People teach us how to generate and hold concepts about ourselves and the world around us: humans are driven to understand and explain their world. They then form a club with other like-minded folks and rally to defend their ideas, even when those ideas are seriously bizarro. They’ve even been known to kill other people who don’t think like them. Can you believe it? So popular is the philosophy of “creating your reality,” that we have become a society who megadoses on the thinking intoxicant. It’s like an endorphin we can’t get enough of. We have run amok in a quagmire of ideas, affirmations, and meditations. Hey, just check out the NY Times today and see what I mean. See: Believers Invest in the Gospel of Getting Rich.
Allow me to assist you if you feel you’ve been left behind. It’s actually quite simple. Start with an idea, a concept. Now, apply focus and intention, and lots of repetition, until your ideas about the world become your reality. Why hasn’t anyone noticed this is scary stuff? Picture this: A can of that silly string that shoots out of a small nozzle like Redi-Whip, whipped cream. Everyone gets a can of a different color and fires away. Endless streams of color – some shot out in short, festive bursts, some strewn out in long sinewy lines – all mix together, creating what starts out looking beautiful but ends up as a big fat mess, not to mention an environmental hazard. We all are walking through gobs of metaphoric silly string, awash in thoughts that seem real, thoughts that result in action without prior contemplation as to their possible results. Why is it that when over-thinking a situation, we go away to come back with an emptier, fresher perspective? Do insights arise out of emptiness, without the armor of thought? Can’t have that now, can we? If there’s no one home to claim ownership of the insight, then that becomes really scary stuff. Or does it? Can we caged birds finally sing? And perhaps even harmonize???
Here’s the bad news: any idea you have is only and idea, it will never lead to or be an absolute truth, but remain in perpetuity a relative one. Give up thinking? Impossible. But put thinking where thinking belongs. Do not take your thoughts too seriously. But if you can cash in on them, I could be totally wrong.
