Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Living Now and Dealing with Thought Poop

Wayne Dyer in his book, Your Erroneous Zones, said that Jesus was a totally self-actualized person, a person who has no guilt and no negative internal self-talk weighing Him down--none of that stuff that hampers most of us. Lance Wallnau talks about being in the present moment by focusing your energy on the person in front of you and thinking of that person as a human being created in the image of God, gifted with specific, unique and wonderful talents. Today I discovered Josh Pais and his method for being in the now. He also brings up self talk and points out that most of it is repetitive and total, pure drivel that our minds engage in day after day after day--a lot of it is negative self-talk and plain old worry.

You guys know me well enough to begin nodding your heads and saying, "Yep, there's Mom. Lots of negative self-talk and worrying about stupid stuff." Yes, I admit it. This has come up because I'm on a campaign to stop being socially incompetent. You may recall I gave a book talk back in November 2014. I wasn't scared of that public speaking moment at all, even though three of the people in the audience sent definite, "Wow, that's stupid," vibes in my general direction. (They didn't stick around to buy my book, but they sure did eat a lot of cookies!) Anyway, they didn't phase me. I guess teaching Sunday School all those years and leading Cub Scouts did give me some experience in public speaking. What scared me was chatting with people I didn't already know. Why that absolutely terrifies me, I don't understand, but it does. (Why do I care what they think of me? I don't know.)

Back to Pais. Apparently being in the present moment is the key. Jesus is the Master of that skill--duh--He's the Master of all the skills--but that's how He can be with the bossy, fire-breathing Pharisees and not be phased by them and then hang out with prostitutes who came to adore Him. He's present--He's WITH them. His mind isn't wandering off thinking of how He's going to reply or what He wants for supper or wondering when the person is going to stop talking so He can walk away--He's there, totally, with the person.

I used to have this skill before I became a teenager and my mind latched onto the concept that I was good for nothing. Mr. Cabbot used to come into the nursery, sit in the back and drink coffee. If my Dad was around and had a minute, he'd join him. One day Mr. Cabbot came in fuming, but my Dad was busy. I felt like he needed someone to talk to, so I got a coke out of the machine (I knew where the key was) and joined him. He went on about his wife. I don't remember what she did, but he was furious. After a while he stopped ranting so I asked him, "If you had to do it all over again, would you still marry her?" He stared at me for a second then he got this speculative look on his face. A few moments later he looked sad, then happy, then, strangely, his face turned soft and affectionate and he said, "Thank you. I better go see my wife." He walked out and he didn't come back to the nursery for a couple of weeks. I like to think he went home and started a second honeymoon.

If I can attach the first lesson from Josh Pais to this post, I'm going to do it. Otherwise, go to his site and sign up for it. It's really good! However, I would beg to differ with him on one point: you can learn to think differently by learning to think like Jesus and the way you learn to think like Jesus is to study Him and meditate on how He did things. In short, study the Bible. The Word of God literally will renew your mind. I know, because it renewed mine.

I've come a long way doing this from the days when I would worry so much that I literally could not move. And, believe it or not, I've come a long way from the days of the most self-hating self-talk you probably never wanted to know I engaged in. That said, there is still useful information in Pais's MP3--mostly about the idea of yanking yourself back to the present moment. As I mentioned above, Lance Wallnau talks about being in the present too. I have four MP3's on that topic and related ones that I bought from his website. I've shared them with Charlie, Dano and Dan and they're really good. I can copy them to zip drives.

Stephen Pressfield, the guy who wrote The Legend of Bagger Vance, writes about a thing called "Resistance." This is the force that is determined that regardless of what you believe is the good thing to do, the creative thing you can do now, the beauty you can create, the poetry you can write--whatever it is--Resistance is there to make sure you don't do it. Resistance takes many forms such as procrastination, distraction and so on, including negative self-talk.

The primary residence of Resistance is not out there in the world, but inside our own heads. Pais describes it this way, "The mind wants to pull us out of the present into the past (to compare now with something in the past) or the future (starting with the initial optimism: "this is going great, I'm going to make it this time," and then moving on to "oh crap, I'm done, it's over now."). The mind does this because when you're living in the present, it has no control. The mind likes to have control." (Below is a video of an interview Pais did, it has most of the information from the Pais MP3 download.)

The "mind" as Pais describes it, or Resistance as Pressfield describes it, is what the Apostle Paul calls the "sinful nature," that part of us that is infected with sin, for lack of a better term. The objective of the sinful nature is to sabotage everything good we try to do and ruin everything good God has created by misusing it or abusing it in one way or another. Essentially, to keep us from amounting to anything and make sure we screw up as much as possible. And, it makes sense that Jesus had no issues with Resistance or the "mind" as Pais describes it, because He didn't have a sinful nature trying to maintain its control over Him--He didn't even have a smidgen of its infection.

A believer in Christ has had the root of the infection removed, but the tendrils of its influence remain and we must do battle with those tendrils in one way or another. The primary place where battle occurs is in our minds. Everything starts there--with what we believe. The mind likes to flood our thoughts with loads of crap because if we are distracted, out of the present moment, what we believe will have no effect because it's not being employed. God's favor is showered up on us and we might even believe it, but if our mind is focused on negative self talk--it doesn't matter what we believe, Resistance or the "mind" or the sinful nature, whatever you want to call it, is blocking the positive results we might otherwise obtain.

Unfortunately, for most Christians, Resistance is built into what they're taught--before I learned better I repeated the same crap. You can't really expect blessings from God until you behave right--that's the old saw. But it's a lie. It's not about our behavior, it's about Jesus' behavior because once we say, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in our hearts God raised Him from the dead, we are IN Him in much the same way I am in my house right now typing this. To be IN Him means that everything, including His perfection, is ours as if we owned it from day one, whether we personally measure up or not. Unfortunately, it might be ours, but if we think we can't have it until we follow the rules, we won't be able to access it. That's like sleeping on the floor when there's a perfectly good bed right there in the room because we don't believe we're allowed even though the bed has a sign on it, "It's yours. Enjoy."

Anyway, back to Pais. I can't figure out how to share an MP3, so here's the link to John Pais free lesson. And below is the YouTube video with most of the free lesson on it:


Love to you all

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