How do we experience our realities? Do we go about, having unique experiences, new experiences, or do we allow our minds to label each experience, each interaction, by comparison with past experiences, with memory?
Think about this. Our minds tend to label nearly everything we experience. What does this mean? Our discriminating minds are nearly always getting involved, deciding what kind of experience we are having and classifying our experiences as good, bad, ugly, beautiful, etc. In a way, placing each experience into a mental box or frame. How does this happen? With nearly every experience, our minds delve into the memory banks and compare the new experience with a previous experience. This happens through habit and could mean that we mostly live in past memory and not in the present. We find ourselves to be stuck in the habit of labeling.
The mind is so conditioned to label everything, that it can even label something before we actually experience it! We allow the opinions of other people (and past memories) to influence our view on something, or we already make up our minds to how something will be, even before we actually experience it. By doing this, we are actually stealing from ourselves the precious opportunity to have a new and unique experience.
This happens, doesn't it?
Going through life, labeling, and conceptualizing everything has a very strong influence on the kind of experience we have. One's entire reality is formed by the way one labels things. Constantly saying something is good or bad, or someone is ugly or beautiful.
The one thing we need to take into consideration when we do such labeling, is we need to ask ourselves, what are we comparing the label to? Someone is beautiful, compared to what? Or, a situation is bad, compared to what? By taking this into account, we may actually realize that these labels are all mere opinions. Opinions, influenced by our current state of mind, narrowed down to only this exact situation, and maybe not concerning a broader understanding. Most of the time, the ideas we have are only existing in our own minds, and not the views or understandings of others, and we may find ourselves to be living in an illusion of mind most of the time.
For example, while driving our car to work, we may experience congested traffic and delays. We label this situation as 'bad'. However, in another person's reality, someone else is praying to have a car and a job to drive to. So, what we label as a misfortune, another person may label as fortune. It is all about perception.
Further, we may actually find that these comparisons we make, such as saying that someone is beautiful compared to someone ugly, these comparisons all exist within a spectrum of contrasts or opposites. The one cannot exist without the other, and the comparisons we make actually rely on each other, to exist. Therefore, we can apply a non-dual understanding by saying that good does not exist without bad, ugly does not exist without beautiful, and that these concepts are basically just two sides of one coin.
Through the process of labeling our everyday experiences, we can actually freely decide which kind of label we want to apply to any situation, because the power to label something lies in ourselves. Since our experience of reality is directly influenced by the way we label things, what would happen if we become more mindful of the way we label objects? For example, instead of labeling a challenging situation a 'problem' we can label it an 'opportunity to learn'.
Instead of labeling someone 'rude' or 'nasty', we can label them as 'teacher' or 'kind' because, in effect, they grant us a precious opportunity to practice patience and kindness and an opportunity to learn and grow spiritually! Consider this. The only way a problem exists is when we start to label it 'problem'. Is this not true?
Through understanding this, and contemplating on this daily, we can beneficially use this process of mental labeling. We can apply wisdom to our mental activities, and start to label objects or situations in beneficial ways. Thus, seeing and experiencing all situations as positive and as beneficial as possible. Of course, this may not be easy to do in the beginning. However, this can be considered to be an extremely fruitful practice, because we can start to experience the positive effects immediately!
For example, instead of seeing an enemy, we see a person suffering. Instead of expressing anger, we express compassion. It's like magic! Because the mind is a creature of habit, we can get our minds into the habit of seeing all situations as such. We can allow our minds to be extremely efficient and beneficial to us, but if we are not vigilant, we can fall into the trap of becoming mere servants to our minds!
Ultimately, we may want to consider stopping mental labeling completely. This means, we are not applying a good or bad label to any experience, because we come to the understanding that nothing is truly good or bad from its own side. We allow each experience to be new, unique. Living in the moment, in the present, each moment fully here and now. We see each moment as a brand new moment, not comparing or labeling through past memories or experiences. We allow our emotions and experiences to flow freely, wherever it wants to flow. Such an amazing sense of freedom...
By reducing the amount of mental involvement we invest in each experience, we open up to an experience of clarity. We allow ourselves to be more present in any given situation. We can appreciate and enjoy things for what they truly are, and not for what we label them. This opens up a whole new world, a whole new reality to us. A reality that has always been there, we were merely too caught up in our discriminating minds to experience it!
Think about this. Our minds tend to label nearly everything we experience. What does this mean? Our discriminating minds are nearly always getting involved, deciding what kind of experience we are having and classifying our experiences as good, bad, ugly, beautiful, etc. In a way, placing each experience into a mental box or frame. How does this happen? With nearly every experience, our minds delve into the memory banks and compare the new experience with a previous experience. This happens through habit and could mean that we mostly live in past memory and not in the present. We find ourselves to be stuck in the habit of labeling.
The mind is so conditioned to label everything, that it can even label something before we actually experience it! We allow the opinions of other people (and past memories) to influence our view on something, or we already make up our minds to how something will be, even before we actually experience it. By doing this, we are actually stealing from ourselves the precious opportunity to have a new and unique experience.
This happens, doesn't it?
Narrowing down our experience
We prevent, in a sense, a natural flow of emotions or experiences to happen, because we are forcing in a way, our minds to flow into a certain, familiar direction. A forced experience of constantly labeling and comparing. This happens at a very subtle level, which we are not even aware of, most of the time.Going through life, labeling, and conceptualizing everything has a very strong influence on the kind of experience we have. One's entire reality is formed by the way one labels things. Constantly saying something is good or bad, or someone is ugly or beautiful.
The one thing we need to take into consideration when we do such labeling, is we need to ask ourselves, what are we comparing the label to? Someone is beautiful, compared to what? Or, a situation is bad, compared to what? By taking this into account, we may actually realize that these labels are all mere opinions. Opinions, influenced by our current state of mind, narrowed down to only this exact situation, and maybe not concerning a broader understanding. Most of the time, the ideas we have are only existing in our own minds, and not the views or understandings of others, and we may find ourselves to be living in an illusion of mind most of the time.
For example, while driving our car to work, we may experience congested traffic and delays. We label this situation as 'bad'. However, in another person's reality, someone else is praying to have a car and a job to drive to. So, what we label as a misfortune, another person may label as fortune. It is all about perception.
Further, we may actually find that these comparisons we make, such as saying that someone is beautiful compared to someone ugly, these comparisons all exist within a spectrum of contrasts or opposites. The one cannot exist without the other, and the comparisons we make actually rely on each other, to exist. Therefore, we can apply a non-dual understanding by saying that good does not exist without bad, ugly does not exist without beautiful, and that these concepts are basically just two sides of one coin.
The power to decide how we view life
Now, we need to consider the following very carefully...Through the process of labeling our everyday experiences, we can actually freely decide which kind of label we want to apply to any situation, because the power to label something lies in ourselves. Since our experience of reality is directly influenced by the way we label things, what would happen if we become more mindful of the way we label objects? For example, instead of labeling a challenging situation a 'problem' we can label it an 'opportunity to learn'.
Instead of labeling someone 'rude' or 'nasty', we can label them as 'teacher' or 'kind' because, in effect, they grant us a precious opportunity to practice patience and kindness and an opportunity to learn and grow spiritually! Consider this. The only way a problem exists is when we start to label it 'problem'. Is this not true?
Through understanding this, and contemplating on this daily, we can beneficially use this process of mental labeling. We can apply wisdom to our mental activities, and start to label objects or situations in beneficial ways. Thus, seeing and experiencing all situations as positive and as beneficial as possible. Of course, this may not be easy to do in the beginning. However, this can be considered to be an extremely fruitful practice, because we can start to experience the positive effects immediately!
For example, instead of seeing an enemy, we see a person suffering. Instead of expressing anger, we express compassion. It's like magic! Because the mind is a creature of habit, we can get our minds into the habit of seeing all situations as such. We can allow our minds to be extremely efficient and beneficial to us, but if we are not vigilant, we can fall into the trap of becoming mere servants to our minds!
Ultimately, we may want to consider stopping mental labeling completely. This means, we are not applying a good or bad label to any experience, because we come to the understanding that nothing is truly good or bad from its own side. We allow each experience to be new, unique. Living in the moment, in the present, each moment fully here and now. We see each moment as a brand new moment, not comparing or labeling through past memories or experiences. We allow our emotions and experiences to flow freely, wherever it wants to flow. Such an amazing sense of freedom...
By reducing the amount of mental involvement we invest in each experience, we open up to an experience of clarity. We allow ourselves to be more present in any given situation. We can appreciate and enjoy things for what they truly are, and not for what we label them. This opens up a whole new world, a whole new reality to us. A reality that has always been there, we were merely too caught up in our discriminating minds to experience it!
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| An example of labeling. We decide which label we want to place on each experience. The power to decide which label we use lies within us! |
Love hierdie!😃
ReplyDeleteDankie, Annika!
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