What if you found that you’re never upset for the reason you think?
Nov 19, 2019
(By Eldad Ben-Moshe ✨ Reading Time: 7 minutes)
Loved ones ❤
What if you found out that you’re never upset for the reason you think?
I know, it might sound strange.
You might be asking me in your head:
“Eldad, what do you mean?
Of course I'm upset because of her/him/what happened.
What else?”
But as you dive deeper and deeper into how your mind really works,
you find many surprises.
I absolutely guarantee that.
The reason is that we never learn these things -
not in school, not in our homes, not in our culture, and certainly not on TV….
To be more accurate: what we do learn is the opposite of the truth.
So when you finally learn the truth?
It can be very surprising.
Our mind(/ego) & culture teaches us that external things cause our
suffering & upset.
But is that really so?
Consider this, compiled from lessons 2-9 of A Course in Miracle’s workbook:
Let’s break it down and see how this works:
1. I Have Given Everything I See All The Meaning That It Has For Me.
Let’s say you and I are looking at a flower.
You think the flower is beautiful; I think it’s ugly.
Who is right? What is the flower - beautiful or ugly?
The truth is it is neither beautiful nor ugly.
It just is.
‘Beautiful’ and ‘ugly’ are just our judgments of it, our opinions - nothing more.
Our judgments and opinions do not change what it is.
If I’m sure the sun is cold, it does not change the sun.
This is true for emotionally charged issues as well.
If I’m sure the results of the elections are great, and you’re sure they’re terrible,
what are there results, great or terrible?
They’re neither. They’re just the results.
Great and terrible, and all the rest, is not the truth about what they are -
it’s only our judgments about them.
We have given what happened all the meaning it has for us.
Without our judgments and stories, things just are -
Neither good nor bad, they just are.
This is sometimes hard to accept, as our mind loves to be right.
You are likely to rebel at this idea, even if intellectually you’ll agree.
Just wait until the next time you get upset, and you’ll see…
2. I Do Not Understand Anything I See.
As much as we hate to admit this, our judgments are based on
psychological inclinations and just a tiny fraction of the big picture,
not on real knowledge and wisdom.
To make a perfect judgment, to really know what’s best,
you’ll have to have absolute and infinite knowledge of all
the past, present, and future.
Furthermore, you’ll have to be totally objective and unbiased,
wholly detached from any personal opinion, inclination, or wish -
both conscious and unconscious.
Neither of these 2 conditions is possible for you or me.
So both of them together?
Forget it.
Be honest - there's no way any of us can really understand it all perfectly.
And if we misunderstand even some part of the situation (or a person),
how can we know if it is good or bad?
How accurate can our judgment of it be?
3. Therefore, These Thoughts Do Not Mean Anything.
They can be wrong just as much as they can be right,
and you have no way to really know.
If we’re honest about it,
we have to admit not only that we don’t know, but also that we can’t know.
… and that we were sure we were right many times before,
and sometimes we still discovered that we were wrong.
4. I See Only The Past.
(yes, I changed the order a bit - for the sake of learning. It’ll make sense soon)
“Old ideas about time are very difficult to change,
because everything you believe is rooted in time,
and depends on your not learning these new ideas about it.
Yet that is precisely why you need new ideas about time.
This first time idea is not really so strange as it may sound at first.
Look at a cup, for example.Do you see a cup, or are you merely reviewing your past experiences
of picking up a cup, being thirsty, drinking from a cup, feeling the rim
of a cup against your lips, having breakfast and so on?
Are not your aesthetic reactions to the cup, too, based on past experiences?
How else would you know whether or not this kind of cup will break if you drop it?
What do you know about this cup except what you learned in the past?
You would have no idea what this cup is, except for your past learning.
Do you, then, really see it?
Look about you. This is equally true of whatever you look at.
Acknowledge this by applying the idea for today indiscriminately
to whatever catches your eye. For example:
I see only the past in this pencil.I see only the past in this shoe.
I see only the past in this hand.
I see only the past in that body.
I see only the past in that face.”
5. I Am Never Upset For The Reason I Think.
I Am Upset Because I See Something That Is Not There.
“Wait Eldad, what?
I’m upset because she cheated on me.
And it certainly was there.
Even if I see only the past - she even admitted it!”
Ok, I hear you….
Let’s take it one step at a time, shall we?
“No one really sees anything.
He sees only his thoughts projected outward.
The mind’s preoccupation with the past is the cause of the misconception
about time from which your seeing suffers.
Your mind cannot grasp the present, which is the only time there is.
It therefore cannot understand time, and cannot, in fact, understand anything.”
In other words, you are not upset about your partner, because you don’t even see her.
What you ‘see,’ and react to, is your thoughts, your stories, your beliefs, your judgments.
And your thoughts are not ‘there,’ where your wife is, or in what you call reality.
They are in your head.
The fact is that you can react differently to the same situation.
The difference will be either in your thoughts about what happened,
or in the way you choose to see your thoughts.
That does not mean, of course, it's ok to cheat, or that one shouldn't react
at all if their partner cheats on them.
I sure wouldn't want my wife to cheat on me.
What we're talking about is why we get upset, so that we can deal
with life's events from a more mindful, healthy, less triggered place.
This, in turn, will lead to a happier, better, healthier life.
At the end of the day, Isn't that what we really want?
6. My Mind Is Preoccupied With Past Thoughts.
“The one wholly true thought one can hold about the past
is that it is not here.
To think about it at all is therefore to think about illusions.
Very few have realized what is actually entailed in picturing the past
or in anticipating the future.
The mind is actually blank when it does this,
because it is not really thinking about anything.
The purpose of the exercises for today is to begin to train your mind to
recognize when it is not really thinking at all.
While thoughtless ideas preoccupy your mind, the truth is blocked.
Recognizing that your mind has been merely blank,
rather than believing that it is filled with real ideas,
is the first step to opening the way to vision.”
Since we see only the past, our thoughts are a result of the past -
even if we're thinking of what's happening now.
To repeat the above example, we see the cup through our past experiences,
what we learned in the past, not through the present moment.
Since our thoughts are a result of our past, and we only see our
thoughts projected outwards (as explained above),
the only thing we ever see is our past projected outwards.
It could be what you ‘learned’ about how people behave when their partner
cheated on them (how many movie and TV scenes have you seen about that?).
It could even be that this is considered ‘cheating’ -
a very loaded word, with psychological influences of its own.
The point is, you're not coming as a ‘clean slate’ to any situation in life.
You come to it with all your past. And you see it through your past.
In fact, you see only the past, not the situation as it is.
As it is, it just is - like the flower. All the rest is stories and judgments.
And those stories and judgments, and your attachment to them,
are the cause of your suffering.
7. I See Nothing As It Is Now.
As we’ve just seen, since your mind is preoccupied with past thoughts,
you do not see anything as it is now.
“This idea obviously follows from the two preceding ones.
But while you may be able to accept it intellectually,
it is unlikely that it will mean anything to you as yet.
However, understanding is not necessary at this point. In fact,
the recognition that you do not understand is a prerequisite
for undoing your false ideas.
These exercises are concerned with practice, not with understanding.
You do not need to practice what you already understand.
It would indeed be circular to aim at understanding,
and assume that you have it already.
It is difficult for the untrained mind to believe that what it seems
to picture is not there. This idea can be quite disturbing,
and may meet with active resistance in any number of forms.
Yet that does not preclude applying it.
No more than that is required for these or any other exercises.
Each small step will clear a little of the darkness away,
and understanding will finally come to lighten every corner of
the mind that has been cleared of the debris that darkens it.”
8. The spiritual dimension:
The course speaks on many levels simultaneously.
One level is the level in which we think we are the body and personality,
to which all the above discussion applies.
But on the deeper spiritual level, the Course tells us that "I see only the past" &
"My mind is preoccupied with past thoughts" relates to our decision to separate
from oneness and see what individuality and specialness will be like.
That decision happened in the past (if we apply linear time to this metaphorical story),
and the result of it is this dream of separation and individuality.
It is not a decision we made as a body, or even as a soul, since a soul is separate
and unique as well (my soul is not your soul, my past life is not yours,
my soul's journey isn't your soul's journey, etc.).
It was a decision made by us as the one Son of God (or any other name you'd like to give it; The Son of God is what A Course in Miracles calls it, but any other relevant name will do).
While that separation never really happened, as long as we believe that it did,
we suffer from guilt and fear over that decision as it means the end of perfect oneness.
One of the A Course in Miracles' main agendas is to help us deal with that cycle of guilt and fear
that follows the belief we have 'sinned' by separating from perfect oneness.
The course clearly states that the separation never happened, and that the decision for separation was a mistake rather than a sin.
But thankfully, it also goes a step further and gives us a practical tool to use in our daily lives, so that we could deal with the guilt and fear in a more practical way.
The way to do that is through the practice of Forgiveness,
but note that it is not forgiveness as we know it.
The course gives the word forgiveness a very different meaning, of which you can read here.
It's all about being practical:
As you can see in the last quote,
intellectual understanding is not what's most important,
as it just won't bring the change you want to see in your life.
"These exercises are concerned with practice, not with understanding.
You do not need to practice what you already understand.
It would indeed be circular to aim at understanding,
and assume that you have it already."
To have the better life we want, to be happier and suffer less,
learning is just one step, but not enough.
The process, as I see it, is Learn -> Practice -> Experience -> Transform™.
Practice, or implementation, is necessary for any significant, long-term change to really happen.
I wholeheartedly recommend doing the exercises in A Course in Miracle's workbook.
I've been working with them since 2005, and they literally changed my life.
In fact, one of the reasons I love this course so much is because it has daily exercises.
There are other methods too, of course. For example:
- I love using the Enneagram as a coaching tool for transformation.
Both my clients and I see great results from Enneagram coaching. - The B-AIR™ system is probably the fastest to learn, most direct, simplest,
and easiest to implement - while bringing great results every time. - Meditation is priceless.
Find the practice(s) you love, and do the work.
Getting help from professionals usually proved to be worth every penny.
While pain is inevitable in life, suffering and upsets are self-made,
and we can work through them and reach the happier,
better life we want and deserve.
Whether you do it by yourself or get someone's help,
be it my help or someone else's,
I really want to see you overcome whatever stands
between you and your better life.
Final note: You can do this!
Choose the thing(s) that inspire you the most.
Don’t over-do it, keep it simple and joyful.
Take one baby step at a time.
Remember -
- Implement.
- Baby steps.
- Joyfully.
To your better life,
with tons of 💖
Eldad Ben-Moshe
Founder, Teacher, and Coach
Better Life Awareness Center
Author
