The Frog’s Tongue

This illustration, is using the Frog’s tongue as an analogy for mental fixation.

From the time we wake up, until we fall asleep. The mind continuously jumps from one focus to the next. This is really “what the frog does”.

When the frog sees something it wants to eat, it shoots out its tongue, and the sticky tongue grabs that thing, and pulls it into its mouth.

But what happens if the thing the tongue sticks to, does not want to move? What if the Frog’s tongue gets stuck to that thing, and can’t let go.

Hmmm …. dilemma….

Rather than continuing thru the day, hap hap happily hopping along, the Frog gets its tongue stuck to one thing, and it impedes the Frog from going about his happy go lucky day. Frustration kicks in…

The Frog is stuck… bogged down.
What was simply a momentary focusing of the Frog’s tongue on something to eat, the Frog is now in a “holding onto something past its expiry date” situation. Stuck.

Mental fixation is like this.

From the time we wake up in the morning until we fall asleep, our mind focuses on one thing, and then when it is done with that thing, it moves onto the next: get out of bed, put on the slippers, go to the washroom and do the whole washroom thing…. then the stomach says, I think I am hungry…. so we go looking for something to eat… then drink…. then get ready to enter the days work or activities. Each of these activities comes and goes, gets picked up, then gets dropped for the next activity.

But then… something happens. IT may be a headline in the newspaper (does anyone read those things anymore??) or something that the spouse said, or the toast gets burned, or a child is acting up.

Suddenly, the mind focuses on this item (frog shoots out tongue to grab that thing). Then if we add an emotional reaction into the mix …. well…. The stronger the emotion or attitude about this item, the more the mind wants to stay focused on that item, and the fixated, exaggeration process begins.

The mind, in fixated mode, is not free flowing, not moving from one focal point to the next, it just gets STUCK.

We all experience this, and some of us know how to make that “Frog’s tongue” let go of that fixation.

Many folks do NOT know how to let go of things, and get thrown into a downward spiral of being frustrated or angry, and not know how, or not wanting to, let go of it and carry on with our day.

The worse part of this process is, that more and more fixated things come up, and it becomes a ball of fixated things, eliciting more and more intense emotion. And before long, it spins out of control.

This process and how to stop it, are lessons that each person needs to learn in their life. It might be learned from a situation that completely spun out of control, and we were forced to find a way to drop it, or it might just happen in the normal course of living.

Learning to unstick our mind (frogs tongue) … to stop the exaggeration process is the difference between living a fixated, stuck life, and a free flowing, moving thru the day without stuckness.

IT is not an easy lesson to learn, but it does show us how it is “my mind sticking to things, and not those things sticking to my mind”.

It is due to our anger, or frustration, or opinions that fixate us.

And finally….

“Fixations of every kind, are harmful to the human mind.”