More Insight.

First I want to thank you guys for all the comments that were posted since yesterday. Thanks for reading and for letting me know what you think. David had a good point in saying that paragraphing is not a bad thing. Even though I like the look of not separating the text I do understand that it would be easier to read if I would use paragraphs. And since I am talking about change all the time I should not be afraid of it myself.

I want to go back to the thought of yesterday and the question if there is a life without the mind. How would our life’s look like without the mind? The truth is we need the mind; life is not possible without it. We need it to remember where we live, what our name is and at what time we have to be at work. It can calculate and remember notes in music or f-stops in photography. That is what it is for. The only problem with the mind is when it starts to do things it is not supposed to do, when it imagines it knows what life is all about and comes up with an idea who we are. That is when the problem starts because in that area it has no idea what it is doing. It is like me trying to fly a Boing 747 tomorrow morning. Not a good idea.

The mind does not know who we are or what is good for us. It has no idea what this earth, this universe is about but tries to make sense of it. It has no doubt about what its conclusions are it believes whatever little sense it made to be the ultimate truth. Honestly, what do we know? We do not know where we come from and we do not know where we are going to. It has no idea who we are, why we are doing what we are doing and forgot where all its ideas came from. But it is certain about what it believes. People die for what their mind believes.  They die for their country, their religion their believes. But do they die for their believes or somebody else’s? Who came up with the idea of countries and religion?

At the same time we should ask ourselves if we live a life controlled by our minds whose life we really live? Is it our life or do we live the life of our mothers, our fathers or our elementary school teachers? How much has their teaching, their programming our minds influenced us how we live our life’s? How would our life’s look like if we would have had different parents, different elementary school teachers, if we would have grown up in a different country in a different culture? I have a very good friend who is from Mexico. We had group therapy together. I was suffering because being from Germany I did what I loved doing very well but nothing I did was ever good enough. It is called German perfectionism. This is the reason why they built such good cars.  He was suffering because even though he is exceptionally intelligent and gifted he had a hard time to envision seeing that he could work in a field that he loves and that would utilize his abilities. I am convinced that if I had grown up in Mexico our roles would have been reversed.

But what has that to do with what both of us really are? Absolutely nothing! How did these beliefs influence our life’s? I had a hard time getting to the next level in photography because I believed my work not to be good enough and he worked a hard underpaid job. Even though the minds beliefs are not true, they still create reality. I like to compare it to the movie “The Matrix”. Even though Neo, Morphius, and Trinity know that the Matrix is not real they still would die if they would get shot by one of the agents because the beliefs of their minds are so strong. What I am trying to say is that even though somebody might be a genius if this person beliefs he is a fool that will be his reality. The mind overrides what is true. The mind becomes the truth.

This creates a tremendous amount of suffering. Every human being is unique and came to the earth to express something. Would the mind not take over and rule our life’s we would naturally find what we came here to do. But now the mind kicks in. All these ideas all these beliefs we are trained to have. Suddenly somebody who would naturally be a photographer ends up in a bank. That is how I spent five years of my life. Or the opposite, somebody has artist parents becomes a painter but would make an excellent businessman. In either way being in the wrong place will not make anybody happy. But again the mind is running the show. Time is going by, we get used to it. My solution to survive to work in a bank was to get wasted every single weekend

People have what other people perceive as being great jobs. But they are in the wrong place; they are very unhappy and depressed. Their minds came up with the job because that was the job the mind was trained to perceive as the right job out of whatever reason. But even in suffering the mind does not give up. Because it made its conclusion and it is always right. People go to their doctors whose minds are also trained to believe that their patients should be happy with what they do. And there is help. To make it possible they give them prescription drugs to help them to waist more of their precious time with thinks they are not supposed to do.

 But what is the way to stop this insanity? And how would a different life look like?

Being Different. Williamsburg/Brooklyn 01-15-08 at 02:44 PM.

 

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