{"id":31118,"date":"2021-02-03T15:16:56","date_gmt":"2021-02-03T15:16:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/?p=31118"},"modified":"2021-02-03T15:16:56","modified_gmt":"2021-02-03T15:16:56","slug":"changing-your-mind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/2021\/02\/03\/changing-your-mind\/","title":{"rendered":"Changing your mind."},"content":{"rendered":"
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People always look for certainty and security.<\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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We just can\u2019t help it.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Or can we?<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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A guy emailed me today to compliment me on the first book I wrote (which was published in 2015), but he also criticized me because of my pretty negative views on mainstream mental health and therapy in general.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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As was to be expected I felt the stung of his words in my mind and body (hello conditioning!), but was able to release it fairly quickly.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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And I was actually grateful to receive this spontaneous opportunity to investigate some of my old thinking.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Although I still believe in much of the stuff I wrote about back then, there are also a lot of things that have very much changed for me.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Now that is probably fairly normal, this change, this growth in time, but there is a tremendous amount of power in the realization of this (and I\u2019ll get back to that in a minute).<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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We subscribe to ideas and opinions passionately because it makes us feel safe.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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We want to believe that we understand how the world works, and what we can do to get the future we think we need.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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We hang on to what we\u2019ve been told is true and valuable, and regard the world from that place, through that lens.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Life looks to us the way it looks to us, because of how we automatically create it.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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And no matter how enlightened we are (or believe ourselves to be), there is always a particular system in place that secretly builds the universe we seem to live in.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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I don\u2019t really think we can escape all of our prejudices, opinions and preferences in order to ultimately engage in a 100% pure, unfiltered existence, and I also don\u2019t think we have to or should.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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It\u2019s our humanness that makes being human worthwhile.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Being alive builds firmly on the wonderful realness of what is essentially a moment to moment imaginary creation, a situation that is only visible and felt by the person lost in that specific point of consciousness.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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So, where am I going with this?<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Am I just trying to be a spiritual smart-ass?<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Well, no (or maybe a little).<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Like I said earlier, there is really a lot of freedom and lightness to be found in consciously knowing what we know, and embracing the idea that we don\u2019t yet know what we WILL know one day.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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It\u2019s all up for grabs.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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And whatever you believe to be true right now, you can take it along for the ride until it doesn\u2019t serve you anymore.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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So what to do with this?<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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What has worked wonders for me (because life has been patiently showing me that over and over again) is to hold things lightly.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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All things, or at least as many things as I am aware of.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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I deeply love and appreciate the positive and hopeful and powerful outlook on life that I entertain at this moment in time, and it has given me huge amounts of joy and pleasure and fulfillment and liberation and connection.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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But I don\u2019t feel the old need to get stuck in it, to defend it all the time, and to build a fragile feeling of security around what is essentially ever-changing.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Part of how I view life and the universe and the me or the I that are part of that amazing ongoing creation, is a more relaxed stance towards who I think I am and what that really means.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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I am more and more aware of the flimsiness of thoughts, and the restrictiveness of an absolute worldview, that powerful layer of egoic self-importance, even though I can\u2019t truly escape the circus in my mind.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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There is still a lot of intellectual deliberation going on, but I just don\u2019t get lost in it 24\/7, and I don\u2019t take it nearly as seriously as I used to do.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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To end with a paradox:<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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There\u2019s security in insecurity.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Now go out and play.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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—<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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(Photo by @neonbrand, for Unsplash)<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

People always look for certainty and security. We just can\u2019t help it. Or can we? A guy emailed me today to compliment me on the first book I wrote (which was published in 2015), but he also criticized me because of my pretty negative views on mainstream mental health and therapy in general. As was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31119,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":""},"categories":[97,117,100,116,113,103],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31118"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31118"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31120,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31118\/revisions\/31120"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}