Doug,

EXCELLENT writing, loved the way you shared that story and made it so vivid in my mind about how we create and ingest our own brew of negativity stew.  The illustration really brought to life your point - THE point!

What this writing helped me just wake up to and realize is that I use to identify with a spiral or whirlpool like vision whenever I saw myself being overtaken by negativity.  And I just now realized that that viewpoint kept me in a victim state of mind, as if some whirlwind or whirlpool surrounded me and sucked me into it.  I see now that with as much as I thought I had learned and grown, I was still attached to being a victim of the state of mind, not truly realizing I was at once creating and resisting it.

This idea of cooking up this negativity stew for me was like a light bulb went off.  Choosing to put down the spoon when you find yourself stirring and stirring the pot can be so self empowering as you realize that you don't have to continue to increase the negative state you find yourself in.  You don't even have to resist or judge the whole fact that you started cooking up something distasteful and unhealthy.  You just turn off the stove and walk away from it. Next negative state I wake up to, you can bet what I just read will come to mind.

I know its all about awareness and I also know that illustrations, like the one you shared here (and the ones Guy so artistically shares with us all on a continuous basis) hit home and wake us up.

Keep up the great writing!

With Light and Peace,

Stephanie

Stephanie,

I couldn't see how to stop simmering the stew but your comment shed light on it, it is the realization that "we don't have to resist or judge the whole fact that we started cooking up something distateful". As underlined it in the devils' story, it is the second step, the re-ignition of the pot : the resistance to the pain caused by the too bitter stew.

It is a all-in-one self : cooker, eater, and judge.  

Ahh! Mmmm! Yummy! Lovely stew, ?me? favourite! As many a deadly pirate on a high-seas-ghost-ship would say.

Stew and dumplings, Hot Pot, Irish stew, Hungarian Goulash with sour cream on top, are all mouth wateringly delicious varieties of stews from around the world. And, just like most people in the world, ?me? also gets stuck in a variety of negativity stews; enjoying each morsel it thinks of because, in a cannibalistic way, ?me? loves the faux-Ratatouille it creates - as it loves itself. Yet, it is not satisfied, as one would with say a genuine Beef Bourguignon or a Chilli con carne, because ?me? is feeding on empty thoughts.

One of the world?s negative stews that I sometimes spoon myself is Regretful Stew - this one has far too much salt in it. It comes from first looking at the vessel (which is me), thinks there is a lack (education, possessions, awards etc.), and then looks back at missed chances. Wrongly, comparing with others vessels, I think that additives are required, I think that what I am missing should have been added some time in the past so in looking back I simply add more salt (without flavour) in the form of inner emotionally tears.

Even an old salt like me can lose his appetite for such gruel. Like Oliver Twist I can now call its bluff and even if I ask for more I know no matter how much of it is concurred up by my mind it has no sustenance as there is no substance.    

Looking back at what I have written above, a pang of regret comes over me as realise I could have said said Rue Stew instead of Regretful Stew.

Yet,  apart from it making for a better sound-bite, it does show how my mind, ever intend to impress others, can cook itself up an alphabet soup of a dish to worry about. Happily, by inspecting the workings of the kitchen I see that the demon chefs have created the Stress-to-impress Stew. An inspectors report for the Mind-Food-Guide would suggest that the kitchen be closed down for being unhealthy.

PS

In the last paragraph I should have said conjured not concurred. The cooks been given orders to quit.        

Thanks for the colorful blog this week Doug. I feel that all of us outside of southern Oregon are waiting as patiently as humanly possible, sitting on our hands, figuratively, waiting for the hush of the pines to lift.

Afterall, the man can't be a 24/7 dicta-phone like I sometimes wish he could be.

Peter, I always enjoy your commentary when you give it. It has Lewis Carroll-esque quality to it, or at least, that's the way I hear it.

I, as well, cooked up a sour stew I can never resist making out of the remnants of a "spotted dog" scraped off my freon-leaky freezer.

I saw unpleasant events coming my way this past week, and I set myself appropriately enough thinking "toward" the event rather than "from" it. I seemed to benefit well in bits of honest self-observation. It was an early start to my day 4:45, for me anyway.

Anyway, round about mid afternoon the little leg of my crock-pot gave out and spotted-dog came sloshing out across the counter and on to the floor.

A little TOO much thinking about myself I think, and like Stephanie said it's like a "whirlpool" sucking you in from whence you no not where. It's maybe like watching traffic go by and suddenly finding yourself road-kill.

This, a little unrelated, I was driving busy highway 25 when I saw a sign being towed by an airplane high over Denver. I pointed it out to the kids. Maybe, drained by lack of good sleep, I had a senstion of my attention being sucked inexorably away from the speeding traffic around me to the sickly drifting ad sign. I was thinking, could my attention just drift away entirely a few moments and find myself in an accident. Did it matter much that the sign was advertising car insurance?!

Hello,

In an interview on CBC, the interviewer asks the interviewee a very simple question : "what do you answer to those who say that God is a fairy tale ?". I won't interfere in this debate.

But clearly, there are a lot of fairy tales running at the mental level, and it is true for all human beings. They are going undetected most of the time. So the only fact to notice that "we" are in the middle of one of them when it happens, is already a step towards freedom.

What complicates a lot the willingness to start looking for the Truth (Light, God...) ? Why was I "on my breaks"  for three decades ? It is simple, as long as I presumed I was already conscious the search was groundless. But in the long run, when we realized we mentally, psychologically and emotionally suffer from the same kind of thoughts, rerun pasts, anticipated joys opposing the present moment, comparisons of all orders, hopeless ideas (not exhaustive list), we have the revelation that there is very little consciousness in our life. That is also a strong and repetitive indication that we are their captive, that we inadvertently gave them carte blanche to rule our own life. So, what's remaining is a kind of residual consciousness. And here comes a second revelation. It doesn't matter how long and deeply we are unconsciously driven by them, how many depressions come in the way, they cannot have the power to prevent anybody to stand up and start the quest. In reality, they are absolutely powerless, as the clouds are to make disappear the sun. As Guy Finley encourages us, if I have well understood, it is more than that, we can still search in the worst crisis, we can learn to suffer consciously.