The negative inner reactions to life circumstances and people that we try to deal with every day, are due to our way of seeing the world around us. These are built up storylines that we have come to repeat to ourselves over and over, ruminating on them…. finding and strengthening excuses for our attitude towards the world.
Not all folks struggle have some sort of neuro-divergence like ADHD or as i call it, monkey mind, to the extent where it causes self-destructive behaviours and suffering. But for some of us, it becomes the major issue of our lives, and demands an actual solution instead of using medication to control it.
By the time we reach our teens (and onward), these negative inner reactions are largely habitual, automatic, and thus quite “subconscious”making them very difficult to dig down to or untangle. i have often seen this mess as a tangled ball of yarn. We begin in our earlier, more superstitious years, asking someone to help us to fix this. It might have been God or Jesus, or some other deity. Once we have grown up sufficiently to know that it is “my problem and only i can fix it”…… we begin to look elsewhere for a method that WORKS. We need a method that can take that tangled ball of yarn, and de-construct it string by string.
Once i had learned a method to “climb inside myself” to search properly (zazen for my mind portion and yoga to untangle my body portion) there was still the fact that i would get fixated on things, getting all tied up in them, characterized by the stickiness and clinging nature of feelings and emotions. There was still a questioning sense of “what will free me from this bondage”. I jsut simply couldn’t extricate myself except for some form of “medicating”. (in this definition, medicating includes any sort of diversion that would lessen the suffering for even a short while.)
Then i met Gary Weber, and after listening to his videos on “how to free yourself from the monkey mind chatter “blah blah blah”, i listened to his concept of Self-Inquiry, but it was not clear in my mind and took some time to “reveal” itself.
After considerable effort, i was ready to try my first test of the method. The results were so astounding, that sometimes i felt like i was walking on air for days afterwards. It was embarrassing to talk about it, because i got quite evangelistic about it for a while…. haha.
The combination of meditation, simple yoga, together with the practice of “focusing” i had learned years before, and then adding Self-Inquiry methods, proved to succeed in my search for the experiencing of “a more abundant life”.
This is what i have found.
Our “storyline” which we tell ourselves, is a playing out of how we see the world… our worldview. For this to change or stop, a deconstruction process needs to happen, so that we no longer see the world in the same way. i found that all of my attitudes and opinions grew out of my world view.
As long as we believe the storyline (narrative) of how we are seeing the world, we will continue to repeat it to ourselves, and this ties us into a vicious circle.
So, as i have mentioned, the deconstruction process, for me, is the self-inquiry method.
It might seem impossible or too complicated or too time consuming, but i can say it is not, and from my own experience that it can free us from our bondage.
It includes (in real time as it happens):
1) we react to something in our life (real time activity… while it is happening) usually a negative, hurt or angry reaction….
(Find an alone place)
2) Find the physical place where this reaction is locating itself in your body, as this is the proof of whether or not we are carrying it actively. It is usually a tight spot in the throat, the shoulders, the diaphragm, or the belly. Keep in contact with this “felt sense” throughout this procedure.
3) Accept our reaction to the incident, and ask ourselves to pour out that whole story and emotion.
3a) we treat this reaction as a younger part of ourselves…. respectfully and empathetically “putting our arm around it and letting it pour out its sadness or anger or fear.
4) When to story is complete, ask the speaker if it is true, false, or exaggerated, and accept the answer as pure honesty.
5) Regardless of”who or what is to blame” and irrespective of how to fix it or if something needs to be done about it, Ask that inner person if the issue can be dropped…. and if the answer is yes, putting out the hand, opening up the fist, and literally dropping it on the floor… boom.
6) Check to see if the tight spot inside ourselves, where we were holding onto the reaction released itself or not.
If it didn’t release, we will need to repeat the process when we are ready to actually drop it.
This process might be a tad time consuming at the beginning, but as soon as it has corrected that one thing, the urge to “do it again” will soon make the process automatic.
Step by step, our world view will become one which matches reality, and our clinging mind will release its hold on us, and the urge to control things outside ourselves will become freed up energy to live life “as it is”.
Reality is Dharma 