Today, let’s explore how a simple way of changing our minds can change our experiences. While researching this topic, I discovered that there is a book with the same name. How cool is that? So last session we talked about how Happiness is an inside job and how pain and pleasure are within us. How we let external conditions dictate our mood.
I am sure we all had some kind of problem today. It bothered us. It disturbed our peace. But if you think back, was that an external problem or an internal problem? I would bet a pretty penny it was an external problem. We let our external problems power to make us suffer. But it is all about perception. Say one day is going great. We feel like everything is going our way. Traffic is flowing smoothly, coworkers are on their best behavior, and so forth. The very next day, we feel like the whole world is against us. Someone cuts us off in the traffic, coworkers sound like they are demanding and whatnot. It is the same set of characters but we despise them! Why? Because our internal compass is off that day.
Let me tell you a story. I was driving through rural Mississippi about 20 years ago. I saw a small vendor on the roadside so I stopped. She was an old lady selling boiled peanuts. I bought a few and started talking with her. I asked her how her day was. She said it was an especially good day. I asked her what made that an especially good day. She said, well, I would make $20 today. Think about it! $20 was an especially good day. Granted I was in rural Mississippi in the early 2000s but still. She just had a particularly bright outlook on life you can tell. I bet she hardly had a bad day.
Everything depends upon our mind, including our sense of self. I think I may have talked about this in the past but let’s just reiterate. We all have this strong sense of self. Who we are. We are certain types of people, we do x and not y, and so forth. But if you think about it, this sense of self is not constant. It is ever-changing. Think about your 10-year-old self. I bet when you were ten, your sense of who you were was totally different from who you are today! Your 10-year-old self may not recognize who you have become. I am sure that’s true in my case. And you can say the same thing about your 20-year-old self and so on. So our sense of self is evolving. It is a good thing. And if we know it is constantly changing why are we hanging on to that sense of self? If we realize that our sense of self depends upon our thoughts, it becomes liberating! We are free to change our thoughts and in turn our sense of self. How cool is that?
Our sense of self is always based on our delusions. Our anger, jealousy, pride, attachment, and so on. But as long as it is an imputed sense of self, why not impute a happier state of mind? Because the universe gives us what we want. If we are always identifying ourselves as a tired, frustrated, and angry person then that is what the universe will give us. We do what we intend to do anyway. So why not create the intention to be happy all the time? If we are feeling completely rattled and overwhelmed, rather than identifying with that rattled and frustrated self, why don’t we tell ourselves, we are peaceful? We identify ourselves with our peaceful nature. We are this inherently peaceful person who happens to get rattled or frustrated every now and then. Now, we have changed the basis of our imputation all of a sudden. We are no longer identifying ourselves with the unhappy or angry but recognize that those are just our delusions that flare up from time to time.
We have talked about this before that we have the unlimited potential for peace. We are like this golden nugget that has some dirt on it. We recognize that we are not this dirty rock but actually a golden nugget with some dirt. As soon as we realize and accept that, we begin the work of removing the dirt from our golden nugget so we can be that peaceful person all the time.