Page 40 - Taming Your Gremlin A Surprisingly Simple Method for Getting Out of Your Own Way (Rick Carson)_Neat

Your gremlin will raise objections to these simple truths. He may be
doing so at this very moment. He wants you to feel lousy and less than fully
vibrant and alive, so he may fuss, rant, and rave, or hit you with some

lengthy, diversionary pontification. Notice his chatter. You may even gain
some appreciation for his persistence and creativity. After all, he’s been
with you since your early years and he’s developed his methods based on
his thorough knowledge of you and of your unique vulnerabilities. He is
determined to hypnotize you into believing life is complex, difficult, and
perhaps even painful. And he is a full-time devotee of this purpose. Notice
his chatter, but do so without taking his chatter too seriously.

Sometimes, when we’re not consciously directing our spotlight of

awareness, we slip unknowingly into the world of mind, which often is no
more than a world of make-believe. If, for example, you and I were talking
right now and I saw you looking at me, I might imagine that you were
listening to me, that you were bored, that you were angry with me, or any
combination of these or who knows what? I might even predicate my
actions on my fantasy. If I imagined that you were listening to me, I

probably would continue talking. If I imagined you were bored, I might
stop talking. If I imagined you were angry with me, I might get uptight and
begin communicating with you defensively. My action would be based on
fantasy, and my fantasy would, in all likelihood, be based on past
experiences rather than on the reality of the current moment.

Taming your gremlin does not involve staying out of the world
of mind. It simply involves making certain that you enter the

world of mind by choice.

Your awareness will serve you best when you gently focus it. Terms like

spaced out or foggy describe your existence when your awareness is not
focused. Being spaced out is no more than generalizing your awareness,
that is, taking in too much at once, with no sharp foreground to your
experience.

You often have a choice about what you bring into the foreground of
your experience and what you relegate to background. Taking charge of

your awareness and consciously guiding it from its base in the here and now