The competition for your mind is fierce. Every day, from every direction, there exists an onslaught of thoughts, opinions, ideologies, and noise that wants to occupy your brain. Like a settler staking a claim to a new area, the mission being to set things up their way, under their rules, and to promote their culture. Where we most commonly encounter this battle is within our experiences at school, in our family, our religion, our work, and through the media. This is not to say these are inherently bad, in fact, everything I just named can play a very positive and important role in this world. But, like so many things in life, there exists a shadow.
The shadow I wish to expose in today’s blog is “conditioned thinking”. Again, a certain level of conditioned thinking is beneficial, especially the kind that guides us to be kind, honest, mindful of our health, and respectful of others, etc. What I want to highlight are the patterns of belief and thought we are exposed to that block our ability to see the bigger picture, go deeper, and to be in awe of the remarkable human experience we are all having. All too frequently, we can get trapped into narrow paths, limiting beliefs, and just plain wrong-headedness.
We recently discussed this topic in the men’s meditation group I have the privilege of leading twice a month. I posed the question, what does “conditioned thinking” mean to you? What followed was a very robust exchange of thoughts and ideas. One response, though mundane in nature, I believe succinctly illustrates an example of how this type of thinking can go awry.
The story went… as a child, a young woman observed her mother always cutting off both ends of a ham before putting it in the oven to bake. This image was captured by the young woman throughout her time of living at home. She assumed that this was some special way her mother had discovered it was best to bake a ham. As an adult, in her own home, she continued the tradition of cutting off both ends of the ham, before placing it in the oven. One day, she shared with her mother that she was doing the same thing with ham as her mother did when she baked. She asked how she learned to do this, and was it some family secret recipe? To her surprise, her mother replied that the only reason she did so was because the baking pan she had was too small to fit the full-size ham, therefore, she cut the ends off to make it fit.
Another way of characterizing “conditioned thinking” is to call it “our stories”. Some of these stories can have a devastating impact on our lives. Maybe not the ham story, but what about a limiting belief that gets drilled into your mind by family? Or a particular view of beauty that a young girl adopts as result of hours and hours of exposure to media? Or an early educational environment that smothers and punishes a child’s creativity? Or a religious doctrine that instead of inspiring and uplifting a person, creates depression and fear? These all have and do happen and the list can go deep beyond what most of us could even imagine.
It’s the “stories” we tell ourselves that make all the difference. In my role as a Shaman and Astrologer, I frequently find that some of the most important work I do is to help people identity these “stories” and to assist them in writing “new stories”. Remarkably, astrology can help guide you to identify these stories, your deeply ingrained patterns, and also point the way/direction to change them. Unfortunately, many of these false beliefs or patterns can carry with them a wound. This is where shamanic healing can be of assistance. As a shaman, I work with you to restore balance to your soul, bringing back pieces of you that have been abandoned or temporarily lost as a means of coping with these wounds.
In 1992, an all-female group known as En Vogue, released a raucous pop song entitled, “Free Your Mind”. It’s a hard driving anthem about prejudice. In the chorus, they belt out, “free your mind and the rest will follow”. It was the memory of that chorus that inspired today’s blog. It is with those words I challenge you to do the same. Evaluate the “stories” in your life. Are they serving you well? Are they really even your story or simply one you adopted under duress or by default? Maybe its time to write a new one… it could be what frees your mind.
Written by: Urban Shaman
Comments