SICK OF BEING SICK OF

July 30th, 2019

Using the phrase “I’m sick of” indicates what exactly?

Is our body ill in the way it would be if we had the flu?

No.  Not really.

Usually it references an unpleasant experience that occurs regularly.

Notice how strange it would be to say you are sick of something that has only happened once and probably will only happen once.

Regularity is key here.

The regular and unpleasant experience is one thing to deal with.  But what about the instances when we report it to other people?  Hence saying “I’m so sick of…”

Generally, we aren’t in the midst of the experience while we harp about it to some friend.  We are reporting the experience some time after it has happened.

But in so doing, we are activating the unpleasantness again.

With awareness focused again on the unpleasant experience, we experience it again.  At least in its effect of producing unpleasantness.

It’s likely that we are eager to report the experience because we’ve been thinking about it nonstop since it happened, and talking about it is a way to expunge it.

In this case, what we are really sick ofis… thinking about it.  And this is generally the case for all things that we can be sick of.

Rarely is the experience of such things all that bad, otherwise we’d take definitive actions to make sure it doesn’t happen again. What we really suffer from is the way such experiences continue to inhabit our thoughts and awareness.  It’s our sense of the moment, our awareness which is polluted and sick.

However, our mental world is one that we can edit on the fly.  The ability to choose what to think about is a skill that can be practiced and honed, and meditation is the biggest, clearest doorway to this gymnasium of exercise.

Thoughts and beliefs have a parasitic nature.  Our minds become hosts to these thoughts and beliefs.  Like the common cold, or the flu, or the seasonal ‘bug’ that wreaks havoc in our body, thoughts and beliefs can similarly wreak havoc in the mind.  The ability to choose what to think about requires a foundation of awareness about what’s really going on in the mind.  Most of the time we are like a soldier in the midst of a battle.  Awareness of one’s thoughts is like becoming a general who can see the whole battle. 

Meditation builds an immune system for the mind.

We cease to be sick ofthis or that when we develop the ability to choose what to think about.