Negative Thoughts

How to Find What Is Missing in Your Life

/ Tim Custis / Leave a comment

Does something feel missing in your life? Do you feel called toward something different or more meaningful? Are you continually searching for the next thing that will bring you the peace, joy, and happiness that you desire? Do you find yourself doing, doing, and doing until exhaustion, then trying to squeeze in time to enjoy life? Do you hang onto memories of the past and dream of better days to come?

Many experience life like this and ultimately wake up one day wondering where their lives are going or went, and this awakening becomes the motivating force to create something new. The misstep that happens is that we believe we must embark on a long journey to some place new — not realizing that what we are seeking is already here and does not need to be created.

What if your searching, which has offered you incremental change toward your desired outcome, somehow is simultaneously keeping you from your intended destination? Can you see this happening in your life? Does your intended destination always seem so close, yet somehow you never arrive?

The surprising solution is so simple that many think it cannot possibly work, and therefore, it is often overlooked. Is it possible that you are so trapped in personhood that you have lost the ability to see the truth of who you really are? Has your doing, doing, doing kept you from being able to just BE in life, to be present in the moment?

For some, this will sound silly to the mind, and especially so to anyone who has never questioned who they are. All I ask is that you ignore your mind just this once. Ask yourself this question if you are having trouble understanding where I am pointing. Has your mind throughout your life produced thoughts that were always true and helpful? If not, then please keep reading.

The following insight will tell you when you are actually in the moment, which is something you can confirm for yourself. When you can be present, in the here and now, the moment, thoughts are not perceived.

We have all had times like this when we do pay attention to our thoughts, and they seem to be gone. For example, when we are in awe of a sunset, or we experience so much joy that we lose track of time. In these moments, there is nothing to do and nothing wrong. We are one with what is and fully present. We become still inside and full of peace. It is only when we fall back into personhood that thought once again appears.

Of course, afterward, we THINK that living every moment in this way is not possible because we have to make a living or we have to take care of the family, or we have to… Like a dog chasing its tail, we continue looking for something that seems elusive. We keep searching to find that thing that will recreate our experience, not realizing that it is always here. We have forgotten it is our natural state, just to BE.

The truth is that living in the present moment is not about creating anything. It is not about taking a journey or changing anything. We are so attached to our thoughts that we cannot see this, and we THINK that being present is about practice, a ritual or hard work. We fail to recognize that we are more than just the body and this life as a person.

You cannot figure all this out through the mind because it will get in the way of you seeing the truth. It will make you THINK that you already know or you are getting close if you just do one more thing. Finding your way out of this mind-trap is simple; however, letting go of years of conditioning and habitual thinking is not always easy for most of us.

Therefore, if you truly feel a calling to go deeper and have direct experience of this truth, you must be vigilant and bring more awareness into your life. Life does not have to be so serious. Suffering comes from the attachment to thought and the desire for a different outcome than what showed up. You know when this has happened you have become too attached to personhood and lost awareness of your True-Self, your real nature. You will only find stability there because everything associated with personhood is unstable; it comes, goes, lives, and dies.

I am not asking you to believe me or to acquire more knowledge. Test it out for yourself, because it will only be through direct experience that you can build the strength to ignore the misdirection of your thoughts. Use your mind when you need to and stop believing everything it says. Become aware of its rambling, and your life will become full of joy and peace. Return to your real and timeless state.

Magnificent Awareness

/ Tim Custis / Leave a comment

Waking up to the source of your problems is where freedom resides.

The root of all your difficulties is not what you THINK. With awareness, you will notice that your suffering is caused by illogical thinking, and not by outside circumstances as your thoughts tell you. These kinds of thoughts keep you from having the experience of your real nature and remaining in the present moment. When you are in the present moment, all thoughts cease.

Just notice any one of the many thoughts you have every day that is not truthful or helpful in living life fully. They fill your mind throughout the day, still many more without your conscious awareness. If you bring a little attention to them, you will begin to awaken to their misguiding nature.

With awareness, you will see that something is observing these passing thoughts. Now, are you the observer, that which is observed or both? Are you more than just the body and your life of personhood?

These questions alone can help you begin to wake up to the truth of who you are and lead you from suffering to peace. Follow them inward to experience your True-Self. As you do, your life as you THINK you know it will begin to fall away, revealing your real nature.

Be careful not to grasp onto any story that the mind will create to satisfy your curiosity or distract you; these stories will be associated with an old belief or conditioning that is not sound. If one arises, question it, and it too will fall away once you awaken to its falsehood.

Following your mind to find the truth will lead you astray every time. To know the truth, you must have a direct experience of your real nature. You will never have this experience using knowledge, logic, or the mind. These are the tools of personhood, and they will keep you trapped in the illusion that you are only the body.

Pay attention to how your thoughts direct your life. Is their influence guiding it in the direction you want? If not, take the simple step of noticing with awareness, how misleading your thoughts can be, and then let them go when you can. You will begin to wake up to your unconscious thoughts by doing this, one moment and thought at a time.

The world we live in today is a creation of these false and unconscious thoughts, and the only way out is to be willing to bring awareness to them. Knowing, feeling, or believing this to be true is not enough. If it were the world would be full of enlightened beings today. We must have a direct experience of our true nature for lasting progress to be made. Do not be trapped by expecting the experience to be a dramatic one, but instead practice what I have suggested above and then notice what happens. Do not listen to any fake news created by your mind!

For example:

I am not doing it right.
This is not working.
I should have woken up by now.
I do not understand.
This may work for others, but it is not working for me.

These are just a few examples of the thoughts that can arise to derail your progress and force you back into the habitual thought patterns that keep you stuck. Therefore, pay attention and question your thoughts to see if they are for your highest good. Remain connected to your heart and follow your intuition.

This is simple, so do not let the mind complicate if for you. Can you become zero? What I mean by this is can you let go of every story you tell yourself, every thought of present, past, or future, just for a minute. Can you become empty? To avoid any confusion created by your upcoming thoughts around this, I will tell you that everyone can do this.

Once you become empty, what do you experience? Many find profound peace or love. Be present with this peace or love; this is your True-Self. The more you do this, the more it will fill each moment of every day.

I will leave you with this last thought to contemplate. The world is not what you think it is; the world becomes what you think it is.

The Good Struggle

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The Good Struggle sounds funny I know, but we all experience it at some point in our lives. It is when something hard that we go through turns out to be worth the struggle. Can you think of something that has already happened to you that proves this point?

In the context of awakening, our struggle turns out to be good when we begin to recognize our conditioned self. That means we start to see in ourselves certain behaviors and thoughts that we can no longer tolerate. They make us feel uncomfortable in some way, and we now realize that they have been with us for some time, but we did not see them, or we have ignored them.

This process can begin in different ways. However, for many, it happens once we start to question our lives. We may feel a calling or that there has to be something more to life.  However, often something traumatic or difficult happens in our lives and these events shake us up, and begin to wake us up.

Once this happens, we start to see these behaviors and thoughts that were before out of our conscious awareness. Sometimes you can even see this playing out in the actions of friends or family members; however, it is much harder to see in our own lives without awareness.

Things that you might notice are that you feel uneasy, out of balance, or more emotional. Fear, anger, anxiety and other uncomfortable feelings come up more often and stay longer. Your thoughts may urge you to believe these feeling have just started and were caused by someone or something else in your life. Yet somehow, you know this is not true, and that they were there all along.

Once the light of awareness starts flowing in, the mind fights back to stay in control. Therefore, dealing with everything that is coming out makes things more difficult for a time, this should not bring concern but instead optimism. It can even feel better or easier if we just go along with our thoughts and ignore what is happening, but I can assure you this is not true. When the real self is calling us, there is no turning back, and if we ignore this calling, then our struggle can evolve into great suffering because of our resistance.

We often think that we are supposed to have a mystical or spiritual experience to awaken or we want the quick fix. Then we spend years going from one thing to the next, one teacher or workshop waiting for this to happen or chasing a similar experience that happened before, not realizing we are going nowhere.

For the majority, having this kind of dramatic moment never happens, and we end up in more distress over the years. Once we experience our true nature and the light of awareness begins to flow, things will happen naturally and without much effort. However, we must remain watchful so that we do not fall prey to the tricks of the mind because it will easily betray us through our conditioned thoughts. So yes, you may feel at times this is a struggle, but I assure you once again that it is The Good Struggle.

 

Falling Apart

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“The ego’s root feeling is that if I do not hold myself together there will be a falling apart into something chaotic and difficult. So there is anxiety, an energetic anxiety which is located in the body, in the whole energetic system of the body and interpersonal turbulence reminds us again and again C’.” ~ Dalai Lama

Falling apart to me means letting go of that which no longer serves us, which means letting go of your conditioning. Conditioning contributes to the person you have become and how you interact with life, it is not the real you that is under all that conditioning.

I explained it this way to one of my clients. When NASA sends a rocket up into space at some point, the rocket drops its booster because it is no longer needed and they keep the main rocket from soaring to its destination. Our conditioning is like the booster; at some point, it begins to weigh us downs and prevents us from soaring in life.

The thought that, “If I do not hold myself together there will be a falling apart,” keeps us from living in the present moment. We must admit the truth to ourselves and stop believing our thoughts, which have no basis in reality. Listening and believing only in our thoughts lead us in a needless never-ending cycle of despair, worry, anxiety, and suffering.

Self-inquiry can expose this kind of wrong thinking every time and remember that we can feel that we are right without being right, but that we cannot be right without feeling right. Therefore, if you are not feeling centered and peaceful pay attention to how you are thinking and be open to a little self-insight.

Feeding the Mind

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Most of us think about what food we put into our bodies. Of course, we do not always do a great job, but at least we try. However, many of us never think about what we are putting into our minds, and we are feeding it all day long with negative information and repetitive thoughts that keep us from being in the moment and present with those we love.
 
You know what I am talking about; we even start forming our response in the middle of someone else’s thought, without really listening and giving them a chance to finish. Pay more attention, and you will see that what I am saying is true.