaches, skin conditions, poor sleep, cognitive decline, and fatigue to be signs of getting old and therefore we don’t address the causes. As the years pass we have another new symptom: an increase in belly fat, insomnia, more fatigue, and eventually disease - cancer, alzheimer’s, dementia, MS, IBS, Crohn's, autoimmune, etc…
When you aren’t so triggered by your thoughts, the thought patterns lose their impact and they will soon dissolve. The stress response won’t be engaged and the body will spend less time in the breakdown mode, allowing room to heal and regenerate and will therefore have more resources for life stressors that are sure to come. This is called resiliency. Studies on people who meditate show that they are more resilient than those that do not.
Here is the link to one study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12883106
Meditation practices balance and strengthen your nervous system, digestive system, glandular system, and the immune system in a positively glorious ways. Every cell in your body will sing and you will thrive. If you don’t believe me, just try it.
An excellent, thought provoking post. Reminded me of the film What the Bleep Do We know and quantum physics and the double slit experiment.
The idea of separating ourselves from our thoughts and emotions is revolutionary, although when I think about the concept - it does bring up some reservations. For instance, if we only observe, doesn't it reduce us to the level of a mere camera lens? Aren't chemical storms part of our very essence as human beings as opposed to robots?
Profound but not actually revolutionary:-). According to the ancient wisdom traditions like the Vedas and the Zohar, this is the point of our existence - to realize who we are, as consciousness/awareness and that the nature of this awareness is limitless bliss (not bliss as in ecstatic happiness but whole and complete peaceful bliss, unaffected by our experience).
I understand your reservations. The beauty in it is that once you are free of your thoughts and begin to realize you are awareness, the witness of all object then you be able to experience both good and bad situations without attachment. You won't be searching for the next happy experience or trying to avoid unpleasant experiences because you will see that you are the happiness/blissfulness you seek in the objects. In sanskrit the hamster wheel of life where we continuously seek happiness in objects is called samsara.
Make sense?
I suppose it does make sense, it's just hard for me to instantly adopt as my life up to this point had plenty of drama (maybe it's because of my Scorpio ascendant :))
I'll take a deeper look into it, thank you for elaborating.
I'm a scorpio. funny. Scorpio's are truth seekers. Mediation makes the unconscious conscious. You begin to see the world differently and you can see your drama and everyone else's too. Very difficult to adopt in the beginning, it's a practice...
Upvote and resteem.
I find it difficult to read and follow your content. Your structuring and picture content has much room for improvement. You can improve by using a simple essay style that first introduces an argument with 3 supporting issues. Separate your paragraphs properly, for instance when changing a topic, and then use both an indent and blank line as a separator. Then build your 3 content paragraphs (or more) around your initial supporting arguments. Use dicriptive pictures, not foolish yoga pictures that make no sense. Finally, draw the line and conclude.
If you want to list items, then indent and use html code to help you display a list.
In your above text you have made statements without being very scientific. Since you are a PhD I do expect a high level of competency demonstrated.
I appreciate your content very much, I know you will provide better content as the time moves on. I wish you success on Steemit.
Thanks for your constructive criticism. I have much room for improvement on my structure, this is true. When writing for mobile phones content needs to have space otherwise with busy people the won't read when they see content rich paragraphs. I probably went a little overboard here and I do agree with your proposals. I hope you see me improve on this!
Science is a method of inquiry. You have a hypothesis and you design an experiment to test the hypothesis. I made statements about the nature of who we think we are vs who we truly are and gave a method for readers to inquire about the truth of this hypothesis. I believe that is science.
Nooooo. Science is based on the results of experiments or relations based on exsisting proof. Don't worry, all will be well. I am not your average reader, so don't feel uncomfortable. I will pull off your socks before you know it! Don't worry, keep going. Good luck!
Thank you, but your idea about science is incorrect. Science is not the results, science is a method of inquiry. Investigate this, if you don't believe me, but it is good that you've brought this up so that people will realize the truth about what science is and isn't :-). You should check out Rupert Sheldrake, he explains this issue well. Cheers!
You are right, and you are wrong. I am always wrong, even when I am right. People live in denial, and they hate the truth. Science is both.
A really great article, people meditate for thousands of years and is a reason why. It is something I want to integrate into my life and to be in harmony with my thoughts and dancing with my cells!
One suggestion, you should include titles on your articles, it will help to read more easily the content. I decided to follow you because I enjoyed reading this article :)
Thanks for the tip. I'm trying to figure out the best way to write. When using mobile phones you need to spread out the content but I guess since SteemIt isn't mobile available I don't need to;-). Thank you.