The Inner Journey
Getting Off the Roller Coaster
CONDITIONED EMOTIONS AND CHOOSING.
A conditioned emotion is one where you respond without awareness. What you
feel, is then given expression through an automatic response.
Through our behavior, many problems can be brought upon ourselves, and
because of this we tend to think that such problems are an unavoidable and
painful part of life. This way of thinking can be mistakenly justified when we
suffer a misfortune that is not of our making. We then feel through such an
incident that life is truly the source of all our problems. We find it easy to
point blame and often refer to these incidents (consciously or not) to falsely
obtain a strength to assert misguided beliefs.
If you can develop an awareness of this, you will then be able to give
yourself a chance to foresee the potential of future problems before they
unfold. By altering the unthinking conditioned behavior through an awareness
of it, will enable great expansions of thought and opportunities to be a part
of your life.
From these unthinking reactions, we can turn events into real problems.
Something which simply requires ones attention, can also be seen as a source
of bother. This can happen when we procrastinate about jobs to be done. The
more we delay, the louder the thing screams out to be done. What would have
taken a little bit of effort in the beginning, can end up requiring a lot of
effort as we struggle along with our other demands. When we attempt to make
things easy for ourselves, we very often end up making it harder. Conditioned behavior
which continues to delay things, will always bring us future
problems. Without doubt, it is these sorts of problems that are truly of our
own making.
As I am writing this book, I am continually adding and fine tuning its
contents. In this process of daily updates, I print the information at the end
of each day so I can examine and edit it during the course of the following
day. At times I am tempted to think, "What a drag... all these changes
and errors I have to deal with". But once again, the real me has seen the
need for this process to be followed; it is the most efficient way for me to
go about editing. However, the Ego steps in wanting to try alternatives to
this editing process in an attempt to make things easy for me.
"Easy"... but not necessarily effective in the long run.
The point I make here highlights how the Ego does try to work for us, but its
motive in this case was a fear of extra effort. It is reluctant to consider
concept of overall long term effects, and is often blind to the future
benefits of the application of extra effort during the present moment. Within
my own circumstance, my Ego did not know of the value of patience and as such,
it wants satisfaction to be obtained without delay.
When pain comes into our life, the Ego very easily asserts itself by telling
us it has some answers to our suffering. Since it shows us ways to kill the
pain we are enduring, it is given power if we act upon the options that are
put before us.
When the Ego has such command over our emotions and responses, our thinking is
a mirror to the nature of fear, and it is from this thinking that we deny the
long term consequences of particular choices, and go on to seek some source of
contentment that will bring about the removal of our pain. After we begin to
bear the consequences of our choices, we become illuminated to the folly of
our ways to then suffer guilt, remorse, or some other negative emotion. The
Ego, acting as it only knows and only can, will then put forth some other
option for our choice in an attempt to ease the latest distress.
top | continued | download book
home | about
me | i am the
heart | getting off the roller coaster
short discourses |
|
