Entering In To Joy
Growing up, I was taught that intelligent adults stay abreast of current events and form an opinion about each issue of the day. If you were a responsible member of society, you had a well-constructed and cogent opinion that you could present and defend in a friendly debate at a moment's notice. Perhaps at a dinner party or curling Bonspiel.
Nowadays this is time-consuming and exhausting. I had deliberately moved away from wondering what my own opinion was or would be on quite a few issues, mostly, because it felt better not to. I just didn't really pay attention to things or topics that didn't directly affect me or my life.
One fairly big area, recently, where I wasn't paying attention and it was blissful to not be aware of the ins and outs of this particular topic, was the recent US election. Now, I don't bring this up to provoke a reaction or to say anyone ought to have done anything differently or had different opinions. It's just that in watching other people, on both sides of the political divide, get very, very opinionated and then either upset or jubilant, I started to get curious about what we call "opinions".
I noticed that I held some pretty strong opinions about my own country's politicians and their behaviours.
So, what is an opinion?
We're entitled to them. We can form an opinion and we can dissolve an opinion. We can't eat them, put them in a wheelbarrow, or physically hit someone over the head with one. Even though it feels like it at times.
It seems like I'm stating the obvious to say opinions are made of Thought. Now, when I say Thought with a capital T, it's to denote that I'm talking about the formless energetic creative potential of life itself. All thoughts and thinking are made of this life energy of Thought.
We are gifted with the ability to create our experience of life moment to moment using this creative potential. We ourselves exist before any creation and so exist before all thought.
Opinions are our creations of the moment.
Those two bits are really, really important. Our creations. Of the moment.
Thoughts, thinking, preferences, opinions and all the other forms of mental activity are temporary illusions created by you. You are the creative maestro of the orchestra of your opinions. Our ability to manipulate the energy of life into thoughts and opinions is a very powerful potential. Interestingly, all you need to do is to be aware of this fact.
In different scientific fields, the word potential or potentiality is a physical field of a gradient of possibility.
We have electrical potentials, which is a gradient of positive to negative electrical charge. We have chemical potentials which is a gradient of higher concentration to lower concentration of a particular chemical. An electron potential is the quantum field of possibility of a given electron's orbit where it has the potential to exist in higher or lower probabilities.
We live in a literal field of energetic possibility.
We call it life.
We use this life energy in a variety of ways. One of those ways is to form an opinion and then defend it as if our very life depends on it. Don't get me wrong, we are literally entitled to it.
By the very fact that you are here on this planet, born into this highly interesting field of possibility, means that you are free and worthy of any and all creation.
Only...most people create unconsciously. They don't realize how they are doing it and so they don't know how to get what it is they are actually looking for. Most people think their experience of life comes from what happens to them in life. Which is an actually terrifying idea. The idea that you are at the whim of chance and whatever happens you have to make the best of or the best one can do is to have better coping skills. Yikes! Or even worse manipulating your thoughts at all moments to try and get "better thinking".
We create our lived experience of life from the inside. From before all creation. From a space of potential possibilities. I love being with my coaching clients, when they realize for the first time, how powerful they are and how simple the whole set-up is.
The best part about this unending field of possibility is that it responds to us. The energy of life itself responds to us! Let that sink in for a moment. Wowzas! That's truly amazing.
Back to opinions and politics!
I started to wonder if I needed my opinions.
Just that alone is enough to start dissolving a thought-created opinion, by the way.
Once you see a thought as "not really real", thoughts do what thought does and dissipates. Thoughts are like these ghostly figures that we form and then power with our life force. As soon as we see them for what they are, see their nature, then they go back to the formless sea of energy from whence they came.
Interestingly, without my strongly held opinions and beliefs about certain Canadian politicians, I could see what actually WAS, much more clearly.
The policies and behaviours of a certain political party no longer looked "evil" (I'm still talking about CDN politics here, so stay with me). It just looks like one group of humans trying to run a country the way they think is best. I don't happen to think it's best. There’s no emotionality in that without my OPINION. Next time there's an election, I get to vote on which group of humans I think would be best. Maybe they will be, maybe they won't be. There’s lots of humans (some who I know and like) who think the current approach is going to be great in the long run.
Next, I got curious about preferences (which are simply mild opinions, which are made of Thought).
What would my favourite foods taste like if I didn't "prefer" them or have strong thoughts of liking about them.
Or what about hated foods?! Would I still hate them if I didn't know I hated them?
This is a fun exploration. I found, as with opinions, when I didn't have a preference, I was able to more directly experience the food, now, rather than my accumulated thinking about the food.
I'd somehow thought that my having loudly stated preferences about foods (my husband can attest to how "loud" these preferences are) was keeping me safe from the dangers of hated foods. Sounds funny but yes, it's true. The dangers of a flavour I don't prefer. Lol.
I am delighted to report that things I enjoy, I actually enjoy a whole lot more without even the mild filter of a preference in the way of that experience.
Our thoughts and thinking filter reality so that we never directly experience the thing we are having opinions and preferences about. Ironic, I know. Without opinions and preferences, or with less of them, the true flavours of life come shining through in bursts of bright sensation and wonder.
Every moment becomes a moment of enjoyment.
An invitation from life itself to enter in, to joy.
With Love,
Sara Joy
Entering In To Joy