Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
little monsters
patbb
Veteran
i think that heaven is always, every single moments.
but little monsters sometimes spoil heaven.
sometimes they spoil it completely, spoil every single moments of it.
like a bunch of teenagers at the cinema, ruining the movie.
if we could see the little monsters, see what they are doing and the effect of their distracting actions, we'd just kick them out and be at peace enjoying the magnificent movie that's playing.
Too bad tho the way to kick them out is to stop being bothered by them, which is like to stop feeding them, so they die of hunger.
Which is somewhat hard to do i think.
Would be easier if we could just get angry at them and literally kick them out.
but little monsters sometimes spoil heaven.
sometimes they spoil it completely, spoil every single moments of it.
like a bunch of teenagers at the cinema, ruining the movie.
if we could see the little monsters, see what they are doing and the effect of their distracting actions, we'd just kick them out and be at peace enjoying the magnificent movie that's playing.
Too bad tho the way to kick them out is to stop being bothered by them, which is like to stop feeding them, so they die of hunger.
Which is somewhat hard to do i think.
Would be easier if we could just get angry at them and literally kick them out.
0
Comments
It all begins in our head - with what we tell ourselves.
It's not how they affect us - it's how we permit them to affect us.....
i like to think of it this way because it's so simple.
If we could see these little monsters, see what they are doing to us, to our family, to our lives, we wouldn't stand those things in our home for a moment. We'd kick them right out.
But most cannot even conceive of them. We even believe we are them (or that they are part of us) and we are even attached to them. Sometimes even choosing them OVER our loved ones
And to think that those little monsters aren't even alive...
Reality is nicer than this let us imagine. 2 points i want to make.
1st point: "not permit them to affect us" is not entirely possible for most people, most of the time.
i think that for the general population (and light meditators who do things such as trying to be mindful, 15 minutes samatha here and there...)
the feeling (monsters) that we can see and feel: sadness, anger, frustrations... are only a very small portion of the totality of feelings inside.
We can only see the biggest, most coarse feelings that are there.
Even the feelings that we would consider as subtle are extremely coarse and huge in comparison to the hundred of little ones we normally cannot perceive (because our mind is very coarse as well.)
The bigger the conditioned negative emotional reaction, the more it can influence our life but that doesn't mean the little ones that we cannot usually perceive have no impact.
An example from my experience, after a meditation retreat, i could finally begin to see much more subtle things happening inside.
Seeing very subtle vibrating feelings inside.
When i went back home, it was to be surprised.
Just looking around, pretty much anywhere, would trigger 1-2-4 tiny little monsters to light up and vibrate inside the body.
Then i realize that there are hundreds of them, every single day, affecting our decision in the background, affecting our moods, making me very slightly annoyed at the red light, making me very slightly annoyed at whatever it is we have a very subtle negative opinion about.
Such as: i think eating junk food is unhealthy, what do you think happen looking at some fat dude eating burgers? You bet, even tho i would never be able to suspect i have any kind of emotional reaction in normal circumstance, there is no hiding possible when we can actually see those little things.
There is no "not allow them to affect us" possible when deeling with things we have no idea even exist.
2nd point: this is true but most often only on a temporary point of view.
Little monsters (to keep consistent with the original image) do die out and there is no need to not permit them to affect us anymore.
This is much much easier with the tiny little one, at least for me, if i can see it and be aware of them, i can simply relax them and lose them forever. But this is assuming i can see them.
But not letting them affect us is only temporary solution.
They will die out and we wont have to "not let them affect us" anymore.
The difference between having a bunch of noisy teenagers in the cinema and not be bothered by them, and just not have any teenagers in the cinema at all.
An example from my own life:
I use to be extremely shy.
Imagine a very introverted kid at school.
Life was miserable for me.
Even going outside was a challenge.
Whatever monster was bugging me back then isn't here to bother me anymore.
I don't have to look at my fear and be not affected by it, it's just not here anymore. I can do whatever i want without any of this kind of fear showing up.
im sure you have plenty of this kind of example as well.