Quote:
Originally Posted by CroMagna  So if I focus on my feelings, I will start to be more focused on the present moment and the voices will go away? |
Nope...when you realize that you are not "the opinions of others" and that your feelings come and go, but beyond you is a cool steadfastness that watches the whole circus.
Feelings are like clouds in the sky....they come and go. Watch them float by but you have a choice not to float with them. When anger comes, you can stay in the "middle". You don't have to explode.
Same with the opinions of others, with perspective you immediately see the ego in those people trying to assert itself against you. Real love doesn't judge so when judgment is there, it's an ego trip. And why let an ego trip define you?
You know deep down who you are...loving, giving, creative, and so on. You experience you, no one else does, not even your closest friends or lovers. No one knows you so how can they define you?
The people that you quoted that ring in your ears never met you. And if they did, so what? They don't live your existence and that they would judge speaks so poorly of their awareness of life.
This kind of realization makes it easy to drop the whole thing. You only hear the voices because you identify with your thoughts and those are your thoughts about self so you still get a negative self image from thoughts. Thoughts!!! They are just thoughts and look how they confuse the heck out of you and steal your joy!
You know that your issue is "mental" and I don't mean that in a bad way, just observing. You know that the mind creates these barriers or obsessions and stuff. So you know where to put your efforts...not in focusing the mind but in realizing that the mind is a process to help you deal with the unknown in life, but it's not your life. The mind guesses at what may be true but because it is thinking about it, it doesn't know the truth about what it's thinking.
When you can see that your thoughts are guesses about whatever you're trying to figure out, you've come a long way to escaping the prison of your mind. It's a great servant but a lousy master.