As you read various Daily Reminders, you might notice every now and again, that the word ‘should’ gets followed with a little red flag emoji (🚩)
And you might be wondering why!
It's actually one of two disclaimers that I share fairly early on, when I'm working with groups. We'll look at one today and another tomorrow.
Why have ‘disclaimers’ at all?
Because minds are cheeky little monkeys, that's why! They get the slightest whiff of change (especially anything pertaining to them), and they'll pull all sorts of stunts to get themselves off the hook.
An Ego Construct 📦 challenged, is a dangerous beast!
I've spoken before about how they'll feign disinterest, so that you don't show up, but at the opposite end of the spectrum is a really keen mind: one that wants to get its sleeves rolled up and help.
📦🗣️ “Oh, it's me! I'm the problem! Right, come on then, let's get this sorted! What's he saying? Yeah, I can get behind that. Ok, right, so that means we should…”
And there it is – the innocent ‘should’ (🚩)
Hence my first disclaimer:
Minds want to get involved. They want to have rules that they can abide by. They want answers, and unfortunately (for them), life's not really like that.
We get this experience of Now – pure presence, or flow, or pure, uncontaminated Thought-perception (‘Just tree’ as the Buddhists call it). Life! This moment.
And then the mind looks in on it, and chops it up into little bits, and places it on a timescale, and compares, and adds concepts to it all, and judges some things as ‘better’ and others as ‘worse’ and this is why I can get away with outrageous statements like:
Because it's true!
There are no problems in life itself – it's all ticking along nicely in its cycle of growth and decay and birth and death.
And the ‘should’ red flag (🚩) falls into the same category. By definition, it means that the mind is active. Life—or ‘what is’—doesn't come pre-packaged with ‘should’s.
It's really reliable. Any time you catch yourself saying ‘should’ (🚩) it's merely a sign that the mind is active, and whatever it's saying doesn't have to be taken seriously.
The more aware of it you are, spotting that, Oh, this is the mind, looking in on life, and saying some stuff, the easier things will become.
Because there are no shoulds!
💟
Giles
p.s. of course it doesn't mean that you ‘shouldn't’ (🚩) do what it's saying, either! 🥴