Q: I work in a retail shop and I seem to have a mental loop occurring after interactions with certain customers who are unreasonable in their demands or accusations and where the situation remains somehow unresolved in some way where I didn’t get to say what I wanted . This mental loop occurs as thought replays of that scene with that customer saying & doing what they did & I act in different ways in response to them . These thought replays are like mental video clips that are triggered by nothing in particular and can occur anytime and very often over the next week or two weeks after the incident. These replays are irritating and frustrating because logically I realize that the incident is over & that I can do nothing about it. I also feel that I have a desire to get rid of this mental loop. Should I let them play on till it plays itself out meanwhile experiencing lots of frustration & irritation every time these memories resurface? Could you please advise me as to what if anything I can do about this?
C: That reminds me of what my son said when he was working computer tech support many years ago: "This is a great job except for the customers!" :-)
Here's the thing: So long as there is the trace, the barest vestige, of a 'me", there will always be "others". Then those others may stimulate a response that the "me" thinks "should not be". THAT, the sense of a "should" about what IS, and the passion of a conviction that the "Should" is RIGHT and that the "me" is RIGHT and of course that the other is "wrong" is real suffering. All there is is what is, and the afterthoughts, or subsequent interpretations, are a product of the notion of being a separate entity who "should" be different, implying that what is COULD be different, which is patently impossible! What is, IS. Full Stop.
Each thought is fresh in the moment. You seem to believe that there IS a "loop". It is all happening JUST NOW though.
As far as "advice" goes, who would give advice to whom? You are along for the ride! Totality does it all, and then the machine that you are claims "there is something wrong and I want to change it". Right? But you might just as well wish to change New York into London.
You as an entity are completely powerless and devoid of any trace of independent existence apart from Totality. So WHO is it that needs or gives advice? Phantom storytellers, nothing real and nothing valid. Regardless of the empty claims of the masses.
As I wrote elsewhere, see beyond this conceptual entity that is essentially nothing put a passing fancy, a notion with no properties, that ONLY TOTALITY DOES ALL DOING and the false sense of a separate entity-I is an OVERLAY or afterthought that is no more connected to actions than the boat ride in the amusement park's three "steering wheels" are connected to any steering mechanism. The seeker who CLAIMS these "realizations" is like a leaf being carried by the river toward the ocean, asserting that IT is doing the traveling, IT is steering toward the ocean where IT will "merge" etc etc! And then CLAIM "I made it!" (And then it may well start to "teach!") Hehehehe ...
Lookit: When the storyteller assumes it is the story, the star "entity-I-me" ... and assumes the authorship or control of the doing and the action, the seeker remains in the delusion of doership or authorship of what is actually just the natural and unscripted Being-And-Doing of the Whole. So drop the idea that anything is missing, There is NOTHING to get. As there is NO ONE that can "get" anything, or even a thing called "nothing" (a popular delusion in spiritual circles: OH, 'I' get it, 'I am Nothing'." THAT is just more bullshit starry-eyed story!
I say, NOT as a "prescription" but rather a description of what may well happen in the reading and pondering of this, that it MAY be clear that all suffering and all ideas of "wrongness or rightness" or "mental loops" or ANY "me" or "other" etc is nothing more that BELIEVING THOUGHTS TO BE TRUE. As that conviction drops off and is replaced NOT by "disbelief in thoughts" or anything else but rather is replaced by Nothing, the No Thing that YOU REALLY are, peace will be clear and obvious, while the dance goes on but without the "personal attachment" that makes What Is into something that causes suffering. May it be so for you... Right Now!
The possibility here is the freedom of being POWERLESS. For an example ...
In my experience, TRUE Freedom consists ONLY in Being absolutely Powerless! This first appeared for me when I was racing and lost control when a radiator tank burst and dumped water on the right rear wheel in a 125 MPH left hand corner. As the car was spinning out of any possibility of "my" controlling it, there dawned absolute Freedom, absolute Peace, and this continued as the car leapt a guard rail and spinning around, landed in a clearing 50' down a steep hill, ruining the springs and shocks and whatnot. I was uninjured.
It's a profound Possibility: The Freedom of Being Powerless! Seeing-Knowing THAT, there is no suffering, and no should or should not be. What IS, is accepted As It IS and Is Not ... by No-One i.e Your Self.
Much Love,
Charlie
“Anyone who has truly apprehended that it is impossible for him to live independently according to his own "will power" would naturally cease having any intentions. When he is convinced that living is a sort of dreaming in which he has no control over his [or her] actions, all tension ceases and a sense of total freedom takes over”. ~Ramesh Balsekar
“Spontaneous, natural action happens only when the mind is vacant of the slightest trace of intention and planning. The greatest liberty is in having total trust in that final authority that makes the grass grow and our limbs, organs and minds work by themselves.” ~Ramesh Balsekar
