Name: Steve Mensing
Topic: Mack: Thinking about our thinking
Sent: 11.42 - 3/22 2001
Mack:

Thinking about our thinking is a highly important aspect of our life that we better not neglect.
I suspect a large number of the folks who come here fall into the meta-thinker category (thinking about your thinking).

Life can become more of a struggle if we don't test our thinking and beliefs. We also can find it worthwhile to step entirely out of the thinking box and shift into a viewpoint where we are no longer looking through our thinking lens. This can be very instructive about our thinking in general.

Those questions we ask often form what we will see.

Altered states of consciousness can often assist us in seeing our thinking in a novel way and open us to the discovery of how we think the way we do.

Thought distortions are part of our landscape and it is imperative that we recognize them for the good and meaningful life.

Someone said: "The unexamined life is not worth living." I don't know if I'd completely go along with that. There's plenty of people reeling through life, not knowing what's up, who live happy and satisfying lives.

There's also persons who delude themselves who really believe they are on top of it all and lead a throughly examined and philosophical life. However they may be checking out the world from distorted viewpoints and towers of Babel. How many street apostles have we met who claim to know the way?

It's difficult cutting through the jungles of knowing. Where do you start? What is North and South?

Who or what tells us what is the correct way to proceed?

Hard questions.

Various meditation forms may be helpful in allowing us to learn and know about what goes on in consciousness. You get to look at your thoughtforms, beliefs, sensations, feelings, impulses, intutions, streams of thoughts, spaces between thoughtforms, emotions, altered states of awareness. Breathwork does some neat things and so does tech. Reading and checking out your thoughts and beliefs. Heck this NAP page holds up the mirror to your thinking and feeling.

Another area that Mack touched on was checking out possible thought distortions. There's lot of them and likely a bunch are posted on the net. I'll see if some sites exist. These distrtions generally fall in the area of absolutistic thinking. The more common are:

Awfulizing: We make inconveniences or discomfort into disasters, catastrophes and the like.

Can't Stand it-itis: Here's where we make standable situations into something that's too much or can't be stood.

Shoulding: Desires and preferences get turned into arbitary and ironclad laws.

Labeling: We overgeneralize with the verb to be. I am blank. They are blank.

Needing Nonnecessities: I think some of you know this one.

Absolutizing: always, never, forever, all the time, totally, continually, etc.

Impossiblizing: Here we turn the difficult into the impossible. Too much! Too hard!

Deservingness: Here we believe we have a license from the universe that entitles us to what we desire. Hey I deserve to step to the head of this line ahead of these human waste products.

Unbelief: Here we erase the reality of a situation. I don't belief this is happening to me.

Unfair and unjust: Demanding that there is a universal standard for justice and fairness rather than agreements. Simply look at labor management wrangles.

Trying: Uncommitted effort.

What if: We ask a question that will creat worse case scenerios and not show positive aspects or neutral aspects.

Overgeneralizing: Several instances of a category is seen as an entire category.

Viewing only the negative: Seeing only the negative while filtering out the positive.

Black & White thinking: Seeing life without neutral or gray areas.

Fault Finding: Blaming. Not taking responsibility for a snafu.

Comparing: Building others up so we can tear ourselves down or visa versa.

Double-binding: A pressure cooker style of thinking that says you must do something, but you can't.

Forevering: Making the temporary into a permanent state.

Leaping to conclusions: Basing our conclusions on slim or no evidence.

Nixing the Positive: Explaining away postive events.

Gut thinking: Basing your evidence on feelings that may be based on fantasies.

Expanding: Exagerating small weaknesses or defects.

Contracting: Minimizing assets or the positive.

Overresponisibility: Taking too much responsibility for situations out of our power.

Cultural think: Buying everything we here as gospel.

Perfectionism: Demanding the super human.

There's a ton more these are among the most popular.

Take care and keep examining, Steve