As someone who has overcome undesirable behaviours of my own, I can tell you it takes much fortitude, a little professional help, and focus on new desirable behaviours.

This may sound simple, but keep a journal of goals and ways you could achieve them. Write down who you want to be, tell yourself you are this person already and slowly you will become the person you want to be.

What I had envisioned for OSScast at the start was a place where people of all faiths and none, could come to be exposed to a ‘core toolbox’ if you will, of basic skills. Like Meditation, Visualization, Breathwork, Fasting, Chanting, etc….and MORE importantly, talk to the people that DO those things as part of their own personal disciplines. Then maybe with enough input from the toolbox, these hypothetical osscast members, would at least be able to come away with more than what they started with. They would be able to take their personal path that much further without having to sign up for the WHOLE dogma that lots of other sources out there require.
I felt, and STILL feel, that given the right environment we can come together as a people and combine the very BEST that we have from all of our disciplines.
I don’t believe that conflict (healthy or not) needs to occur for development to take place, but I fear the deeper truth of your words. That without an inherent conflict to any sort of exchange, 21st century people become bored and quickly move on.

I guess only time will really tell…….and I hope I see more activity here, from me as well as everyone else.

Warmly,
Russ

Peace,
Russ

I think our perception of reality is the key here. Anything we experience is seen through the lenses of our senses. We are far enough away from reality that we can only experience the tiniest sliver of what really is. So much so that we actually define reality through our observation.

Let’s take an object, lets say a chair (pardon me Plato). A carpenter will see the wood it’s made of and note the craftsmanship. A chair collector might look at the design and note the year it was created. A physicist will tell you that it is made of energy condensed into a slow vibration so we perceive it as matter.

But that’s not all. A tired person will see it as a place to sit. A short person will see it as a stepstool to reach something. An angry person might see it as a weapon.

We define the reality of the object through our state of mind.

I have a theory about Bigfoot and Aliens too….

“understand myself a little bit before I let go of this life”

If I can do that, then I win. If I can help others to do that for themselves, then I’ve grossly exceeded my expectations.

I don’t know if that is my free will or not……but I think I’m ok with that.

Maybe our constant, almost subconscious, ritualistic reaffirmations of our current state, are the only things that KEEP us IN our current state.
Maybe the reason these ‘change your mind change your life’ books don’t really work instantaneously is because our current Point Of View in relation to our life, precludes an ability to actually SEE how much we re-affirm our status quo.
In other words, how much our ‘habits’ will undo what we consciously are trying to change by continuing with the subconscious rituals to reaffirm our current reality.

Question:
What if we are like a person in the middle of the ocean treading water? That is all we’ve known….THAT action gets us a ‘reality’ that is our ONLY reference for existence. What if THAT is the metaphor for how we experience the huge thing we call our subjective reality. And what if all we have to do to STOP experiencing the status quo, the same ole same ole…….to DRAMATICALLY CHANGE our reality, is STOP SWIMMING?

Have you ever heard of the term “repetition compulsion”? If not, and please don’t think I am talking down to you if you have heard it. It’s just that if you haven’t it is hard to progress through my meandering and faulty thought process.
Anyway, back to repetition compulsion. The way it works is, when we are kids events take place that make an impression on us. Maybe our parents drank too much, maybe we got beat up at school, maybe one of our parents beat up the other or had affairs or whatever. These events make an impact and generally they are terrible to us. The good events make an impact to but are not included in the repetition compulsion discussion.
So, bad things happen (a vast understatement I know but it will have to do for now) and we are hurt or scared or something else bad. So then we grow up. When we were kids we had little or no ability to successfully protect ourselves from bad things. As adults we have more of an even playing field. We have some input into the bad things that we allow to happen to us. So repetition compulsion is our adult selves trying out those bad situations from childhood in what may be a representative way or maybe something more literal. We want to master the bad situation where daddy used to hit mommy and we couldn’t protect her. So we marry someone who will hit us. That way we can stop them from hitting us and symbolically stop daddy from hurting mommy.
That is the repetition part, but the compulsion comes in when we are unable to master that situation from childhood. We can’t stop daddy from hurting mommy because it already happened and when our partner hits us we freeze with terror or shame or whatever because we become that little helpless kid again. We want mastery over a situation we can’t have mastery over. And since we can’t gain mastery in our adulthood, we just keep on trying.
Your friend keeps trying to work through whatever it is that she is trying to work through with these beautiful, angry, uneducated men. She fails every time so she keeps going back to try again. But she gets the same results because she doesn’t change her behavior.
That is another possibility.
Given that, I guess we are who we are for whatever reasons we are that way. Maybe we’ll change in this lifetime, maybe we won’t. If I can come to understand myself a little bit before I let go of this life, I will feel I have done pretty good. I may never stop my bad behavior but maybe I will; and if I can figure out why I do that bad behavior I will be grateful.
I guess.