Author: sedge808

We are hard wired to see the bad in our lives

Last night I was desperately trying to focus on anything other than the bad experience I had earlier in the day. I could change focus for a short while then back to the bad.

The reason we are hard wired, is so we could survive the tiger waiting in the bushes, ready to attack and eat us.

We are hard wired to SEE the tiger, so we can escape it. This is VERY important. Without it we would be tiger breakfast.

Residential people are able to choose what they focus thier attention on.

Eventually I was able to shift my focus, but I took a while.

Gavin.

Benefit finding

Benefit finding in psychology refers to the positive psychological changes or benefits that individuals perceive after experiencing a challenging or stressful life event. It’s a coping mechanism where individuals actively seek and find positive aspects or growth opportunities within difficult situations.

“Don’t loose what you have, to what you have lost”

Gavin.

Quote

“The surest way to work up a crusade in favour of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behaviour ‘righteous indignation’ — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.” 

 – Aldous Huxley

The mind

“The harder the mind struggles to get rid of the pain, the greater the pain. 
The mind can never find the solution, nor can it afford to allow you to find the solution, because it is itself an intrinsic part of the ‘problem.’ 

Imagine a chief of police trying to find an arsonist when the arsonist is the chief of police. 

You will not be free of that pain until you cease to derive your sense of self from identification with the mind,
which is to say from ego.” 

~ Eckhart Tolle

Hi All.

Sorry I’ve not been around much lately. Been focusing on music, which is my passion.

This quote from Eckhart is one of my favourites. Identification with your thoughts is the great trap of our century.

My thoughts are not who I am. This is the great freedom to be had…

Not easy, but it is essentially the path to peace.

Gavin.

love and truth

The concepts of love and truth don’t always seem to sit together comfortably: sometimes it seems like the pursuit of truth requires us to sacrifice love, and other times, we might feel that to pursue love is to sacrifice the truth. Most of us feel this tension at times. But for Benedict, this was a false choice. Love and truth are inseparable, he said, and a society that sacrifices truth also sacrifices love.

‘Only in truth does charity shine forth, only in truth can charity be authentically lived. Truth is the light that gives meaning and value to charity … it grasps its meaning as gift, acceptance, and communion. Without truth, charity degenerates into sentimentality. Love becomes an empty shell, to be filled in an arbitrary way. In a culture without truth, this is the fatal risk facing love [my emphasis]. It falls prey to contingent subjective emotions and opinions, the word ‘love’ is abused and distorted, to the point where it comes to mean the opposite’ (Caritas in Veritatei, §3).

The deepest craving of the human heart is to love and be loved. But if we give up on truth, we give up on something else we hold precious, something that defines our very existence: love itself.