How come people are so keen on taking credit for their fortune and quick to blame their misfortune onto their circumstances? Are we doing fortune and something else is doing the misfortune or another way to say it; do we have fortune within and does misfortune come from the outside? Can fortune and misfortune be governed by different rules or principles? That would be like we only need to consider the principle of gravity when we are falling and can ignore it when we need to lift stuff. Just the thought of this is silly but in fact this still more or less describes how we act in life.
We go about in our lives as if the circumstances comes with fixed values. If the circumstances of our lives in fact had preset attributes and values all people would feel the same way about everything. Right?! And yet we don’t. Why? Simply because it is not true and deep down we all know it.
One of the largest misunderstandings in the world is that we for the most of the time fail to see that things and events in life come without values. Does an apple create its taste or is it just an apple until we as humans take a bite and apply our reality on that apple and attribute it as taste good or taste bad? I know that this question seems simple but try to apply this thought to something else and you might be surprised.
The fact of the matter is that everything in our world just IS until you apply your thinking to it. This goes for the example with the apple to the rude driver who cuts you off in traffic and even have the nerve to give you the finger. Even Shakespeare knew this when he expressed: “There is nothing good nor bad but thinking makes it so”. No circumstance can make you feel anything without your permission.
Reading this you might nod along and agreeing to the direction I am pointing in but take a moment and consider the implications of this. EVERYTHING we feel comes from how we THINK in the moment.
Now, this suggests that anger, irritation, worry, guilt, impatience, stress, frustration, despair, fear, mistrust, judgement, jealousy, just about anything that makes us feel bad are all our own creations. That means that expressions like “Stop pressuring me” or “You make me so angry” are all a fallacy. They are all a trick of the mind empowered by a misinterpretation on how the human psychology works that we innocently has been carrying throughout time. And we all are going to believe what we see as true until we see something else. (hint. do you remember when the earth was considered flat?)
So our thoughts tricks us to believe that reality comes with attributes. Let’s take look how that might play out in our lives. Take a moment and think of any situation when you have been upset and ask yourself this: Can I be upset with this particular situation without having any thoughts about it? Yes…No…? Then consider, can you stay upset without any thoughts about it? If you answer yes to one or both questions I would like to have you consider this. Are you aware of all your thoughts? If you still think yes means that you most of the time believe whatever your mind tells you and that it unintentionally placed you in a hidden trap. It is like you are sitting front row in a dark movie salon watching a movie that lasts a lifetime.
Let us go back to the view of the world without attributes. Imagine for a second what your world would look like if you could experience it without any attributes attached to it, or at least attributes so small that you don’t take them seriously anymore. How would your life be without them? Now imagine what the world would look like if this understanding on some level was received, acknowledged and accessible to the people around us.
What would the world be if people took their thinking less seriously?
Use your own life and challenge what I am proposing here. I am saying that feelings are shadows of your thoughts. Thought creates feelings and without thought there cannot be any feelings.
This seems true but what can I do…?
Well, the only thing you need to do to get out of a trap is in fact to realize that you are in one. The general belief that we are affected by our circumstances and not our own thinking is the largest trap that mankind has ever sat its big foot in. But the best part is, once you see the trap, it is gone. Simply because it will obey the same rule as any creature of your imagination and diminish.
I wish you the best in your exploration.
With my warmest regards,
Patrik
Ps. I wrote this article with hope that it can help someone to see what to me, seems like one of the biggest misunderstanding in the history of mankind. I believe this misunderstanding is responsible for almost any suffering that I can imagine caused by people. I sincerely apologize beforehand to anyone that felt offended by this article. This was never my intention. I wrote this to challenge a common belief that is strongly embodied in our world and this is the way I choose to challenge it. What I am writing here is not by far new knowledge or wisdom. It has been taught in eastern traditions for millennia and there has even been a new breakthrough in this understanding no longer than 40 years ago. But the big difference now is our modern technology actually allows this information to make an enormous impact in the world, if it’s allowed and given permission to exist. So if you found anything in this article that resonated with you I invite you to explore this further.