Quick Comment
I just noticed that the "voice" is the one doing all the predicting. My guess is that it was commissioned to save me at all times and to avoid any pain at all, and that's what it is constantly doing all the time, saving me from a possible future painful experience, which is impossible since even it cannot predict the future. Embarrassment is not physically painful, the voice thinks it is. I am getting better at stopping the voice. As soon as I recognize it's rant or predictive threats that begin to tighten my body I am getting to where I can say STOP, and let the thought pattern of predictive fear-to-be-avoided go. I feel the trick is to get used to feeling pain, emotional pain like fear, and letting it go. Resisting fear makes it stronger, not weaker. Ignoring it and accepting disappointment as a natural part of life and its imperfection lessens the importance of avoiding any emotional pain at all.
Rich
Rich
Replies
Is there a place in the book where he says to say STOP to the voice?
If so, where?
Not that I know of, I\'ll have to look. I believe he says it as \"stop listening\". Maybe I stated it wrongly; I don\'t stop the voice as much as I stop listening ton whatever is being said. I\'ll let you know if I find it,
Chapter 10....:-)
Page 63; second paragraph: \"What exactly does it mean \'to stop\'? It\'s something you do inside. It\'s called letting go.\"
Chapter 10: pg. 94; You just stop telling your mind that its job is to fix your personal problems\", and pg. 95; All you have to do is stop expecting your mind to fix what\'s wrong inside of you.\" & paragraph 2, last sentence end: \"just don\'t listen\" [doesn\'t \"just don\'t\" mean STOP?]
However! pg. 96 paragraph 3: \"And do not try to stop it\" --- \"just let it go\". To me, just \"letting it go\" means \"stop listening\", it means stop focusing your attention on the thinking voice, not stopping the voice itself...
;-) Hugszzz
to me it means \"don\'t give it any power\"
Like yesterday, I was getting frustrated because I have not heard from my estranged brother (he got in town wed. nite). My thoughts were all over the place...then I began to laugh \"here I go again.\" I didn\'t try to STOP the voice, but I became very aware how my thoughts were doing nothing; creating nothing but upset. I was thinking \"he\'s so rude, he\'s such an ass, you know Ronnie, he might show up and he might not, he doesn\'t care about my time, etc.\" To be honest, we never set a time to meet; just tht he would call me. So....I observed what I was doing and I began to laugh.
I listened to it and thought how ridiculous I was being. Crazy making at it\'s best.
Hugszzzz, Vicki
Well, that\'s what I\'m talking about too. When I said \"I am getting to where I can say STOP, and let the thought pattern of predictive fear-to-be-avoided go.\" The \"stop\" is followed by \"and LET [the thought pattern of predictive pain] GO. Let... GO! As you say: \"don\'t give it any power\" and first you have to notice you are giving IT, the voice of predictive pain, power, and \"stop\" giving it your attention.
When I used to talk about stop predicting, I now understand that it is ALWAYS the \"voice\" that is predicting, trying to make, insure, or control the future in order to give ourselves the illusion of safety from pain. The BIG DEAL is always avoiding PAIN, except it is imaginary and emotional pain we want to avoid. It is preparing to avoid the pain of not being CORRECT, which I swear comes form childhood and being threatened with punishment from our parents for not being perfect enough for THEIR egos and wishes.
The need to feel perfect is a painful conflict since it is impossible. Conflict is always a result of a clash between reality and fantasy; and no one can be perfect, we all feel punished at one time or another. The best lesson I can teach myself right now [I believe] is to become comfortable with pain, learn to make pain for being imperfect \"okay\". The whole \"fear thing to be avoided\" is to avoid PAIN, any pain, even the slightest pain, or we have failed and deserve to be punished for not avoiding pain; and instead the truth is that pain is a natural part of life, and we can all feel pained by some thought about something or another, because we live life in our fantasy-mind instead of reality. We deny reality and expect the fantasy wishes as the real experience, and when we don\'t get our fantasy life, we complain that reality is somehow wrong and the fantasy wish is right; it\'s actually the other way around. Learning to be comfortable with reality is the true accomplishment for avoiding pain. Typically my focus is created by my mind, the voice, on complaining and feeling pain for what \"I DON\'T have, instead of being thankful for the reality that I am experiencing. I tend to continue to focus on the negative and ignore the positive. My feeling now is that learning to accept reality, without judging it as good or bad [\"good is without pain, Bad is with pain] takes a lot less energy and a lot less of the pain caused by the imaginary needs of controlling and setting conditions for my mind\'s happiness and protection. As you suggest [in my contorted way of explaining it] taking the power away from the voice and it\'s predictions of fears to avoid makes living a lot easier.
I\'ve said it before, in one fashion or another, and I\'ll say it again: My mind is absolutely terrible at predicting the future! It cannot be done with any accuracy, and I\'m guessing no one else\'s mind can either; at least not perfectly.
I\'ll leave you with this idea: after all the fears of pain I have had in my life that I have avoided so I would avoid some sort of painful death, I\'m still here. Worrying about being \"right\" about the future accomplishes NOTHING! Pull the plug on the \"voice\'s\" responsibility to protect us from any pain, or \"wrong\", that we cannot reasonably control. Know when we are being directed by our voice to do the impossible, which is trying to control things we have no control of. It\'s that wish for \"magical powers\" to control the external world, instead of our internal real world is the real problem. It is our [MY] belief that the external world controls my identity and how I feel about myself and my imperfection. The only imperfection I have is that I am not a God and I have absolutely NO CONTROL over the future of the external world; and I\'m just now learning to control my inside world; my minds: the talker and the listener. all this time I have allowed myself to feel like a victim of my \"voice\" because I was taught to give it the power to protect me. Now I\'m learning I do not \"Have To\" listen to it or give it power by giving it my listener\'s attention. It is the \"listener\" that is the true soul; IT is the one who directs attention, and experiences the world, either through the senses, or fantasy. Accept the real world as a gift, let go of judging it as good or bad, accept what ever happens as it does, without correct or opinion. My guess is that is the projection of what we feel about ourselves as not being perfect: our fantasy world can never be \"perfect\" because it always conflicts with reality, always. And we use our fantasy mind to set conditions for understanding and accepting the real world as it is and our happiness for it being perfect as it is.
There. I\'m done for now. That\'s how far I gotten today.
Hugszzz, Rich
We are making progress out of co-dependency. Co-dependency is actually dependence on the external world for our happiness with our inner-selves; and I\'m learning THAT is impossible, they are mutually exclusive of each other. The real work is learning to change the inside, not the outside. And that\'s why we\'re here on DS as friends, continuing to learn and teach each other.
Lot\'s of Love...Rich.