Creating Cracks In The Machine: Conscious Work
Seeing and questioning our mechanical pattern
there is a big fat machine inside us it has grown with us and had taken full charge over us we had become a slave to our conditioning slave to thinking mind and its destructive patterns — stubborn stimulus-response patterns
going with the flow is generally good but going with the flow of blind mechanical thought patterns is not flow but being stuck in repeat mode of pain
at any now, If I don’t initiate, my thought-response pattern will initiate the movement or proceedings How do I initiate? By seeing the thought-response pattern — simply seeing where it’s even heading towards like a boat without the sailor
thoughts are like a bully it pulls us here and there wherever it takes us we silently follow without knowing where we are headed to even it, thoughts, does not know after all, thoughts aren't supposed to use us we are supposed to use it
Don’t think you are obliged to do everything the thought says; that’s perhaps the trouble with psychopaths; instead, rejoice at your little sanity left.
we are fed up with our unchanging patterns so we feel defeated and become more asleep after all, to see we had become a slave to conditioning is painful so we distract from ourselves we fear being with ourselves and to be punched around by the machine — the machine-like program
it has become so huge and fat we can’t remove it or fight it if we try using the same thinking strategies we will be defeated with more pain there is nothing new to hope for in depending on garbage thoughts again and again it’s like falling for its slavery our only possibility is to watch it without resisting or trying to change it
just imagine this: we are facing a big enemy all we got is our vision and maybe a sharp pencil we have to take him down with our seeing and pencil
as soon as he comes to attack we watch it clearly and move out of the way without resisting while still watching it and then give a poke with the sharp pencil yes, we create one crack at a time as he approaches to attack — kind of doing aikido with our own destructive patterns
similarly, when our conditioning runs wild we just watch its movement without fighting with it when we are watching it we are already out of its way and then we question it we question its current movement be it thinking or reacting we question its intention we question its usefulness we question where is it headed to without demanding it to change it’s like poking with a sharp pencil and watching we understand that it’s running automatically without any intelligence but merely to fill time with repetitive stimuli-response patterns — we regain a little breathing space from it
Perhaps, be still and know that you are God (identified with a machine), as mystics say.
we create the cracks or pause or a break in the mechanical pattern a little shock here and there to the stubborn inner movements through seeing and questioning tiny cracks appears through which consciousness or intelligence can seep in little by little waking up from the robotic slavery of thinking mind — recovering sanity and autonomy.
Seeing the patterns of my inner life, noticing how things repeat, sensing the boredom and monotony of such a second-hand life, a longing for what is real and true begins to arise in me. This longing comes from being. The being begins to stir and awaken just a little. — Red Hawk, Self Observation: The Awakening of Conscience