Howard McQueen's Blog – October 2011 Archive (10)

(C) 2011 Howard McQueen

Every thought deemed disagreeable,

every thought deemed desirable

emanates from the inner, mental judge.

Installed very early in life,

the judge is conditioned to expect drama,

expects to have the courtroom schedule fully booked.

To sustain this virtual courtroom,

a host of other internal mental characters are empowered: detectives, witnesses - and an extensive lexicon of injustices is…

(c) 2011 Howard McQueen

Like a job you would be loath to show up for,

like a bad dream that seems to want to stick and not go away,

what you have grasped and hold to be your identity 

can be our very own mind-spun spider web,

catching and binding us to suffering.

If no web is spun,

there is nothing to create resistance.

Nothing becomes snagged.

The endless stream of thoughts and concepts,

free of…

(c) 2011 Howard McQueen

That we appear contained within a separate body

has no real bearing on establishing our identity, what we really are.

Yes, a part of our experience is hard wired into the sensory organs.

This is what makes experience sometimes so very delicious,

sometimes so very frightening.

That experience is ever changing,

that experience can be re-interpreted,

that our ability to become increasing…

(C) 2011 Howard McQueen

There is a fundamental "grace" manifest and underpinning life.

This grace can be seen in the expressions of life as unconditional love.

If this were not true, every resentment would grow

into an insurmountable and impenetrable wall.

We would then strive to stone each other unto death.

That resentment and violence are even temporarily entertained, or acted out

is a sign that unconditional…

(c) 2011 Howard McQueen

There is endless investigating,

endless searching and seeking,

endless manipulating

in order to shape circumstances that create and sustain happiness.

There is endless efforting to try to scrub clean (or eradicate)

what we refer to as the ego and all of its bruises and wounds.

Why not drop all this stress-induced restlessness

and no longer make any attempts to personalize…

(c) 2011  Howard McQueen

"I am" points our identity to the here and now.

Now, release this notion.

What are  you (your identity), if you are not

 the body

 the thoughts

 the memories

 the fleeting circumstances?

Yes, you are "the witness" of all this in the here and now.

Your true identity contains and enables "the witness" and all that is witnessed.

Now, release this notion.

So,…

(c) 2011 Howard McQueen

Initiating a full-stop within 

is not creating silence.

It is no more than no longer believing in what the mind wants to dictate.

It is suspending belief in all the cascading judgments,

the inner urges,

the conditioned beliefs,

the false assumptions,

the remembered anxieties,

the fear and grief.

Secretly we hold on to and feed the mind,

hoping that it will protect and…

(C) 2011 Howard McQueen

For there to be suffering,

experience must be personalized,

experience must be resisted (i.e. resented, feared, i.e. singled out by the mind with judgments).

It is the mind that constructs and creates ongoing beliefs that create suffering.

(C) 2011 Howard McQueen

Some memories, when accessed,

bring with them sensations of anxiety.

When we have spent extended periods of time in these valleys of anxiety,

we forget how acclimated and infused we became,

how we held on to this environment,

as if it held a sense of our true (dark) identity.

While in these valleys, the mind frantically struggles,

generating stress, until, often

we feel and…

(C) 2011 Howard McQueen

You may come to realize that you are not

the limited, cut-off, defective and helpless self.

You may have felt  like that and told yourself and others stories until

this formed a temporary and wavering sense of identity.

If your essence and nature are not this self, then what are you?

The sweet simplicity of confirming and affirming what you really are

will put a full-stop on…