MOD XCIV

Obsessive thoughts try to perfect the self we think we are. Since this "self" is born of thought it is a thought thinking of it-self - not our Self. Like Narcissus falling in love with his image this seeming self-centeredness is actually thought centered narrowly focused obsessively on reflections of more and more thought. Narcissus was thus kept from loving those who loved him by his chronic fascination with his image.  Imagining that imagination creates reality rather than noticing that existence in all its forms is a product of reality, not its creator.  The idea that thoughts create reality is a lie leading to the sensation that our life depends on obsessively maintaining this idea rather than noticing the conflicted effects indicate otherwise - and undermine our physical ability to function, survive, and thrive. Imagine that. Our contemplative advantage is turned into an intolerable sleepwalking daydream turned into a nightmare that only seems hard to imagine we could possibly have anything to do with. 

The Mental Obsession Discussion:

We Know We Know.
We Are Aware We Are Aware.
We Are as We Are.

Reality is unlimited. Nothing can be added or subtracted to or from It. The idea that how and what we think creates reality suggests otherwise. Acting on such backward thoughts leads to behaviors that are out of order. Anxious and systemic disorders reflect this impossible attempt to reverse the Laws of the universe that govern nature’s order. Disease is the lack of ease created and maintained by such twisted mental gymnastics.

Sharing principles affirms and confirms our indivisibility. We can choose desperation while our unchanging essence remains inspired.

Moments of clarity are like sparks of enlightenment revealing the Ever Present Shadowless Knowing Light of Inspiration’s Intuitive Wisdom aptly called brilliance, bright, and radiant. Intelligence expresses our knowing nature. Ignoring what is happening produces unintelligible ignorance - not reality.



contact@mentalobsession.com

Transcript

0:12

(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) So, here we are again to talk about the mental obsession, the effects on our mentality, or the choices we make about how we think, not the fact that we think. And one of the things that occurred to me this morning as I was getting ready was to remind everyone that there's no way that I can communicate this reasonably enough to have anyone come to terms with it because of the words I use or the way I speak about it. Because we each have the capacity to make decisions for ourselves. We're actually volunteers in terms of the thinking we do. Because we're free to think, we voluntarily make choices about how we think. Now, it can feel as though they're not voluntary choices and they're happening to us. But to the degree that that's happening, in my experience, I have made believe that those things have nothing to do with me. And that somehow they're happening to me. And as a result, there's nothing I can do about them. And as a result, the only thing I can continue to do is operating as though I am completely detached from them. Meaning I'm only going to do the same thing I was doing that caused the upset and the... Here comes Gabe. The upset and the friction that I was confronting to begin with. Good morning, Gabe. So, I'm going to start a little bit again, Gabe, too. Because one of the points I thought of this morning is the fact that this can't be spoken about rationally enough. If anyone is interested in maintaining irrational ideas or unreasonable ideas. And what those ideas would be is that despite all the evidence that conflicts exist, that the thoughts that create that conflict are actually right. When, in fact, that conflict is created by a wrong thought thinking it's right. By us choosing to make believe that a wrong thought is right. That conflict, we cannot escape as long as we continue to maintain the idea that the conflicts, that the wrong thoughts we have are right. And one of the primary issues of that is thinking that thoughts are, in fact, reality. If I think my thoughts are reality, I think I become the creator of reality. If I become the creator of reality, I have now created myself. And I now think that I am in my thoughts because I don't think of my thoughts as something I'm doing. I begin to think of them as something I am. And when I think of them as something I am, I feel damned and condemned. And my behavior begins to reflect it because I'm in a constant cycle of attach, addictive cycle to my mentality. Thinking it's reality and obsessive thoughts are constantly trying to perfect the self that I imagine myself to be. When it really is only thinking, thinking about itself. I've utilized the potential I have to think about my thinking as a contemplative advantage and turned it against my own instincts for survival. Claiming my only survival depends on continuing to maintain the same thinking. Which if it is causing conflict and emotional turmoil and mental anguish, it's going to continue to do that as long as I continue to think that way. So there's nothing I can do about that for anyone. It's up to each of us to look at what we're doing and decide in our own experience what we are doing and how we're doing it. And it's not up to me to tell you that. I talk about this because my experience has been when the audience has opened up a little bit, especially because I worked with people one-on-one for years. And then realized that working one-on-one was great for people when they were one-on-one. But it didn't really give them the chance to operate socially on that basis. Because there wasn't any broader action than them and I. And so when we started this conversation, there were times that there were a lot of reactivity. There was a lot of upset. People didn't come back. There was all kinds of things between people within the conversation they didn't like. But the focus of the conversation, my interest in this is focusing the conversation on the absolute state of reality rather than try to get into the weeds over the dysfunctional state of thinking and fractured terms as being reality. So in sobriety, there's a very common term called a bottom that people seem to get to when they finally say I've had enough and start looking at their experience accurately enough to say I can't keep doing what I'm doing if I'm interested in getting better. And the idea of addiction is that I keep doing the wrong thing as the right thing. And it becomes the only thing because I think I have nothing to do with it. I just think it's a condition that somehow my body has and I have nothing to do with it and I can't do anything about it. So I continue to do the same thing over and over again, which I mentioned earlier. So if the bottom is the point at which I decide to stop digging, what I've been digging for is a treasure that seems to be buried that I can never find. And the reason for that digging is because I think that treasure is not here now. That it isn't my immediate experience that has those denying thoughts bring that sense of darkness. It's the immediacy of my conclusion that those thoughts are true and thus the only thing I have to do. And so my behavior follows. So one of the things that we talked about yesterday with lenses and I want to go a little deeper in that today is about forgiveness and about starting to see that forgiveness isn't about forgiving the other person. It's about seeing that we've been holding them hostage to ideas that we have about what they did well beyond the point they stopped doing what they did. And I think in your case, you were talking about something 14 years ago. Yeah, that was that was probably enough time to maybe notice that he was no longer doing what he did. And yet it seemed very much like something he had done that continued to plague you and hurt you and you suffered from as a result of that experience. And yesterday we talked about in the podcast episode with lenses and her daughter. We talked about the fact that the present nature is always present and the things that happened that happened are not happening now. They're only happening in our thoughts. And our thoughts ego is only happening in our thought in terms of this false self. Lies are only happening in our thoughts in terms of the ability and the idea that we can think more about something and turn something that's wrong into right. Those only happen in our thoughts. A lack of forgiveness only happens in our thoughts because forgiveness is actually for being forgiving things what they are as they are now. And what are they now when something stopped 14 years ago, but nothing more than a thought I'm having about it. So the forgiveness is coming to terms with my culpability, my decisions, my conclusions, rather than the things that happened. I don't need to straighten anybody out to do that. And what happens automatically is my relationship with them straightens out because I straighten out mentally, physically, spiritually. And Jack, the most beautiful thing happened when you gave me the tool to apply that forgiveness to that episode. I immediately felt that change in my brain. Something happened and I felt something going out and I feel happy. And oh my gosh, this is amazing. And I'm doing that in every chapter through 14 years in my life. And I apply that. So now, see, what you think came to you is simply the not doing of the thing you kept doing that gave you the impression that that thing that you thought came wasn't there. The preoccupation of these lies that we maintain consume all our attention because it's impossible to ever turn them into truth. They're fantasy. We're trying to turn them into reality. It's an impossibility. So the further we dig, all we get is deeper in a hole that's technically a grave. And we're starting to feel the fear of the fact that we keep digging and digging and digging for a treasure that we never seem able to find. And all of a sudden, that freedom, just considering as you did, that maybe it was what you were doing that caused it. And the whole bubble burst because you now are outside of the bubble looking at it and saying, that's crazy. Rather than thinking you're in it and there's nothing you can do. That transition between the two is palpable because all of a sudden you think reality has come and love has come and the awareness has come and the adventure of life and the awesome nature of that inspiration is coming. But it isn't coming. What's happening is you're no longer preoccupied with a thought that's giving you the impression that it's not here. You're creating that thought to consume your attention and then using that consumption of attention, just like an intoxication with alcohol or drugs. Trying to feel better by denying what's happening doesn't ever feel better. It can feel like it's better within the thinking, but it's actually getting worse as time passes and the tension is growing and growing and growing. Yes, because 14 years happened and I thought it was done. But no, it was there. By using those tools, using this wisdom, it's helping me to expand my happiness because for real, I want to live in this earth. I want to live full measure. Exactly, in this earth. I want to feel happy, like for real happiness. Beautiful. Not with a mask. You know what is silly to me? How many people, including me, we're wearing a mask. We weren't happy because we were facing pain and things like that. But now we understand and take this wisdom, apply it, practice it, and feel it because it's real. This is real. It's real. Well, that mask you're talking about is sort of like standing in front of a mirror, not liking what's in the mirror, and then yelling at the mirror to change while you're the one standing in front of it. It sounds ridiculous to say that, but it's exactly what we do by not facing what we're facing. Think about it. We think we're facing what we're facing. Well, what we're facing is an illusion that we've made believe is reality and wonder why we feel terrified and alone in the universe. Because we're trying to create reality that already exists entirely and make believe that somehow it's ours and wonder why we feel disconnected and less than and alone and separate and low self-esteem. Why would we have any self-esteem when the self that we're claiming has esteem has no life? It has no existence. It doesn't even have low self-esteem. It has no esteem whatsoever. So feeling less than is actually an accurate assessment of the thinking we're doing, not the being that we are, not the essence of our life, not the essence of our knowing, not the essence of the capital self, the self-realized, self-actualized, actually realizing what's happening rather than what is imagined to be happening. What is thinking is happening. What we're thinking is happening. But wouldn't a mask be fake it till you make it? I mean, I know like in doing things repetitively that I start to believe it. When I'm trying to do a forgiveness about some people, a person, place, or thing, and every day I get on my knees and wish them nothing but abundance and love, and I believe it. And then anything ugly, mean, or bad, or my resentments just melt away. So I don't know if the mask is wholly a bad thing. Well, I don't know that anything is wholly a bad thing when they're just considered imagined. But my sense is there's lots of ways to play with our capacity in thinking. And the idea of faking it till you make it is to also not recognize that you're making up the faking. And at the same time, if the essence of life is life, and if the essence of truth is true, and if the essence of reality is reality, then it isn't something that ever changes. And it doesn't take a lot to think about to basically concede that and begin to see that nothing we've ever held against anyone was anything other than a thought we held that was wrong thought to be right. If I start looking from that vantage point, I start knowing the awareness I have that's greater than the thinking. Because the thinking can't compete with that at all, which is why it constantly – obsessive thinking tries to perfect a self that doesn't exist. Why would it have to be obsessive about something and consumed with something if we are already consumed in the nature of nature? It wouldn't even be there. But, Jana, to your point, you're really talking– there's an interim stage, I suspect, in this awareness process, one of which is beginning to see how flexible our thoughts actually are. Right? When you start faking it and thinking, realizing that your own resistance and denial, you're not quite ready to come to terms with, so you play as though you are. You're simply imagining you are, right? Yes. And that simple imagination is all it takes. Because you begin to see that that other stuff starts to dissolve. But you're still in a rational thinking about it. But even within thinking, you can get better and feel better. But if the ultimate absolute nature isn't recognized as having been absolute the entire time, regardless of what you thought, you're going to loop back and loop back and create new circumstances to help work that out. That process is going to go on. What's interesting is that justification and rationalization are actually proving how flexible our thoughts are, meaning that they're never what we think when we think they're fixed. Whether we're stuck in them, they're fixed. There's nothing we can do about them. They're actually proving there's something we can do about them. But they're fighting for proof that they're real. They're fighting for proof that they won't change by constantly changing the fight that they're having. It's crazy to think of the extent we can go and the mental gymnastics we can perform and make believe that somehow we're going to get better someday when we feel better momentarily. But we're also delaying and building an explosive potential that tends to explode in the face of circumstances that seem very small. But the reaction is huge because it's finally like that volcanic urge just explodes on somebody. If you watch for those things, you'll notice what they are. I have those. I still react. There are things I do not like and I do not tolerate very well. I don't like people who are aggressive. I don't like people who actually pose threats to other people. I'm very keen to that. I was stabbed once, so I have a sensitivity to that whole process. But it doesn't mean that I make it better by reacting, though I may postpone some of the physical ailments that could come from pretending the guy is fine and he's not going to do anything. Because that's what I did with the first guy. I just thought, well, I couldn't even imagine somebody doing what he did. So as a result of that lack of imagination, I was subject to an experience that was pretty intense. Lensis, I could see you panting. I am taking a little note. Yes. You look like you were about to say something, though. I have experienced exactly what you are describing. I know that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we all share the same makeup. You know, when you're talking about faking it, Jana, we all share the same makeup in terms of our genetic makeup. It's already made up. And we have a platform that we're operating from. And if that platform is based on an absolute spiritual nature, and I don't say spirit in terms of trying to identify a god amongst other gods, but simply a state of being, an infinite, unlimited, absolute, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent state of power, whatever that is. I don't even know if it's power because we use that word power because we're so used to thinking when we can control other people and manipulate other people and influence other people in our direction. That we have control and power, but that is actually not control and power. It's manipulation. It's just coercion rather than allowing people to do what they want and recognize the ultimate abundance would not have us think things scarcely, but abundantly. And not fight for things, but actually just allow things and watch things and be the adventure of that process. Be awesome rather than something that needs to go exactly according to my plan, my way, my thoughts. Harry has some experience. Harry and I did a talk last week and he shared some of the same things you did, Lenzes. Repeat again, Jack? Repeat again? Repeat again? Yes, what did you say before? About Harry? About Harry had some of the same experiences you did in the talk that I had with him just before the one I had with you. Harry and I, I think, talked on Wednesday and recorded. Wow. So one of the things I'm starting to do for all of you is that for years, people have called me and I generally don't talk to them unless I have an hour. Because it generally takes an hour to sit and listen and process and all that. So there's a lot of times I'm not available and I don't make myself available to tell them I don't have time. I don't bother to tell them I don't have time. I simply am not available until I have time. And when I do, I take that time. So one of the things I realized is that I might as well be – Harry called, I think, on Tuesday. I said, Harry, why don't you come back Wednesday and we'll record the conversation and just talk about it openly and let other people listen to it. And the point of this conversation is to be able to have a conversation that gives people an option and start to think about things they may not normally think about. And if it weren't for the knowing nature we all have, the only way this conversation could succeed was that it would be rational enough to be systematic enough and ordered enough and said well enough to convince people of something. But if we already know it, there's no convincing that can be done. It doesn't matter what I think. It doesn't make any difference until the individual receiving it decides that it makes a difference or maybe they do know something more than they think. And maybe some of these thoughts are worth considering and starting to look at the effects as evidence of the cause of that conflicted thinking. So where there's inner conflict and emotional turmoil and mental anguish, I could guarantee you from my experience that those are all attached. Those experiences are all effects of thinking. The base root of thoughts are reality. And so every thought I have, no matter how close it might get to something that's functional or useful, are always going to be corrupted in some way because any variation of that process, any expectation I have now is that things should only go the way I think they'll go. And rather than see that to do that means I'm trying to create one possibility in the midst of all possibilities, I am taking all possibilities and diminishing them down to one possibility. And I would say that's a very scarce approach to an abundant nature. And so what do I feel? Afraid. Anxious. Stressed. Pressure. Why? Because I'm resisting nature in my thinking by making believe the thing I'm thinking is true. And now I have to fight it to protect it and to prove it at the same time. Both defending it, trying to prove it. While, in fact, if it were real, it would have no defense because it would never be at risk. In an absolute state, nothing's at risk. And so we are looking like people did originally at the horizon and thought that it was the edge of doom and that if they sailed out to sea, they'd fall off the edge. So people didn't sail to sea, but what they were really feeling that was doomed was the limit of their own thought. That's what was doomed. And for us, the circumstances we use to justify the feelings we're having have nothing to do with the circumstances but what we're thinking about those circumstances and what we're thinking about those people, places, and things. And if I believe my limited thoughts are true, I believe there is no reality beyond that limit. And so I have no objectivity. I'm subjective in my thinking. And what do I become? Subject to all the ramifications of that, too. That sense of disorder. Life's terms are in perfect order. When I start thinking of them only according to my terms and my thinking, I begin to think disordered. My thinking becomes disordered. So what do I have? Disorders. They're growing. The disorders that humans are suffering mentally are growing. And what do we treat? The effect. Help people feel better. To your point, Channa. If the essence is looked at as being essential to our experience rather than something that's optional and negotiable, the thoughts we have that we think will finally kind of relieve it a little bit all of a sudden start to seem impractical and improbable. While they are certainly possible, we can still do it, doesn't mean they're going to work. It's been a delusion the whole time. An illusion thought of as reality is delusional. Thoughts are illusions. They're imagined. They're things that we generate in our brain that we attach pictures to and words to, just like a screenwriter develops a movie. If they're good enough to develop it. And we're pretty masterful to have developed a population of people that seem to be struggling with this and don't even notice. They think of addiction as only the people on the street suffering from drugs and alcohol and fentanyl and all this stuff that we talk about and don't see that it's part of the mental state of society's ills that are allowing that condition to happen and then think there's nothing we can do about it but build them condos. And that's basically the major opinion right now. If you give people a place to live, they'll be better off. It hasn't proven itself to be true at all because many of those people burn the places down they end up in or they end up overdosing from the freedom they have now to be hidden and be more comfortable doing what they're doing. We're encouraging people to get worse by not asking any accountability from them and presuming they're incapable of accountability. That's a social ill. Thinking that people's dignity is completely stripped from them simply because they've degraded themselves so obviously. But that degradation is throughout society. The policies that lead to that are actually the same degradated idea that what's wrong is right and somehow it someday will get better. It hasn't yet. Suicides at an all-time rate. Drug addiction. I interviewed Dr. Jan Schwartz in her new book. She said that gambling is the biggest source of money laundering. I thought it was drugs. Gambling is much bigger than that and it's accepted as a social norm. For years, it was illegal and all of a sudden, when states figured they could make money from lotteries, all of a sudden, they started bending the rules for their own sake. Government inherently benefits by growing, not shrinking. And yet, they're not a profit-bent organization. They don't have the same responsibilities that an individual does to maintain fiscal responsibility. So, we have an enormous fiscal irresponsibility going on that cannot possibly be sustained. It's impossible. And we're witnessing it. There never seems to be enough money for the most basic things, but there seem to be trillions of dollars for things that are optional. I'm not condemning society. I'm simply mentioning that we are all party to that, participants of it. We are playing roles that contribute to it. And those roles, if they are false in any way and thought to be the only thing we can do, are exactly the same thing that all those other people that we point to and say are wrong are doing. And we're culpable. We're part of it as a society, as a species, even broader than a society. Society is small compared to the 8.5 billion people. Any thoughts? I can't imagine. Gabe? Thank you for having us here. Thank you for everything you are sharing. Thanks for showing up. You're all volunteers. This is so powerful. Well, I don't have another description to say because this is what I'm feeling. I'm feeling so, wow, we have everything to be better, to do amazing. You know, again, I don't know. We started the recording a little late because we waited for Gabe, but I don't know if I said this before or after the recording, but the conversation with Lensis and her daughter was very revealing because Esther, who is 16, is as intuitive as anybody I ever encountered. And when I first talked to her, I said, you know, you're seeing things immediately that many adults struggle for years with. And she said, really? Thinking of adults as these sort of masters of the universe, not seeing that very often the mastery is in the maintaining of the baggage and the ideas and the resentments and the unforgiving concepts and the contemptful, spiteful, hateful things about circumstances that aren't even happening. And so the talk that I did yesterday with Lensis and her daughter is very interesting because Esther is very keen and insightful and also offered. What was the name of the fox? Let me see. I have it on my phone. It's something that Apple did, and it's a movie that talks about this, apparently. And was an Academy Award winner? Yes. Oscar. Yeah. Oscar Award winner. Which may be the same thing. Let me see if I can find the name because I know that you sent it to me. So it's worth mentioning because this isn't a new conversation. It's been going on for a long time, but it seems to have been going on on a basis of people constantly seeking and seeking and seeking to find rather than conceding that there is nothing lost. Starting to see that the absolute nature of nature is absolutely right here now. It's always been that way. It will always be that way. It's the nature of nature, and it is our nature. Isn't something we need to go find? It was the boy, the mole, the fox, and the horse. And she got tears talking about it, Esther did, because she said it's very similar to what we're talking about. There have been great poets, Rumi, who've talked about this through history. There have been great prophets who have talked about this. It is not an uncommon thread. And yet here we are, as advanced a civilization as we've ever been in terms of time, still struggling critically with this same basic premise within society. So the question is, what can we do? What we can do? Right here, right now. Yeah, each of us. We're all volunteers. We're voluntarily choosing thoughts to entertain and then make believe they're true because we think somehow we're going to prove ourself. Well, if the proof of ourself is trying to turn what's wrong into right, the proof is something seriously wrong. So to look at it naturally is to start to see the effects are actually revealing the cause. The feeling bad, the feeling wrong, the feeling disconnected, the feeling isolated, the feeling alone, the feeling sad, the feeling hurt, all that stuff.