Get Free of Your Mind
From THE WAY OF HARMONY by Jim Dreaver, published in 1999.
"The mind thrives on duality, on naming objects, experiences, and events as "this" or "that." This is a necessary survival skill. It gives you the ability to discriminate between what supports your well-being and what threatens it.
Duality and naming things become a problem when there's an emotional attachment to the concepts. Being able to affix a name or label to a feeling, event, or thing may give the mind the feeling of certainty it seeks, but it is a false security.
As you get freer of your mind and live more from your heart, from your spiritual depths, you won't feel the same need to cling to beliefs and concepts for your identity. You'll use beliefs, but you won't rely on them to be at peace with yourself. Your sense of identity, of selfhood, will come from being itself---from being awake, alive, attuned to the vibrancy and fullness of the new moment.
Rigidly held beliefs tend to express themselves in muscular armoring, a lack of physical ease, grace, suppleness. In many fundamentalist religious groups, followers are taught not to trust their feelings, their inner experience, but to trust only the dogma being fed to them. This can make a person feel very conflicted. There's a war going on between what they've been told and what they are actually feeling." (pgs 70 - 71)
"When you find the security that doesn't depend on outer conditions, on creeds, or formulas, you won't worry about what to believe." (pg 72)
"There's a current of divine energy, of goodness, that runs through all creation. As you connect with it and realize you are 'it' --- you are an expression of the divine --- you'll see the futility of trying to find happiness through your mind, through knowledge, beliefs, fantasies. To discover this current is to taste the simple delight of just being. What a wondrous gift that is."
"If you use believe in something, believe in your own innate worth and goodness --- and that you can create the life you want." (pas 72-72)
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