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If I can offer a humble overview of this topic … I consider this topic to be *much* more important to everyone on this planet … and elsewhere … to let the thread stop here.
Inasmuch as we each are anything … soul … ego … mind … emotions … physical body … consciousness … we are creatures of habit … we are centered, based, compelled, and controlled … by the familiar … most often brought along as part of our so-called baggage from more past lives than many care to consider that we have undergone through the eons.
The experiences that we set in motion from the beliefs we hold today can happen so many lifetimes ago that we have little chance to uncover the root cause of many of our habitual patterns and viewpoints. With each incarnation … from birth on … we perceive by the foundational understandings of these facets … and these patterns then adapt to the current set of circumstances and lifestyle we will develop to use during this incarnation … changing a bit here … tweaking a bit there … but always compelled by the seedbed belief. More often than we wish to believe … even in infancy … the carry-over experiences and beliefs dictate much of our lives. Current situations will spark memory of old patterns and we are right back in it again.
This is about as common as the human animal having to breathe air to exist.
The mind and emotions have been so designed that their prime use is to learn from personal experience what to do … and what not to do … the latter being the more intense … for we always wish to avoid what will bring us pain, grief, or displeasure in any way. All of morality and virtue is built on this. Certain actions bring such-and-such effects … many of which we wish to avoid.
There is only a hairsbreadth of difference between thoughts of “Don’t do this because it’s gonna cause this pain … “ or “I’ll get myself into trouble if I do that again … “ to thoughts of “I can’t do anything right … “ or “I must be really awful if I can’t make any good choices … ” or “I am no good … “ etc. The variations of all of this are endless. We all face self-rejection to one degree or another … some quite strongly … others run rather mediocre to it all … but are still compelled to follow the habitual edicts … while others have begun to use discipline and mental control to guide the thoughts away from the negative and to look for … and live from … the more positive side of life.
I understand that going back and dredging all of this up is a popular way to address this. More often than not … the initial or root cause of these beliefs go back so far … we may be reading about them in history books. They would be impossible to uncover. We have very little memory of living through times when situations and circumstances were much more dangerous and detrimental than today. It is not just “the past” … it is what we use to understand life around us and our place in it.
I for one would rather put my efforts into revising and recasting the beliefs and patterns I view from. It is not an easy discipline … as mind much more prefers the habitual to any viable change. Habit and change do not go together well at all.
It is exceptionally difficult … if not impossible … to force mind to do much of anything … but it *can* be led … by constant … nurturing … repetitive … gentle but determined mental claims in the direction one wishes to develop into. Much of the strength of the old cliche … The answer lies within … shows that if one has an inner issue … then the answer not only lies within but lies in the opposite direction of the problem. Mind may not like claims to the opposite of a favored habit … and therein lies the discipline. It is a lifestyle … it is a constant revision … until the new … replaces the old.
Enough said. Just my two cents worth … well … maybe more like a couple of dollars worth.
On we go.
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