A Sovereign For Your Thoughts

This is really a very deep subject that you have taken this discussion into, and it touches upon the whole unique thrust that Buddhism presents us with. I am not going to labor upon the point that “your beliefs create your reality”. What is more important to me is the philosophy that you have expressed that follows that point.

That philosophy is the notion that since we create our own reality we should then choose which reality that we are going to create. In short, if you don’t like something about yourself, well then, just believe instead in the reality that you would prefer is true. After all this seems perfectly logical: want to be taller, believe you are taller; need more hair, just believe in it and it will be there. Nothing harmful in any of this.

However, when I read the fine print, I am not so enamored of this path. This is because beliefs are not like socks that you just change when you get tired of them. Beliefs are part of the you of you, the part of you that makes you human and unique. Your beliefs are more like your hands or legs than they are your socks. And it is something far more serious to change your hands than it is to change your socks. Your beliefs are a part of you and your personality, and if you change your beliefs you will be changing yourself into a different person.

I have studied the way the “change your beliefs” philosophy is supposed to work. When you change your beliefs, then you put yourself into that “new” reality where the preferred belief is the active one. Along the way, the personality makes the inner adjustments to accommodate the new beliefs: solutions to vexing problems are discovered; insights are gained where things are seen in a new light. All so that you can move away from the old beliefs and into the new preferred beliefs which form the preferred reality.

This can really be a great thing if for instance you are suffering from a serious illness that has few treatments. I’m not saying that to follow this philosophy is always a bad thing. But the implication behind this whole philosophy is that you will find happiness by changing the things that you don’t like about yourself into those that you think you will. (And yes, you could have control over every aspect of your life, I guess.)

However what I have learned from my experience of practice is a different story. My experience has “shown” me that basically there is, what we can concede to call, “awareness”. As awareness is aware of awareness, affinities come into play, making connections, harmonies.

These affinities lead to yet more affinities, connections, awarenesses. Awareness aware of these connections recognizes / identifies patterns of awarenesses in affinity. Thus identities emerge from the primal soup of awareness. As they recognize and gain more affinities, they grow in complexity. This is all spontaneous, however, and unlimited.

Philosophically, we could say that all is potential, but within this potentiality, connections of likeness form, some potential is a little more like some other potential. So spontaneous patterns emerge but never establish themselves firmly because there is always more potential affinities that the “patterns” are connected to, thus changing them into further developed patterns that they recognize.

Through this maelstrom of awarenesses, identities emerge, recognizing themselves in the patterns of affinities that awarenessses connect into. However the identity is not the pattern itself, that pattern is always changing. The identity is the awareness that recognizes itself, a recognition that has come from that pattern but now is not dependent upon it. An identity within awareness itself, and so not separated from awareness and not independent of that pattern, an ever changing identity.

These patterns of ever-changing affinities rest at the heart of the identity. Though it is not these patterns of affinities, they are inculcated into its recognition of itself. At least in my meager understanding this is how it seems to me.

And, this is my understanding; that these patterns of affinities come and go. Perhaps some of these affinities make us happy. Perhaps some of these affinities will lead to difficulty, like a sour note in the orchestration of one’s life. Because all is connected.