Welcome to the Buddhist Boot Camp Podcast. Our intention is to awaken, enlighten, enrich, and inspire a simple and uncomplicated life. Discover the benefits of mindful living with your host, Timber Hawkeye. My parents took me to an aquarium when I was really young, at least that's what they tell me. I don't recall the trip, so how can I know for sure that it ever took place?
If my parents have lied about other things in the past, and they have, then there is no way for me to know whether the trip to the aquarium was real or if they made it up. Despite this uncertainty, my peace of mind comes from letting go of the need to know. It's not that I don't care, carelessness is harsh, I have simply accepted that among other things in life, this will forever remain a mystery and I'm perfectly okay with that.
"Don't believe everything you think" is probably the best advice I've ever been given. Our thoughts are rarely ever truly our own. They are shaped by the people around us or by current events and media exposure. Even when we think of something ourselves, or we think we do, it's important to remember that the mind is strangely capable of believing just about anything in order to avoid internal conflict and dissonance.
If you tell somebody a good story, they are going to believe it. The story doesn't have to be true to be believable, it simply has to be good enough, and the same is true of the stories we tell ourselves. If we're to take everything that other people tell us with a grain of salt, including the books we read or the news we hear, and we can't even trust our own thoughts, then what can we believe? Our feelings? Definitely not!
Feelings are valid, but they aren't facts. For one thing, they change at the drop of a dime, and they can be flat out wrong. All too often I have felt like someone was mad at me, for example, and then it turned out that they weren't. I have felt overweight when I really wasn't, and frequently felt like a couldn't do something right up until the moment it was done. So if thoughts are to be taken with a grain of salt, feelings ought to be served with
a spoonful. Whenever we feel inadequate, therefore, it's best to catch ourselves in our own lie, and set the record straight: we are actually capable, strong, beautiful, and incredibly blessed. All the other negative self-talk is commentary by a troll in our own minds with nothing better to do than bully us. Since our thoughts can't be trusted, and what other people tell us is always biased, and even our feelings aren't facts, then our
personal experience is the only thing we can truly trust. There is an ancient Chinese
I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, but when I do, I understand. We never have to be convinced of something that we have experienced first hand. The challenge, however, is to differentiate between our actual experience and the memories, thoughts, or feelings that we have about it. Because the experience itself
is the only thing we can trust; everything else is questionable. This line of thinking would get even more intriguing if my parents had a photograph of me at the aquarium, which would prove that I was there regardless of whether or not I could recall the experience. Then I would know that it happened even though it made no impact on me whatsoever, either because I was too young to form any memories, or because even though I was physically there, I was mentally somewhere else.
So, if we can remain unaffected by something that actually happened, can we also be forever changed by something that never did? We can only conclude that our life experience is more significantly shaped by what goes on in our minds than what goes on with our bodies. Timber Hawkeye is the bestselling author of Faithfully Religionless and Buddhist Boot Camp.
For additional information, please visit BuddhistBootCamp.com, where you can order autographed books to support the Prison Library Project, watch Timber's inspiring TED Talk, and join our monthly mailing list. We hope you have enjoyed this episode and invite you to subscribe for more thought-provoking discussions. Thank you for being a Soldier of Peace in the Army of Love. 🙏