If you want to change the way you think and live, you have to see the process of your thoughts, how you think, what makes you have certain thoughts, what is behind your thoughts and feelings, then when you find that, only then do you have the potential to change the way you think.
Only when you change the way you think will you be able to change the way you live and the events that happen to you in your life.
The human condition unfortunately causes us to just think and get so deeply involved with our thoughts which then cause feelings and like a drug, those emotional reactions totally hypnotize us, so we never even know that we can and should put in the effort to explore the cause of our thoughts so that we can find the engine of our experiences.
Just like a car, if you want it to run smoothly, faster and more fuel efficient, you have to work on the engine.
Find the engine of your mind.
Read that again, and think about; the engine of your mind. The source of your thoughts is not your mind. The source of thought is imagination, which is a function of the mind. Imagination creates thoughts based on past experiences stored in memory which it then draws on to relate to and identify an appropriate response to the current situation or question.
Because of the complex and rapid function of how our thoughts are created, we only deal with the thoughts as they come and so like a leaf blowing in the wind, our life experiences and reactions, thoughts and emotions are very often inappropriate.
The exercise of constant self-observation, observing ones actions, thoughts and emotions as much as possible, but crucially when it is a negative thought or emotion, is the first step towards identifying the chain of events which begins with anything that reaches you and calls for a response.
Our life is lived through the process of identifying that event, locating the nearest similar event in your memory regardless of how old the past memory is or how different the circumstances were, and putting that in the mixing bowl with the list of learnt responses, then coming out with a reaction, very often totally robotic and inappropriate, but certainly without thought about what is the best reaction at this moment.
Question why you think, say and do what you do, what was the original reason, as often as you can, and if you do it often enough, your life will be very different, beginning with your reactions to events which will deliver very different results and you will find you begin to see all things on a much deeper level, seeing causes rather than reactions.
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