obsessive thoughts

http://www.outofstress.com/stop-obsessive-thoughts/

states


All you need to do to get rid of obsessive thoughts is to watch the mind without getting involved. You will get really good at this with just a little practice. This practice, or “sadhana” as called in Hindu scriptures, is the root of awakening from the illusion of mind.


Without trying to understand this practice just implement it. The more you try to understand the more mind gets involved. Just watch the mind and you will soon see that you are not the mind at all. That the mind is like a machine in your head that generates thoughts based on your attention/interest. Be free of your mind by depriving it of your interest. This is the only direct path of becoming free of the mind.

 

It seems to work.

addiction solution

http://www.memoirsofanaddictedbrain.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Lewis-CAMH27-03-2012.pdf

recommendations are good

OA is a Spiritual Program

OA is a spiritual program. So what does that really mean?

Spritiual:

Of, relating to, consisting of, or having the nature of spirit; not tangible or material. 

Of, concerned with, or affecting the soul.

Of, from, or relating to God; deific.

Of or belonging to a church or religion; sacred.

Relating to or having the nature of spirits or a spirit; supernatural.

There seems to be a bit of variation, depending on who is defining spirituality. The dictionaries relate it to belief in a spirit, to scared, or tie it to religious values. That does not work for me.

Spiritual, as I understand it, is the belief in something that has no physical form. It is not a belief in a set of concepts, that is religion. Spirituality is some form of transformation of consciousness, sufficient to bring about a change in personality sufficient to end this problem of ours. It has nothing to do with beliefs, but has to do with a state of consciousness, an awareness of something in us but greater than just us, and outside of the mind. It is the essence of human, of life, of awareness, and is outside of the mind and specific beliefs.

If 'I' am what is watching the thoughts in my head, then that is the essence of me, as I understand it, but that I is the mind, not the I of essence. How confusing. I am two I's, the essence and the mind. But I can only be one; hence, I must be the essence, and my mind is therefore separate. Everything that it contains is the reflection of the world around me, mental objects, the collective information of society, my upbringing, and not me. How freeing. I can dump that which is wrong. It is not part of me, just junk the world has foisted onto me. I know some of it is just wrong. The ego is part of the mind. It is what the collective egos have pushed on to me. It is not me, it is impersonal reflection of collective ego junk. It can go. It contains errors. It is impermanent, and can be changed at will, or with effort. The essence is more permanent, or slower changing, within this lifetime at least.

So is that what the spirit is, the essence of human, of life, an awareness, and little else, residing in a body as a symbiotic identity? Or really just the right brain exercising control over everything, without judgements, without conditions?

acceptance

Acceptance of what is, of form, of history, of other people, of government, in the Now, is, and we must accept that which is Now, but that does not mean that we allow the situation to continue. The future is changed in the now. We can accept to allow something to continue if we cannot change it, but we can also step back, go away, and not be part of it.

We can change the future, or change our reaction to the future. We can only change ourselves a bit, and we can change our actions.

The serenity prayer says all this.

Mediation, the act of willfully directing our attention onto or off of something, can be used to really fathom these often heard, seldom thought about sayings.

Ego has been created by the mind to protect us. We can let it go. It is just what the world has told us we are. The reflection of the collective egos and collective super-egos of the world, not us. It is therefore, impersonal. As it changes, it is impermanent. Identification with ego is often the root of our problem. If our ego says eat food, we can say no. The ego does not have our best interest foremost in our mind. It is the third identity in our head. First is our very consciousness, second our thoughts, and third our ego. There is also our collective past, and our negative emotions when the arise, what Tolle calls the pain-body.

When the ego says eat, we, the mind and consciousness, can say no. We are a symbiotic relationship with the parts of our mind.  Emotions, memory, reason, consciousness, thinking, reason, scenes, the intellect, the creative part, each is separate and can be controlled separately by the consciousness.   How about that? and the key to control is identification, watching where the urges come from. Being awake, that is. Rebirth each morning. Do not exceed our natural cadence.

Ignorant People

http://weightmaven.org/2012/04/12/quote-of-the-day-52

Beth has a follower who does not believe in compulsive overeaters, emotional eating and the like. hopefulandfree

Ignorant people do not believe what we know is obvious. It may be caused by hormones, or the body, but when we treat it with the 12 step or similar, it becomes more manageable. We heavy overeaters are the statically normal distribution the other tail from bulimia and anorexia.

We are not many, perhaps only 1 or 2 percent. Many try to use the steps and do not succeed, but were they real compulsive? Some of us have bacteria or the like that keep us addicted to foods, grains, nuts, due to the production of opioid peptides being produced which are addicting. But that is food addiction, the other problem that is not generally accepted. These are beyond sugar/insulin induced overeating, and the misinformation about good diet problem, and excessive hunger issue. Each one must be dealt with by those of us that have the individual problems.

Those who know less that I about this problem still offer no solutions, just abuse. What can we do but abuse back?     

Conjecture - Control Freaks

Conjecture - Control Freaks

How do control freaks develop and how does one live with one?

It is conjecture that control freaks have a feeling of inadequacy, and are looking for another person, place or thing to complete them. They may believe that if someone will just do whatever, then I can be happy, complete, and life will be good.

Well that just ain't gonna happen, bucko.

These type of persons do not operate from a place of being in the now, a authentic human, but from ego in future time, psychological time. This ego self likely developed as a result of seeing self as the collective super-ego (CSE's) placed on them by others, and as a defense method  of achieving self satisfaction.

The solution is to realize that ego is part of the thinking mind; developed from trying to satisfy that CSE's of others: parents, teachers, employers, and self, just trying to be more. Super ego is just what you would like to be in the future.

How do we deal with ourselves if we have this issue? Well accept that we have this problem, give up, and examine the ego. The ego is impersonal, it has noting to do with us. It is response to the CSE's of others who have or had authority over us  in the past, and is not part of the authentic self. It is a self defense devise of the mind that builds to protect us until we grow up. We can as adults, step aside and let those CSE's go past and let go of out own egos.

The ego is impermanent,  and is just another concept, an idea, that we can change or let go of completely. We can then return to a state of being, of space for ideas and concepts, for action in the now, the authentic self, the life or spirit have a human experience.

Control freaks can be seen as just another CSE who would like something. We can say no, and expect a backlash. We can just step back and let them go. We can try to lead by example. Pain is changeful. Let them flail, and perhaps they will become conscious.

Go with Being. This too shall pass.

Step 4

Step four, moral inventory may be a bit lacking in conventional OA, and can be extended for OA+.  I did not get relief until I also did an emotional inventory, and looked at what was driving me to eat. Not good enough, not big enough, not fast enough, not strong enough, not smart enough. All drilled in by parents until I believed it. Imprinted on my reactions were numerous automatic responses including eating, and overeating. It was not until I looked at secular spiritualism that I understood the true effect on my life of the Id, ego, superego, and the negative ego; the effect of collective ego, collective negative ego, and the collective superego.

To overcome these, first we need to understand them, and then they start to lose power over us. Once we become able to look at our ideas, realize that the mind built the ego, and can rebuild, modify, take apart sections; guided by the "I " part that is watching, the consciousness, the spirit. I am, we are, just spirits having a human experiences. We are part of the universe, and will change form, but always be part of the universe. We are mater and energy.

After we discover our negative ego, we can let go of it, for it was imprinted on us by the input of the collective ego and collective negative egos around us. The collective includes parents, siblings, relatives, teachers - everyone who we reacted with, and TV, newspapers, books, all external sources of learning. We also figure some stuff out on our own, and some of that is wrong. Now all we need do is sort out the wrong, and dispose of it. Keep the right.

The ego is constructed on the foundation of the mind, thinking. We just need to watch our thoughts and learn to test them, sort them, and let them go. Thoughts lead the body. As the Buddha said "We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world."

Live in the Now.

Fred T

Here's how we got screwed up

Here's how we got screwed up :: http://lauraschenck.com/self-other/early-maladaptive-schemas-understand-your-patterns, now all we need do is fix it.

In our your youth, we developed cooping methods. These form imprinted reactions or collective consciousness that keep on playing out in our lives. Overeating is likely one of these for some of us, the obese/exobese.

Now how do we retrain ourselves?

Struggle

At this time, I am trying to reconcile living in the Now, satisfied with being, and the concept of a objectives in life. These two concepts do not seem compatible. One is about making decisions in the Now that will likely change the future, and in the other, there is no future or past in psychological time, but the future is changed in the Now. Chronological time keeps on ticking.

Is having a objective in life incompatible with being & Now? If the objective is general and not causing us to identify with the objective, it would probably work. If I do not identify with the objective, what will motivate me, the lazy lump that I am?

Is the Now, being, consciousness, the aware spirit, and watching our thoughts and emotions, connecting with being between thoughts, phrases, words, just a way of being alive, but not producing in life? Am I valuing achievement to much? I think these concepts have merit in non working - social- life, but what about in the identify need, design, compute, calculate,, build, test, implement world?     

Spirituality

When we dive down the spirituality rabbit hole, we never know what we will come back with, if we will come back, or where we will come out. What a trip.

The first thing that struck me is that there prerequisite concepts that we need to clearly understand in detail for the next concept to have a impact. But what is the order? It seems there is no order, it is a spiral, just keep going around and around until we get it, but not quite. Some of the authors take the time to define a concept or two as they go, which helps a lot.

I have been reading Tolle, Brown, Maté, Kabat-Zinn and Gunaratana. All reference the same basic concepts, but do not use the same words, and imply different properties on the same things. Combining all five creates a unique look at spirituality, secular spiritualism, and the process of reaching the point of understanding what it is all about. Some is just not right, for there is disagreement, but at this point, I will take that which I can feel/perceive as being most likely, and that which I cannot reach is just speculation.

Eastern philosophy attempts to 'dissolve' the  ego, while the west attempts to builds it, OA attempts to look at it, but Tolle understand it as part of the thought/intellect mind. Just cut it out of the process. It is impermanent, and impersonal anyway. The collective ego has imposed this whole issue on us. We can just let go of the history, and live freely, without concern for the future. We can be authentic people. It all come down to out natural cadence, and allowing space between our thoughts, and seeing the life in others.

It is pointless to study the pointer, but we must understand what is being pointed too. The words are just pointers. Aha sure. We are all just shape shifting monkeys anyway. The human animal developed awareness and it all developed from there. I which you all a happy April 1, 2012.