FIXING THINGS THROUGH THOUGHT

by Gina Lake

A lot of our thinking is an attempt to fix things that can’t be “fixed.” For example, we might try to fix the past by trying to do it over mentally—imagining other ways it could have or “should” have gone—or trying to defend what we did by thinking about it. We replay the past as if doing that can change it. The mind tries to fix what it cannot fix. Or we might try to plan something down to every detail, as if doing that can cause it to go the way we imagine or want it to. Although some planning has value, the mind overdoes it, as it is often driven by needless worries and fears. It plays “what if” scenarios and tries, through thought, to avoid the messiness and unpredictability of life, however impossible that may be.

The mind also spends a lot of time trying to fix things that don’t even need fixing. It imagines, or anticipates, problems where none exist and, therefore, spends precious energy trying to fix something mentally that doesn’t even need fixing. For example, it might imagine that you will fall on your face while speaking to a group when you don’t even have a plan to speak to a group or when you have never had this difficulty before. Even if you’ve had this difficulty before, thoughts about this right now can’t change what has happened or will happen. This is called needless worrying.

The trouble with trying to fix something by thinking about it is that it doesn’t work! We can’t change the past by thinking about it (although we can still learn from it), and we can’t correct something that isn’t happening right now. We can only “fix,” or affect, real life—what is happening right now—not some mental idea of life. We can think and imagine all we want, but it won’t change the past or affect the present in the way we might like.

The other problem with trying to fix something by thinking about it, besides the fact that this doesn’t work, is that these kinds of thoughts do affect our experience of the present and our experience of life when we are thinking them because they take us out of real life and put us into our own made-up mental world, which for many people is full of worry, fear, and other negativity. We try to manage and control life through thought, and we are programmed to believe we can do this, but the truth is that we can’t. Being able to see this is your ticket out of hell and to freedom and to seeing that life is already just fine the way it is and that life—including you—never needed fixing.

The egoic mind imagines a problem and then imagines a solution. And when we get caught up in this, we feel like we have a problem that must be solved before we can be happy. But it has all been imagined! When you drop out of involvement with these thoughts and into the simple experience of this moment, you discover that this moment is fine the way it is—and you are fine the way you are. Life never had to be any different, and either do you. You can be the “imperfect” human that you are. In fact, you weren’t designed to be anything other than the human being you are. You are doing this human being thing perfectly!

The beauty is that we are all evolving toward being more loving and more aligned with the spiritual being that we actually are, whether we realize that or not. So, you can just relax and enjoy the ride that life is taking you on. All it asks is that you choose love over fear and hatred, and being positive over being negative. Fortunately, we all learn that being loving and positive is the only sane choice, since the other possibility only leads to suffering. So, we can’t really make a mistake (and, therefore, nothing needs fixing) because we are all being swept along toward seeing the truth about ourselves and about life—that we are all One and it is all good!

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