Conflicting Thoughts – Why Does Our Mind Pull Us in Different Directions?
Why does it appear as if there are competing agendas within our mind that are often in conflict with one another?
For example, we may have a yearning to get on better with other people, and yet we still find ourselves becoming judgmental and saying hurtful things. Why does this happen?
The problem is that over the years we have responded to challenging events by adapting new patterns of thinking and new ways of reacting. These constellation of thoughts are sort of like mini-personalities and because they have been created in response to specific events, they can easily come in conflict with other parts of our personality.
As a young kid, I was a bit gullible. I remember some older boys persuaded me to walk around the town where I was living dressed in safety clothing from their parent’s hardware shop. I looked like an alien. The idea was that I would help them advertise their shop. They didn’t pay me anything, but I was delighted to be allowed hang around with those older boys.
I felt proud of my new job, but when I told my parents, they suggested that I had been taken advantage of. I felt ashamed. I swore that I would never allow people to make a fool of of me like that again, and thus a new personality was born that is still alive within me today. It also created an internal conflict between wanting to be liked and not wanting to be made a fool of.
I have found that the secret to escaping the conflict between the different personalities within us is to not identify with any of them. This is what mindfulness is all about. When these thought patterns are allowed to just arise and pass in stillness, they lose their sharp edges, and a sense of harmony begins to take hold in the mind. Now, instead of ongoing battle in our mind, we experience unification and common cause in the realization of stillness.
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