Sometimes my mind is stirred up and some relatively persistent fear emerges. It’s relatively weak at first, but intuitively I sense that the fear already has some authenticity and it demands more attention and if I give in I’ll end up dwelling on it, it will grow, and possibly manifest as one or another unwelcome appearance or pattern that might be harder to get rid of later when it’s no longer just a feeling (or a feeling+idea).
So I realized that trying to deny or to straightforwardly banish or to push out the feeling is sometimes not effective for me. I can quickly banish or dissolve most fears when they occur, but once in a while I do come across a rather stubborn one (or even a particularly “convincing” one).
And then I found a little handy device. I realized that if the feeling is too well rooted to just summarily dump it, what I can do instead is domesticate it.
I visualize a box and then I open this box and put my worried feeling (or feeling+idea) into this box and lock it. Then I lovingly and carefully store the box on a mental shelf. So, the idea is, I’m not getting rid of the bad feeling, and I am also not pretending that I don’t have it. Instead I frame it in a way that makes it contained and makes it unable to grow. It becomes more like a pet or a scientific sample instead of a wild beast.
And these boxes don’t need to be permanent. The idea is to tame the feeling to level off the brunt of its strength and to channel its “energy” into something tame. Once the feeling is properly channeled and tamed, it’s OK to forget it, or to deliberately dissolve the box with the feeling in it. So the idea is not to keep these boxes forever, no, but to tame feelings (or feeling+idea bundles) that are too wild and too powerful to just eliminate on the spot as they occur.
It’s too early for me to tell if this affects manifestation very significantly, but one thing I can vouch for is that it gives a huge peace of mind and a sense of control over feelings I’d normally struggle with when attempting to outright negate/banish/dissolve head on. By using a redirect-the-flow attitude I can frame and tame the charged feeling instead, which is easier. If any of you studied any tai chi concepts, it’s the same as: by using a small force one can lead a larger one. Direct opposition is avoided in this method.
I don’t like this analysis for 3 reasons.
What’s left is not so much you but this or that aspect of your vision for the future that you now think may not happen. That’s not the same as you. Your vision for the future can change, but you will always be yourself. To identify yourself with this or that aspect of a vision is a mistake, but once you stop a firm identification of that sort, you’re not gone, on the contrary, you’re present even more so.
It’s skillful to insist on your vision sometimes. It depends on what your vision is. Sometimes it’s proper to cling to the vision. It’s not always good to let go of your vision.
If you end up thinking you don’t exist, and you don’t take responsibility for this, you’re screwed, because then you think the circumstances have forced you to be a certain way and yet you have no way to take responsibility. You’re giving all the power to the circumstances, which is the functioning of the subconscious mind. That’s back to square 1, being tossed around by the subconscious, having bad dreams, and having no say in your dream content. But if you do take responsibility, then it’s not what everyone thinks when hearing talk of “surrender.” Taking responsibility means acknowledging your power and is not surrender. You’re not surrendering. You’re conquering. You’re there and on top. So “surrender” paints a bad (or misleading) image.
So I definitely don’t agree with anything you’re saying here. Bare minimum the way you have phrased it is not for me at all. But potentially even the meaning behind the words is also not for me. And I don’t mean it in some “clever way” like “not for ‘me’ huh, huh.” Not like that. I mean it straightforwardly.
My own strategy that I discuss on this sub is one of personal empowerment, and in this there is no ambiguity. I don’t talk about surrender (and if I do, slap me please).
The bad thing about the point number 3 is that it’s only good in the occult context. In a conventional context all the beings have to share the power and thus they share responsibility. Thus in a conventional context no being is 100% responsible for their own life. And this is the proper way to explain things outside this subreddit. What I’m talking about with taking total responsibility is basically God mode, solipsism, occult, and it’s not for the public consumption. You cannot build a society on this principle. It will never work. This principle of total responsibility is only something an individual can use and mostly in secret too. The society must instead use the principle of shared responsibility and shared power.
Originally commented by u/mindseal on 2016-11-06 13:16:42 (d9nnv0z)