How to get free? It’s hard to do, but in a way, it’s easy, if you know what it serves. Just to take a moment sometimes and let yourself step back from your own thoughts. I tried this with my students, and this is powerful.
One student who tried it — most of them sort of resisted it — when she got angry with somebody at a dry-cleaning place, and she said: “Oh, this is what Professor Needleman said! I’m going to look at my anger, look at my annoyance and step back from it.” And she was amazed that she became two people, the person who was angry and the other person who was calmly looking at her anger. And then when that happened, the anger itself subsided. Now, what she said after trying that stunned me. She said: “I had no idea my mind could do that.” Are we raising a nation, a culture, of people who don’t know this fundamental power of the human mind to step back from itself, to just look at itself? That power is the source of the beginning of the freedom from the ego. But we don’t value that as a culture. We value it when people get very so-called committed and passionate and are ready to strangle the other person. Do you see what I’m saying?
full interview here
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