Gratitude is much easier when our ego has been altered, changed from childhoods negative, critical start in life. I grew up hearing nothing but negative, critical comments from my father.
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My ego thought it was flawed, not good enough intrinsically to be happy, to be looked at or evaluated by anyone.
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Hard to have gratitude when we think something is wrong with us.
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First we need to fix this core of who we think we are!
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We are perfect, all of us, on this journey of life. Another human, even a caregiver can not steal this from us.
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How could a scared, abused, beaten and verbally assaulted child feel gratitude?
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He did not, he felt incomplete, a failure without redemption.
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So much of my life was wasted feeling unworthy, not good enough.
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Happiness, a calm fulfilling life seemed impossible for me.
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Now, since I changed my ego, gratitude flows every minute of my day. I give thanks for this blog, my breaths and especially my opportunity to be free, perfect and happy.
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Please change your ego, starting today. Daily affirmations will slowly do the job.
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The brain is the primary mover and shaper of the mind.
It’s so busy that, even though it’s only 2 percent of the body’s weight, it uses 20–25 percent of its oxygen and glucose. Like a refrigerator, it’s always humming away, performing its functions; consequently, it uses about the same amount of energy whether you’re deep asleep or thinking hard.
The number of possible combinations of 100 billion neurons firing or not is approximately 10 to the millionth power, or 1 followed by a million zeros, in principle; this is the number of possible states of your brain.
Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder limits our choices to trauma thoughts exclusively on some days.
But there are too many choices to settle for a few.
This is what we consider the fear we experience. See here it is a chemical reaction set off by our amygdala, nothing to be afraid of. We can learn to be calm and use our breath to dissipate the cortisol.
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“Freedom From Fear” by Peyton Quinn.
1. Tunnel Vision: One’s field of vision narrows and tunnels into the perceived threat.
2.Auditory Exclusion: The hearing tends to shut off.
3. Loss of fine motor skills: Often only gross motor functions are possible under the adrenal state.
4. Tai-chi-Psyche: Everything seems to move in slow motion.
5. Increased heart rate, blood pressure and respiration.
This is the environment PTSD places us when we are triggered. Our skills have deteriorated along with our ability to respond to a delusion threat. This is why we have a daily practice, so we can stay present and observe this phenomena correctly.
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“Surrender! The most basic thing is: surrender to reality.
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The more you fight, the more you are in conflict with it, the more you will create obstructions. The more you fight with reality, the more you will be a loser. Of course, through fighting you can attain to the ego, you can become a very strong ego, but your ego will be the hindrance.
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They should be completely surrendered to the river of life, completely surrendered to the river of existence. In deep surrender, the ego disappears.
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And when the ego is not there, for the first time you become aware of that which has always been there.”
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It takes working with every thought to change life time habits.
Words have power inside our heads. Utter a belief and the ego searches our past for evidence backing this belief. For instance, if I entertain thoughts of low self worth, a flawed being, my ego brings back supporting evidence from my experiences.
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Our left hemisphere is a computer like entity. Think of your keyboard as your speech and whatever you type is gospel. It has a history and can grow with attention. Remember what fires together wires together.
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Type in affirmations of I am perfect, striving to be present every moment and it will grow.
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We are the gardeners of our mind, our soul. Type in low self worth and negative feelings about us and the weeds proliferate. Type in we are perfect, responsible only for our effort and direction and see how life will open up.
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We need to get past the ego, the conscious part of the mind, to enter the vast side of the mind. The cognitive part of the mind is a golf ball in the Pacific Ocean, small, tiny, confining, dominated by small thoughts and emotions.
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Free yourself, use affirmations, resist any negative offerings and live free, get to the real side of the mind, your true self lives there.
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Use the power of the breath to fuel the journey to freedom, joy and happiness. Small daily actions are the most powerful over time. A month of daily action carries more healing than we can imagine.
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Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, who Knew two nerds would be geniuses
The ego is a useful creation for identity, nothing else really. So we do not get rid of ego, we go underneath all those distractive foul thoughts connected to strong emotions.
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We let all these thoughts and judgments flow on through as we gently focus on the breath, as we have practiced over and over. this is a simple, singular, concrete action that can be applied with every thought, every emotion, every breath.
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our action can make letting go of the ego’s offerings habit after a while. that brings freedom and a clearing of the mind to heal and see what life is really about.
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Life expands and opportunity flourishes when the ego’s influence shrinks a little each day. Happiness and freedom are awaiting you a little farther up the road.
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let go and trust, refuse to judge, refuse to follow the fear and anxious thoughts, refuse to ask why and what if, refuse to give power to thought and others.
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Live in this movement void of distraction with focus on the breath at this very second.
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It is all that life is about, right now this mundane landscape we see, this is it. look deeper, a whole world we have been overlooking with our grasp of the cognitive thought process, lies right before us.
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One of the ways we know we are experiencing the ego and not the Self is that the ego always experiences itself in comparison to others. The ego never feels fully equal to others: it sees others as higher or lower, as better or worse, as friendly or potentially hostile. The Self, on the other hand, just is. The Self sees everything and everyone as equal to itself.
The ego never feels fully equal to others.
Why use our egos as a replacement for self when it lacks our ability to be here and happy? The ego then inflates itself, its importance and our need to use it continually.
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Where did we veer off course? How do we get back on track?
This is practice, using adrenal stress in a Survival situation. We experience the tunnel vision, hearing shutdown, loss of fine motor skills, and increase in heart rate,respiration and blood pressure? It is the ability to follow our breaths and act calmly when we are triggered. Learn that PTSD can not stop you from living your life first.
This video has some great info on the brain and the science of fear. The graphics of the brain and amygdala are the best I have seen. This is about a couple of exercises to react to fear and freeze responses.
Chronic pain has a relationship with the mind and body. Funny, how deeply I have considered different types of pain. The physical pain itself, our resistance to the pain(tensing up, resisting), our thoughts about the pain, our relationship with pain (friend, foe or the devil), the mental part (large impact), emotional component and suffering(what we add on top of the pain itself).
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Any energy that we lavish on our pain increases the intensity, quickly. This can become a pattern which slowly escalates an already volatile situation.
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If we bring worry or fear to our pain, suffering increases. Acknowledge that we feel the pain, then surrender to it by relaxing into it. My pain is a present moment physiological occurrence, which can be used as a focal point, instead of the breath.
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The only way to know the real power of your pain is to let go. Let go holding all that tenseness and fear. Trust you are safe and realize pain does not harm you.
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Pain is a warning signal and chronic pain is a a fake signal because of my spinal damage. My pain does not harm me in the least. My mind also knows this fact.
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We must be active physically to handle pain efficiently. Sedentary lifestyles make pain and suffering grow.
