The mind watches
There’s an ever-watchful eye in your life, but who’s is it?
Not yours. And its judgements it makes are not your own.
Even after having read the previous sentence, it will begin to tell you the story of this problem, and how you need to fix it.
This is the state of surveillance within you. And it’s perpetuated itself by making you believe that it’s “good” and “in your best interest”.
Many will correlate this to external realities, but doing so would be a mistake. For if you’re more drawn to pointing the finger away from yourself, you’ve already lost the battle, and are well on your way to losing the war.
I’m not interested in talking about external realities because they’re just a convenient excuse like everything else.
This self-monitoring at the forefront of our lives is a conundrum indeed, as it’s required to a large degree before one can even begin to understand why it might be a problem.
But once seen, once known as the source of all interference, it’s to be washed away like soap.
You’ve likely heard something similar, if you’ve been exposed to Zen.
At the end of the day, who you are, and what you’re capable of, all exists independently of this self-monitoring. And all that you wish was no longer a part of your life, all the anxious, misguided reactions, exist because of it.
Things will arise, and you will no doubt continue to recognize them. It’s the reaction or lack thereof that matters.
Humans are both incredibly resilient and woefully fragile. A focus on the latter; a life perspective steeped in excessive self-monitoring is what ails you. It’s the genesis of all your anxieties, troubles and pain; comparisons, fears — everything.
A life of ignorance is not the answer. This will only create more problems. The answer is to understand the obsession and attachment to outcomes. To understand why you feel the way you do. And how you feel about these things upon knowing them. How you treat them. How you react. What chases they might be sending you on.
The complete and total perception.
The life-perception you have is built upon the stories your mind tells you about these perceptions. It’s all just a singular trail of distortions; a clipping feedback loop. And it’s playing in your head constantly. This is your life.
It’s easy to see why the world is depressed. Why people are driven mad. Why molehills are invariably made into mountains. Our perceptions loop and mutate like a game of “Chinese Whispers” or “Telephone” to the point that even the person themselves suspects it’s a far cry from reality, evidenced by the fact they’d be embarrassed to tell a single soul about it.
So then why do they believe it?
Lies constantly perpetuated tend to be seen as truth overtime.
People are liable to drink the Kool-Aid after swimming in it for too long. Just like how people are prone to drinking poison every weekend because the society they swim in does.
You might “think” it’s “bad”. You might “agree” with the evidence.
But what you see and hear every day compels you to act in accordance with it, not the truth.
We’re compelled to adhere to “practical” lives.
And so we all end up living, practical lies of a life.