Many of today's mind-clearing and internal vision improvement practices, derive from Zen and other religious and religion-related traditions. I guess I might have gotten my best aids to my current level of being able to think more clearly and recognize my life for what it is from a small number of Westerners who studied Eastern ideas and brought them back. Major names for me are Jack Kornfield, Charlotte Joko Beck, Mark Epstein and many others. References and sources are scattered through my web site and blog.
It can be difficult to distinguish clear thinking from optimistic or negative thinking. It seems that many people have a positive bias when thinking about themselves but some have a countertendency, natural or trained, to try to offset positive or prideful thinking by purposely emphasizing errors, lapses, and sinful thoughts and deeds. Practicing keeping one's attention on one thing, a spot on the wall or one's breath, can assist in developing clearer insight into the actual internal thoughts, feelings and desires.
One Christian approach, not from its founder but from those who built and formed the religion, is to take the position that no one is perfect and therefore I am not perfect. If I am not perfect, I have some sins and I need to think of what they are. That probably works pretty well much of the time but I might avoid thinking of some and I might come up with something just to meet the requirement.
It seems that when I think clearly and see clearly, there is nothing much all that special that is revealed, nothing all that exciting to see. However, having a little sympathy for myself and a little respect for who I am and what I am seems right. It takes a few moments to recall some of the parts of my life that relate to achievements. I did have them and I did attain them.
One of the directions of modern thinking and research is the extent to which adults are actually driven by their genes, their childhood experiences, their social surroundings, advertising, primitive fears and all kinds of other forces, tendencies and nudges that actually control, direct or influence their choice and lives. So, having a little respect for the biological, mammalian, primate, political, sexual, financial, parental, legal and other forces at work on me throughout my life can show me that I am what might be expected from a creature subject to all those influences.
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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
