Posts Tagged ‘metaphor’
You and Your World~Metaphorically Speaking, Part II
Monday, December 12th, 2011“If you really want to know what’s going on in your unconscious mind, look closely at your life–because it’s telling you the truth.” (jc)
In Part One of this series, I posed a question about possible strategies for dealing with a brain at war with itself.
Well, there’s lots of tactical manuevers people use in this kind of war hoping to emerge victorious.
One popular approach is to get the conflict diagnosed as a mental illness. Then you get to exact vengeance upon your brain with prescription chemical warfare until it burns out and surrenders.
Or, you could enter into desperate negotiations with your brain, hoping to garner a truce. But do any of these really present a useful solution?
I think you know the answer.
But there’s another more solution-oriented approach to finding peace by resolving the conflict. One that most people aren’t aware of.
You remember that beliefs generate our thoughts, feelings and behaviors, right?
Well, lurking beneath statements like I’m at war with myself, or I’m stuck in a rut, or I just can’t handle all this *stuff* hanging over my head, is the structure of the beliefs that are creating the difficulty.
These, and other similar statements are among the countless metaphors people use to describe their life situation.
Your metaphors reveal the landscape of your internal reality.
The experience you’re having right now is the effect of living your life within the metaphoric landscape of what you believe to be true. See?
And while you may be profoundly aware of the effects of the belief, the structure of the problem created by the belief is usually outside of your conscious awareness. Because a person can be aware of how they feel and what they do without actually knowing the cause.
Have you ever noticed a peculiar behavior or puzzling limitation of your own and wondered, “What the heck is that all about?”
Here’s a Mind-Warp for you.
If you were caught in a trap that you could see and feel–like a cage or a pit–you could study the characteristics of the trap and have a good chance of finding a way out, couldn’t you? You might even discover that you had a number of choices for implementing a solution.
But what if you were caught in a trap–and didn’t even know it? What chance for escape would you have then?
Well, practically speaking–none. Your choices are limited to the information you have. How’s that for freedom of choice?
Most people don’t realize they’re living, or are trapped, within a metaphoric world. And because they don’t realize it, they’re unable to find their way out.
Problematic states like chronic depression and anxiety are common examples of this situation. People living within these problems are often caught in a closed recursive neurological loop–a trap consisting of limiting beliefs. And they don’t know that. So the problem persists.
But there are solutions; even for some of the most difficult of these problems. And sometimes they’re so simple, it boggles the mind.
Uncovering the structure of the metaphor within which the problem exists is like bringing the ‘invisible trap’ into view. Then, the specific characteristics of the trap can be observed, and more often than not, a solution created.
Your inner world is made up of beliefs.
And the structure of that world is evident in your behaviors and language patterns–in the form of metaphors. These metaphors have distinct qualities and characteristics including boundaries, textures, various climates and multiple dimensions–just as you would expect of any material landscape–but with some startling exceptions.
The metaphoric world exists within the universe of imagination–of mind. (Anyone thinking about that Twilight Zone music right now, raise your hand.) And, unlike the denser 3-D world of stuff, where pesky things like gravity and aerodynamics rule, in the universe of imagination such rules don’t exist.
Hence, anything is possible there.
The trick is to use your imagination to create a more useful metaphor wherein lies a solution that can be applied in the 3-dimensional world.
In other words, your imagination may be filled with magic carpets and flying automobiles, but unless it was built and tested for flight in this world–don’t go driving your car off a cliff. (*wink*)
Until next time, here’s a simple challenge: what would you say is the only thing powerful enough to change a belief? If you get this, you know more about the rules for change than most.
Want a hint? Recall what beliefs are made of…
(More mind de-boggling coming soon. Stay tuned.)
Hi. Welcome to my Universe.
If you enjoyed this, please Like, Share, Tweet, Comment, or everything to the left of this dot.
And thanks for being you. You’re the only you there will ever be. That makes you awesome.
Tags: anxiety, belief, beliefs, brain, depression, imagination, metaphor, metaphors, mind, solution, trapped, twilight zone, you
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You and Your World~Metaphorically Speaking, Part I
Monday, November 28th, 2011“You live your life according to what you believe to be true of yourself and of the world–even if what you believe to be true isn’t real.” (jc)
Everything we think, feel and do in any given context is dictated by our beliefs. For those of us looking for change, knowing that could be important.
The human brain is said to be the most complex organism in the Universe. Of course, that’s a belief the brain has about itself. But with millions of miles of neurons packed into a single human cranium, with an estimated 1000 trillion connections, it could easily be true–and discussing how it works would get complicated.
And I don’t like complicated things. I like everything to be as simple as possible.
So, rather than discuss how beliefs are created, for now let’s agree that “A belief is information neurologically encoded in such a way that it becomes a statement about reality that you think or feel is true.”
That’s simple enough to play with.
Beliefs are your database of reality statements. They give rise to your thoughts, feelings and behaviors.
That’s how you know how to think, feel and ‘be’ within any given context.
Your life experience is the cumulative effect of your beliefs; the meanings that you project outward onto things and events. It’s not The Realty–it’s Your reality.
Your belief-experience becomes Your Story. And there’s no other story in the world exactly like it.
But your story of reality may not be true for me. I have one of my own. It’s called My Story. And it’s very different from yours.
Your beliefs prove themselves right by shaping reality to fit the mold that your beliefs create. They force you to experience the world their way–not as it IS. And they easily make it seem like everyone who believes as you do is right–and anyone who believes otherwise is wrong.
It’s a very convincing illusion.
All across the world, beliefs unify individuals from various backgrounds into groups aligned toward a common cause or–as opposing beliefs often do–create conflicts resulting in a world at war.
But what happens when conflicting beliefs reside within the same brain–and your brain is at war with itself, creating lots of unhappiness in your life?
Ever catch yourself saying something like “Part of me wants this, but another part of me wants that,” or “I feel like I’m constantly fighting with myself,” or maybe “I love it and I hate it at the same time”? That’s a sure sign of conflicting beliefs.
Listen for statements like these coming from yourself and others over the next week or so. You may begin thinking about language and its meaning in a whole new way.
Do you like to think you have ‘freedom-of-choice’? If so, get ready for a surprising twist in my next post.
Hi. Welcome to my Universe.
If you enjoyed this, please Like, Share, Tweet, Comment, or everything to the left of this dot.
And thanks for being you. You’re the only you there will ever be. That makes you awesome.
Tags: beliefs, change, dimensions, imagination, metaphor, metaphors, problem, reality, solution, world
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