vesterberg.se

I just returned from a long walk in the forest nearby. We northern Swedes get so happy when temperature rises above 18 degrees Celsius (64 degrees Fahrenheit) and the sun is shining. We have summer now. I am fortunate to live near nature and every day I spend time there with my dog. The last weeks I have focused on listening to sounds when I walk in the forest. I make my ears big. You might think I’m crazy. Do you remember that I wrote about prioritizing senses recently? I hear birds singing, leaves that are rustling and the wind blowing. I hear my own shoes treading on twigs and dry leaves on the ground. The small sounds of leaves shivering in the wind are just wonderful. I drink it in and take the opportunity to live in the present. I pause from thoughts and plans.

Increased awareness brings many new insights. Things are going on, that you didn’t realize. Increased awareness means that you become more aware of your body and soul, of your thoughts and actions. Even more important, you can become aware of your own thought process.

A busy mind

Our mind is usually very busy. Thoughts and feelings are dancing around. We look at something and is reminded of something else. We read some headlines and feelings move on the inside. Your kid comes for a talk and you say “mmmm”, but your mind is elsewhere. Many times, we act like moving by autopilot. This phenomenon is accelerated in today’s busy western lifestyle. Media and information are bombarding us all day long. Thoughts triggers reactions, that create even more thoughts; this can form an endless loop and we are at risk of being burned-out.

Thoughts are not you

The truth is that your thoughts are not necessarily you. Thoughts and feelings move as processes on their own; they are not necessarily produced or run by “you”. Not every thought that comes to your mind need to be attended to, nor reacted on. We are not aware of what is going on. Our thoughts and feelings create patterns, like wheel-tracks in our mind and we react on them, almost without knowing it. We have no time today for quietness and we have lost our stillness. We have no space on the inside to look at our thoughts and evaluate them, because decisions to be made press hard on us. We have no time to reflect, because of our busy schedule

Presentation and re-presentation

Man has difficulties separating real experience from thoughts and feelings of his mind. The presentation from our senses is competing with the representations from our mind. When we meet people or situations, our mind is immediately representing thoughts and feelings. This is a mix of past experiences, collective opinions and media influence. These thoughts and feelings take command and unconsciously control our reaction and behaviour. The representations seem more real than reality and we get deceived. The thought of something frightening can be felt in our bodies, just like we were encountering the real thing. Thoughts are powerful. Thought treats itself like the truth – as just being there, telling you how things are.

Relationships

This confusion of reality and thoughts is like a mental fog that makes relationships stagnate and break down, or even prevent them from being formed. Dialogue cannot move on to a deeper level, because we defend our assumptions. We have already settled on what we think is true about neighbours, immigrants and foreign countries. What we need is a mirror that helps us to see our own assumptions.

Easily seduced

How can ordinary people participate in genocide? People like you and me? How is it possible that Jews was treated like cattle during WW2? Still, it has happened again and again. Why? Because when these people looked at the children and the women, they saw what their minds produced. Propaganda placed pictures and feelings in their minds that spoke louder than their own “common sense”. They did not touch reality and therefore had no empathy. The child was not a child and the woman was not a woman. They looked though the filter of their minds. You can see how important it is, to have this space on the inside to discern our own thoughts.

We have collectively and individually built abstractions and models of reality with our thinking. There is great danger in living in that world. We need to learn to live in the present. We need to touch reality.

Presence

I believe we need times of quietness and stillness. It is necessary to give the dancing mind a break. Some empty space need to be allocated on the inside. This growing in mindfulness and awareness of body and mind is very important for us today. It is really reclaiming our own wholeness and peace and strengthening our “self”. By practising stillness, our minds will get less turbulent and reactive and we will have time and space on the inside to reflect.

I also believe in an emphasis on our senses. Let’s take a walk every now and then and give them a chance. Listen to the sounds. Feel the smells. Look around. Listening to songs of birds means health to your mind. Beholding beautiful faces of children will ensure that we will not one day be deceived by thoughts saying they are something else.