The difficulty with thoughts...

[shadowkat]

Some fascinating and rather eye-opening passages from The Pristine Mind - A Practical Guide to Unconditional Happiness by Orgyen Chowang that I feel compelled to share with you all.

First off - the Pristine Mind is considered the achieved state of consciousness after meditation or a silent mind. Clean of the numerous random thoughts, worries, hopes, desires that plague us daily.

* Primordial fear is considered that fear that lies within us all, when we are plagued by these thoughts, and is the underlying source of "anxiety" or "monkey mind". It can manifest in many ways.

If you have anxious feelings without an apparent cause, or if you feel uneasy and restless unless you are constantly engaging with other people in person or online, then you are experiencing primoridal fear. This fear is why we all try so hard to connect with external things. If we find something the feels pleasant, whether it is a musical sound, an exciting image, something we enjoy touching or tasting, or an object we can purchase and posess, we chase after it because it feels good and gives us temporary comfort at that moment.

Most people are subject to some level of anxiety most of the time, whether they recognize it or not. Many of our activities are in truth efforts to distract ourselves from this underlying primordial fear that drives our ordinary mind and only creates more fear. We make phone calls, create incessant plans, and keep our schedule at a hectic pace. We need the TV on or music playing in the background -- even when we're not watching it or really listening -- to feel a sense of connection.

It is this constant activity around which we organize our lives to avoid confronting our primoridal fear. We pursue connection, connection, connection, connection. We try to connect to sounds and flavors and sights. We try to connect to our parents, children, romantic interests, books or art. We are constantly eating, talking, watching, or listening, trying to connect our five senses to anything we can in every waking moment.

We end connecting with unreliable objects of attention, whether they are other people, possessions, or diversions. These are unreliable sources of even ordinary happiness because we can't force them to make us happy; and they are ultimately unreliable because of their inherent impermanence.

It goes on to state that distractions, amusements, etc do not work. And that running away from our fear or avoiding to confront it - results in further distance from the Pristine Mind. OR rather, we become ungrounded and unconnected to ourselves and our world - sort of unhinged. The ordinary mind appears to be the day to day functioning mind, or surface mind, holding hopes, fears, concerns. It's the noise in our head.

* Social Anxiety -- "We think the way we interact with others is normal, but if there is any underlying hesitation, doubt, or discomfort, that is social anxiety."

Turning outward for a sense of security is not just a matter of seeking diversions from various impersonal sources. It also means we look to other people with both hopes and fears. When we are in ordinary mind, our contacts with other people take on an importance beyond what they can realistically deliver. Whether or not we are conscious of it, we hope they will alleviate some of our loneliness, despair, and primoridal fear and at the same time we hesitate to approach others because of fear that our efforts to connect will fail and they will reject us. Attending social events or even just talking with people may trigger our ordinary mind's worry about being judged, our nervousness, our self-doubt, and other negative thoughts and feelings.

In social interactions, most of us seek validation of our own beliefs and judgements. We worry about what other people's thoughts and opinions might be. What do hey really think of us? Are we respected, admired, considered cool and sexy? If people think of us postively along these lines, we feel good about ourselves for a while. But many people are more afriad of other's opinions and judgments than they are of anything else.

Social anxiety comes from being focused on 'how we are doing' in this world. We are constantly judging our own performance and other's treatment of us. For example, if we are preoccupied with what other people feel about us, we raise questions: "What are other people thinking? I hope they like me. What are they saying about me behind my back? What do they really think of me? It's these concerns that we project onto others that compound our social anxiety.

If we examine ourselves honestly, we will see that we are constantly making many, many judgements moment by moment. We judge both ourselves and other people. This process influences the we we treat others and as a result, the way they treat us. Oher people perceive the discomfort in us, so they feel even more uncomfortable than they already were from their own social anxiety. Cues go back and forth based on this mutual anxiety and depending on the degree of anxiety, it can become awkward and stressful. Then we can become even more uncomfortable and more judgemental toward ourselves and others.

If all of your attention is on those agitated thoughts, then even if everybody around you appreciates you and says how much they like you, you may not believe it. But when you are in a pristine state of mind.....you have fewer thoughts and thus less anxiety and fear , because all those uncomfortable experiences come from your thoughts and without thoughts they can't survive. Then it doesn't matter what people think of you; even if everybody around you hates you, it doesn't affect you. You are comfortable with yourself. Even if everyone glares at you angrily and criticizes you, if you pay no attention to your own thoughts, you remain comfortable and as stable as a mountain.

When we reconnect with our Pristine Mind [no negative thoughts], we stope the destructive process of projecting blame for our own feelings, either on ourselves or others, so that our family, friendships, work relationships, and social contacts become more stable. At the same time, we are flexible and adaptable. Our primordial fear has calmed down, so rather than having to make judgements about ourslves or other people, or worry about whether we are being treate fairly, we experience the joy of giving to others and relating to them without expectation or apprehension.

* Addictive activities: "For some people the powerful cravings of our ordinary mind, and its underlying anxiety, discontent, and lack of fulfillment can turn into addictive behaviors."

It can manifest itself less dramatically, like constantly checking e-mail or social media. The behavior turns into a habit, since these distractions can never put the underlying anxiety to rest permanently. These (alcoholism, drug addiction, sex addiction, workaholic etc) are all forms of addiction -- an unfulfilled longing for connection. Like the elusive carrot always out of reach of the donkey, we chase and chase the object of our desire in ordinary mind, but we never really reach it, the very nature of the fear-based and misdirected ordinary mind cannot provide it.

The need for external distractions is like having a food addiction. A person with an eating addiction cannot stop bingeing: they finish the chocolate and then reach for the ice cream, then go out for a hamburger, and then get Chinese takout on the way home. Mentally, we binge on the stimulation of internal and external activity. It is like we are stuffing our mind constantly. Because our mind cannot stay still for one moment, we do not really see our dependency on the stimulation.

This resonated a bit with me, because I'm prone to fall into binge eating. Where I can't stop eating. My mother does it as well. And I'll make myself ill. It's like I'm trying to fill a craving that can't be filled.

Why do people feel such a strong need for all of this stimulation? That addiction to external conditions, that restless energy, is caused by our primordial fear.

It is hard to tell a compulsive eater to stop eating or to eat less, because they are used to eating continuously. Similarly, it is hard to tell ourselves, "Be silent, let go our your thoughts, meditate," because we are addicted to distractions. Our body may eat three meals a day, but our mind eats continuously. As a result, our own internal pristine state continues to be more and more obscured.

I've been practicing the letting go of thoughts bit, and I have to say it really does work. I've become calmer and less frenetic as a result. It does require practice at first and I use various tools - such as meditation, tapping, yoga, breathing exercises, and I'll watch the thought instead of letting it take a firm hold.

Being an addict does not make us content; it makes us crave more. The more we crave, the more we suffer. If we can break the cycle, we will find inner freedom. When we cut through our addiction, we can rest. Englightment comes when the mind rests in its natural state. Real contentment is found when our mental events slow down.

I've noticed that when I'm able to slow my mind and not think, I'm happier. Just go through moments of not thinking at all. Silence. I've pulled away from social media a bit and have eliminated a lot of my trigger foods - which result in the addictive/compulsory eating.

So a lot of what the writer states has rung true, at least in my own experience and makes sense to me.

I'm sharing this in case it helps or resonates with someone else, who like me suffers from things like social anxiety. I'm also posting it to remember it.

I can tell you that I've gone through periods in which I felt terrified. I wasn't even sure what I was terrified of exactly. I was terrified of going outside. Meeting people. Doing day to day things.
Sometimes the fear felt so great that I felt that I could not breath, that a literal weight sat on my chest. Since, I've begun letting go of thoughts and practicing mindfulness, along with meditation, this weight has gone away. Of course, I am seeing a holistic therapist who has been aiding me along the way. I am not doing this all by myself. But it has helped a great deal.