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Take a friendly attitude toward your thoughts.
Your mind is who you are and your thoughts are the tiles that make up the great mosaic
of self. In your thoughts you can know about the sensations, actions, postures, and
conditions of your body - your physical self. In your thoughts you can know about your
feelings - pleasant and unpleasant - your emotional self. In your thoughts you can know
about your motives and your desires - the attractions and aversions - your motivational
self. In your thoughts you can know about your beliefs, delusions, recognitions,
perceptions, ideas, resentments, and appetites, - your intellectual self. Your mind - your
awareness - is where you are and what you are.
Taking this into account, two things become clear. First, active sex addicts fill their
thoughts with obsession, shame, lies, manipulations, maneuvers, and self-loathing - not a
very friendly crowd of thoughts. Second, sex addicts try to control everything, including
their thoughts. It is part of the disease. Of course, controlling everything is utter
folly and it requires tremendous energy - energy that is not then available for other more
productive purposes. Energy that cannot then be directed to knowing ones own self.
This has been part of the problem. Addicts don't know themselves because they have not
spent time in the friendly company of their own thoughts. A thread in the fabric of
recovery, then, is to come into a clearer knowing of self - authentic self.
The goal, then, is to develop a deeper, clearer, more insightful relationship with
self. The way is merely stopping to listen or see what is in the mind. This is the means
of developing a more mindful way of living. There are many ways of working this point.
They all have in common relinquishing mental control and judgmental thinking, remaining
settled and motionless, focusing on breathing, and allowing your mind to show itself to
you. There are many methods for developing this sort of relationship with self and these
go by many names including meditative prayer, meditation, self-hypnosis, and so forth.
What follows is a generic description of the process.
The steps in this process are simple but not easy.
- Do this exercise at a time and place where you will not be disturbed.
- Sit in an upright posture without resting your back on any surface. This may be done
in an armless chair or seated on a cushion or pillow. The goal of seating is to find a
comfortable position so that moving is not required. Fold your hands gently in your lap.
- Close your eyes and focus on your breath. Do not alter your breath. Merely focus on
your breath. When your mind wanders, and it will, refocus on your breath. When you find
yourself thinking in words instead of observing experience without the interference of
words, interrupt the word thinking. The purpose of focusing on breathing is to give your
obsessive mind something definite to do. This helps to steer you away from your habitual
patterns of thinking, planning, remembering, judging, and controlling your thoughts. You
may want to count to five or seven or ten with each inhalation and exhalation. If that
assists you in maintaining focus, then that is useful and should be used. Do what works.
- In a while your thoughts, in all their forms, will begin to float into your
awareness without conscious effort. When you quiet the surface of the mind, the content of
its depth gradually becomes available. The mind wants to know itself and is highly
prepared to do so if given a proper chance.
- This is the part about taking a friendly attitude toward your thoughts. Most of us -
I dare even say all of us - have learned to label, judge, categorize, evaluate, and
compartmentalize our thoughts. We exercise our attractions and aversions to certain mental
experiences in this way. In so doing, we distort our realties. Instead, simply notice what
you notice. When you notice a resentment simply notice it. Do not shove it away mentally
and do not grab hold of it. Simply let it come and pass to be replaced by the next thing
the mind delivers to you. This is difficult and you will find your obsessive tendency to
shove or hold is a habit difficult to resist. But with practice your can develop this
skill. Do the same when you notice a delight or a boredom or a fear or a pain and so
forth. All thoughts are wheat. There is no chaff. Do not be afraid when dangerous thoughts
come to your mind. Simply notice them and let them go. Thinking is not doing. You have
spent a long time teaching your brain how to think dangerous sexual thoughts. Your brain
is just a hunk of stuff with those dangerous patterns etched into it. But in the stillness
of your own mind, a thought is merely a thought. It is not an action. It becomes an action
only when you grab hold of it or a counter action only when you shove it a way. In this
activity you are not observer of your own thoughts. Notice the feeling or sensation
beneath the dangerous thought. You may find that it is a deep wish for peace. You are the
"experiencer" of your own thoughts. You are separate and a part. As you let go
of the compulsion to act and control, you narrow the gulf between the source in the mind
and the experience in the mind. Simply allowing yourself to experience your own thoughts
is a very effective way to deepen your knowledge of yourself, develop true sexual
awareness, and enhance your insight.
- Begin this practice with 15 or 20-minute sessions two or three times a week. Too
much too soon is discouraging. Be gentle with yourself - allow yourself time to become
accustomed to the posture and the mental experience. Let go of expectations. What happens,
happens. Expectations direct attention and create the seed of obsessive control. What
happens is what happens.
- When you complete the exercise, do not fall into obsessive analysis and thinking.
Let the experience be. The effects of this kind of work develop in the deeper, realer,
truer, part of your mind and conscious attention only muddies the waters. This development
is gradual.
If this method isn't your cup of tea, find a different brew. The important part is to
develop a practice that helps you to develop self-awareness and especially that helps you
get honest with yourself about yourself. |
