It’s almost as if there are two minds in our head, battling it out at all times. Most people live with the chattering mind being dominant, and the common sense mind whispering and rarely heard.
For some people the chattering mind is all they can hear. All day long it talks about this and that, comparing, making judgments, deciding its likes and dislikes, and worst of all, showing us pictures of dangerous scenarios that it thinks could happen in the made-up future.
Yesterday I got to watch a friend develop, cultivate, and launch herself into a panic attack.
The conversation went like this:
Her: My son has had a feeling in his chest. He’s been having pain for the last few days. He’s been lifting heavy weights lately. (Healthy young man early 20s)
Me: He probably pulled a muscle.
Her: I don’t know, he said it feels heavy.
Me: Is he stressed about anything?
Her: No. Everything is fine. I think he should go to get it checked out.
Me: Couldn’t hurt.
A few minutes later, her son is on his way to the emergency room. He texts my friend and says that he is going to be getting some cardiac tests.
I think: Of course, no surprise there.
She thinks: (Well whatever she thinks, it’s the worst case scenario.)
She starts frantically texting him, tears in her eyes, panic evident.
I tell her it’s just routine tests and of course they would do that with anyone that came into the emergency room saying that they had a feeling in their chest. Everything will be fine.
Her response to my pointing out the obvious is her wailing, “I’m a bad mother!”
Wait. What? How did we get there from here?
Thought.
Correction, thought BELIEVED.
Chattery mind came in here and took hold of the steering wheel, leaving common sense/wisdom mind in the dust.
Now I know this is her SON we are talking about and he is in the emergency room. I’m not trying to make light of the protection of mother feels over her child. BUT since it was not my child, I could stand on the outside looking in and assess the situation.
To make a long story short, a little while later she texted me and the boy has a pulled muscle.
The last sentence of her text is the one that makes me stop and want to write this story.
She said, “I’m so relieved.”
The irony.
She is relieved of the story that her mind made up to scare her. There was never an actual danger. Her suffering was all thought produced.
How come no one has ever told us before that thought creates our reality? If we had known this from the get-go we would stand more of a chance against falling into a scenario like the one I’ve just described. In my perfect world when scary thought comes in, we would be able to recognize it right away for what it is, an overactive brain with a wild imagination. We would be able to dismiss these horror movie thoughts without feeling them, getting caught in them or believing them as truth.
We would know they were made up.
Not real. Not true.
We would stay more in the present moment where our life actually is, and not try to relive the past or try to predict the future. (Unsuccessfully 100 percent of the time, I might add.)
If only we knew…
Well, now you know.
