Prove that you are "running the show. " Exactly how is that done? Does it work 100% ofv the time?
I'm not running the show. I know this. I can SEE it in certain situations. But the felt sense that I am persists, and it is strong.
I dread my workouts. I am supposed to do them 3x per week and I always procrastinate and wait until the last minute. I am doing that right now. In my head I am trying to will myself to get out of this chair and go into the gym which is only a few feet away. I can't see to do this. There's a pit in my stomach that feels like guilt. A sinking feeling. I feel heavy. Thoughts are anxious and insistent—'You
have to do this! Do it now and get it over with. Once you do it, you will feel better about yourself and next time will be easier. It will set a good tone for your entire day.'
Who are the thoughts talking to? How can
my thoughts be talking to
me? As far as I know, there aren't two of me. So who am I talking to?
Other thoughts say—'But I have a little headache and I should take some ibuprofen and wait for it to go away before I do the workout. What if I did it later today, like this afternoon? I have so much other stuff I need to do today, I can do that now and the workout later. It all needs to get done, so does the order really matter?'
And then the other side makes it retort. And then back again. And back and forth. If I could choose to not be having this conversation inside my head, I would. But I can't.
And whether I end up getting out of this chair and going into the gym and doing a workout will depend on one moment: when I get out of the chair and walk to the gym. And in the moment of doing that, I honestly cannot find a moment in which I make a decision. I just do it. Or I don't.
It's like a buildup of this argument in my head finally tips in one direction or the other. Or it doesn't and it just keeps on going on incessantly forever but I never get up to go into the gym.
Is it the argument that gives the impression of making a decision? The mind weighing the options and debating endlessly? The moment of doing or not doing is one tiny moment. And that moment is just decided by an infinity of things that I have no control over.
So what part of the show am I running? None of it. It just feels like I am. I feel like I am making a decision to sit here and write to you instead of doing my workout in the gym. But really it's just a combination of how much sleep I got last night, the level of hormones in my body, the events of the past week, the events of the past year, that the sun is shining, that the cat is on my lap, that I'm here in the house alone for the first time in forever, that it's quiet, that the computer is here, that I have a slight headache, that it's Sunday, that it's 10:39am, that I'm planning to join Vince's call later today (planning lol), and a bazillion other things. There's no room for free will. It just FEELS that way. I FEEL like a ME. I operate from the place of a tiny me sitting inside my body operating the machinery. I don't know any other way to operate.
'I don't know' is a story.
I can see that I do not choose my thoughts. Any of them. Even a thought that is trying to change other thoughts is a thought that I didn't choose. Thoughts play incessantly in my head. I have a thought that I'd like the thoughts to stop. They don't. All of that is out of my control although I grasp onto it as if it were. I try to direct my thoughts this way or that. I also try to not engage with my thoughts, which I can't seem to do either. Any amount of trying to change anything in my head just ends in frustration. It feels like a web that I am getting more and more caught in. I don't know how to not react and just watch. That feels like effort, an attempt to change, that just results in more frustration.
Sometimes I can approach it with curiosity. That works better. But there seem to be walls, dark spaces that I can't penetrate with seeing. The mind distracts me—it literally says "there's nothing there" or "that's a dead end" or "let's do that later". I make up a story that the mind doesn't want me there. I make up a story that I should try to look there. I don't know how to look without being directed by thoughts.
'I don't know how' is a story.
Back to running the show: I can see that my body moves on its own. My heart beats, my body breathes, all of the biological processes, they happen on their own. I don't decide to do them. I don't decide to go into a story and act it out over and over again. I don't decide to be in suffering—although I can sometimes see that I "decide" to create drama and that I like it. It gives me something. But even that decision is more like a magnet that either tips toward or tips away.
I cannot prove that I am running the show. It's just that I've always operated from that place.
