Can you really trust what you think and feel?
Humans may be at the pinnacle of evolution—and we are BREATHTAKING—but we tend to be robots, largely unaware of our programming. What gullible creatures we are, believing whatever comes into our heads! Our Little. Silicon. Heads. (Can we really lay all the blame on Zuckerberg?)
What a peculiar mystery. As a human being, you are the most creative, intelligent, and self-aware creature alive on planet Earth. And yet, how easily does your life become routine and dull? Your brain does an excellent job of managing your life. Evolution (or God, Spirit, ??) made that brain. But that’s boring now. Because evolution is always about the Edge.
You stand at the EDGE.
Nervous? Listen. Let’s not call what lies before you as Mission Impossible. Let’s call it your Prime Directive (friendly nod to the Star Trek fans).
YOUR PRIME DIRECTIVE
As a human being standing at the peak of planet Earth’s evolutionary achievement, your Prime Directive is to CONSCIOUSLY PARTICIPATE IN YOUR OWN EVOLUTION.
Cool !!
Robots don’t do this. They can’t. They’re programmed how they’re programmed. They lack consciousness.
News Flash: At times you suffer a serious deprivation of consciousness as well. This won’t do for your Prime Directive.
To be blunt: You know very little. You believe a whole heckuva lot.
A robot believes. After all, it doesn’t know anything on its own. It gets programmed. It’s given ‘knowledge’ and operates from that ‘knowledge.’ I submit that robots are therefore religious. They say and do the same things—religiously. This seems comforting because you can then count on the robot, right? You look at the robot and say, “Wow, that robot has it together! It’s IN CONTROL of its life.”
Don’t envy the robot.
Here’s what you have over the robot: The capacity for self-awareness, a sense of mystery, and the tendency to ask questions. You can become AWARE of your programming.
This is important. How you can grow—evolve—if you stay the same?
Read any self-help book and you will find suggestions for how to challenge the beliefs you have about yourself and the world. The concept of challenging limiting beliefs is so commonplace that you’ve likely practiced it at some point in your life. I bet you found it vexing.
Why is that?
PUPPET STRINGS
You’re a robot—on puppet strings. EEEGADS!
Your puppet strings are your emotions. This means if you’re practicing a mantra such as “I am worthy of love” and walk in on your husband, um, holding hands with another woman, your mantra may have died a quick and violent death.
There’s the love of your life, tearful, apologizing some nonsense as he zips up, but you don’t care because you’re focused on her. You know this woman. Had lunch with her last week. She’s a fun friend of yours, beautiful, and she’s an attorney at a prestigious law firm representing dolphins.
How’s that mantra working for you now? Say what? I don’t understand. You’re telling me you’re not worthy of love after all? But you just said it.
This illustrates the challenge in the quest for personal evolution. It’s not only your thoughts which you believe. You also believe in your POWERFUL EMOTIONS. (At least, your interpretation of those emotions.) These powerful emotions are painful. They’re real. How can that be denied?
First, be clear on what is happening here, because it’s NOT truth.
Visualize the silicon robot, held upright by colorful puppet strings. Can you see it?
That is your belief (repetitious thoughts), mightily supported by your emotions. You might notice those puppet strings are jerking that robot around real good. It’s a double whammy. You believe your feelings validate the thoughts you already believed.
EMOTIONS SEAL THE DEAL. Notice, they didn’t broker it.
Brokering and sealing = thoughts and feelings. The deal gets made. You choose to AGREE with the thoughts and feelings. You BELIEVE in I’m not worthy of love.
In sad fact, you gobble it up like gospel. It’s automatic, with no conscious choice on your part. You may as well be a chimpanzee.
What can you do about this? I mean, you tried the mantra. It’s not like you can control your thoughts or feelings, right?
You’re not asked to. What you are asked to do is consider that Evolution has already solved this problem for you. It’s given you—wait for it, wait for it—
AWARENESS!
You may feel desperate, rejected, ashamed, worthless. You may think “I always knew he couldn’t really love me” followed by “because I have monkey toes.”
Please remember that you practiced those thoughts many times before you saw him holding hands with her. Such thoughts were already there, or you wouldn’t even be capable of feeling things like worthlessness or shame.
But for now, you’re capable. You’re the robot on puppet strings. The equation is thus:
WHAT I THINK + WHAT I FEEL = WHAT I BELIEVE.
Here’s what you need to become aware of:
WHAT I THINK + WHAT I FEEL ≠ TRUTH.
This second equation may be ego and worldview shattering, but there you have it. If you insist upon believing that what you think + what you feel = the truth, I suggest you adopt as Truth the beliefs of others who think and feel differently than you do.
Zinger!
Here’s a tip: Instead of allowing painful feelings to support a belief that no one can love you, check to see if those feelings were a knock on the head to let you know that belief was a big ole fat lie in the first place.
Don’t be embarrassed if you misinterpreted what are, after all, your own feelings. The truth of things is difficult to tease out. Your brain is almost certainly turbo-charged with beliefs. This means that when you have a painful feeling, it’s usually arising from many beliefs, all at once. And guess what? They conflict with one another. You could say it’s a freaking mess.
The good news is that you can seek clarity not from thoughts or confusing feelings, but from a quieter place—Awareness. Think of this as even more reliable than a ‘gut feeling.’ We’ll call it a Gut Knowing.
Gut Knowing is a feature of Awareness. It’s a gift. An absolute grace. Just be careful here, too, as your thoughts can be crafty, sneaky creatures. It’s common to replace one belief with another, one story with another. So how can you know a Gut Knowing when it happens?
If your ‘knowing’ comes with a fervor, the thumping of a holy text, a political view, or ANY sense of “I’m right and you’re wrong,” then assume no grace or Gut Knowing is taking place.
GUT KNOWING COMES IN PEACE. IT’S QUIET. VERY QUIET.
Every time. Just like Awareness is.
As a human gifted by Evolution (or God, Spirit, ??) with the capacity for Awareness, get clear on what happens to your life when you’re a robot on puppet strings. Imagine how different life could be for you (and everyone else) if you didn’t take your thoughts and feelings so seriously. In other words, if you became Aware.
You’ll be astonished at how much easier, how much LIGHTER, your existence will become. With practice, Awareness will clean up your freaking mess of thoughts and feelings. And that will be nice. You may even laugh out loud at thoughts like I am unworthy of love.
Practicing Awareness (and opening up your consciousness) is your Prime Directive. Don’t be a robot on puppet strings, all right? Choose the Edge. EVOLVE.
*I’m sorry that I can’t give credit for the featured photo as I lost the name of the artist after I did the free download 🙁
*photo of robot in leaves by CJ Dayrit
*photo of white and orange robot by Erhan Astam
*photo of heart robot by DJ Johnson