Superpowered Mind with Clare Dimond

Continued from 8 July I've just been listening to your podcast which was responding to a listener's question about the above. If I've got it right, I think your response was along the lines of our actions being beyond conscious control, with our perception of free will etc being an illusion. So how do we avoid slipping into determinism with this outlook? It's an old conundrum I know, but why have a penal system which punishes people for actions over which they had no conscious control? If nobody's responsible for anything, anything goes and that surely can't be right. We can go along with Hamlet and decide that "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so", but I can't accept that someone like Ian Huntley (the Soham murderer) thought that what he was doing was 'good'. If what he did was 'good' then I don't want to live in a 'good' world. To conclude that, in separating the action from the actor and to condemn the former but not the latter, removes any sense of agency from what we think human beings are. And that means we're all automatons. Well, do you think we are?

Do you see any value in things like somatic exercises that calm the nervous system or is that just nother way of avoiding and not feeling ?

The body-mind, the system, the robot, the unit... Wonderful Words 

I've just been listening to your podcast which was responding to a listener's question about the above. If I've got it right, I think your response was along the lines of our actions being beyond conscious control, with our perception of free will etc being an illusion. So how do we avoid slipping into determinism with this outlook? It's an old conundrum I know, but why have a penal system which punishes people for actions over which they had no conscious control? If nobody's responsible for anything, anything goes and that surely can't be right. We can go along with Hamlet and decide that "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so", but I can't accept that someone like Ian Huntley (the Soham murderer) thought that what he was doing was 'good'. If what he did was 'good' then I don't want to live in a 'good' world. To conclude that, in separating the action from the actor and to condemn the former but not the latter, removes any sense of agency from what we think human beings are. And that means we're all automatons. Well, do you think we are?

I’ve been pondering the experience you often described of sitting with a feeling and inquiring into what arises as a healing space of awareness, where a shift happens. And while I’m sometimes aware that there is no me to do it or anything, I wonder what actually happens when a shift occurs and how whatever happens takes place? When I think there is a me doer, I wonder how best to inquire into it, to see through it, make it transparent?This may be the result of way overthinking it, and if so it wouldn’t be the first time.An example might show my pondering:I talk on the phone with my darling, beloved sister. She shares with me what’s been happening in her life and I note an edge in her voice when she tells me of something particularly good that has happened to her. I hear this “edge” as bragging, a subtle putdown, and feel annoyed and jealous. I’m aware that I’m feeling this and then add on top of this a level of self-recrimination and guilt, as annoyance and jealousy aren’t “good” emotions. I love my sister and feel I should be happy for her, period.So I feel all of this and sit with it. I feel diminished and I feel icky. And then I inquire about what’s going on. I see old childhood rivalries and competition for parental love and attention. I see where, sometimes when I talk with her, I am annoying and bragging. I own it.  I allow as we’re both human we’re entitled to express human emotions. I see that our reactions come from our body/mind systems of how to be in the world. I allow as what I heard in her voice was my own projection. I’ve taken an endless deep dive into my psychology. This may be well and good, but it feels like drowning in concepts and beliefs. Every “rational” explanation feels like another card in a house of cards that is built on vapor, going nowhere. How is this healing?I wonder who is doing this diving and feeling and inquiring? Is this the body/mind busy defending its existence? Is this a process, a practice, for healing that, like Bryon Katie’s The Work, becomes steps to be followed when a constriction is felt? Or is this inquiry description only of what happens when feelings are felt with inquiry, not a prescription? What makes the shift, the flip from personal to impersonal? Sitting with the feelings and inquiring into them can feel like endless, pointless suffering. What is it in feeling the feelings, asking in curiosity about them, that shifts to the allowing of it, the accepting it, the witnessing it? 

I’d love to hear your reflection on these teachings. They assume free will, duality, and mastery are our best intentions. When Seneca was an advisor to Nero, he served alongside an aide named Epaphroditus, the owner of a slave named…Epictetus.Yet between Seneca, who was the richest man in Rome, Epaphroditus, who was one of the most powerful men in Rome, and Epictetus, who as a slave had no power at allit would be the slave who was the most free.How could that possibly be?Seneca himself would say that to be free is to belong to yourself. It is to be in charge of your mind, your will, your self. It is to insulate yourself from pointless obligations, from other people’s expectations, from materialism and the slavery of cravings or aspirations.“Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power,” Seneca said.Seneca would know, for he was acutely aware that he lacked such power. So did Epictetus. Not only as a slave, but also as a witness to Nero slowly buying and trapping Seneca in a gilded cage. In the end, Seneca couldn’t even quit his job without permission. It was the ultimate prison—one with no walls.Seneca was not a singular figure in this regard. Epictetus saw countless other people who were unable to walk away from a job they hated because they were walled in by big houses and fancy titles. He saw people contorting themselves to get on Nero’s good side. He saw all the limitations and constraints that come with money and power. He saw how jobs that needed to be held for years in order to get ahead narrowed the choices of the ambitious who held them, like chains attached to their own yoke.Epictetus was horrified by what he saw. “It is better to starve to death in a calm and confident state of mind,” he would say, “than to live anxiously amidst abundance.”“Freedom is the prize we are working for,” Seneca wrote, “not being a slave to anything—not to compulsion, not to chance events.” Then he said, “show me a man who isn’t a slave.” To money. To work. To fear. To whatever everyone else is doing. To alcohol, to cigarettes, soda, material possessions, bad habits, followers on social media, anchors on cable news. Indeed, we have many masters.

'If there is no doer does that mean there is no doing?' Listener question 

If thoughts create our reality what do we do because we do not choose our thoughts and we cannot change our thinking.  What do we do to have a better experience.  When we are in depression our thoughts are constantly awful negative and dark. They are on a loop and you don’t get a break from them. How do we change them. 

I have a lot of respect for you, have read all your books, and resonate with how you "teach" about life and how you help people. Honestly, I am at a point where I don't know whether to reach out to someone who I respect, or just try to stop saying and feeling the same things over and over. It has taken me several months feeling this way to decide to finally write to you. As you have said many times, we can't stop the thoughts that go on repeat in our brains/computers. This is a difficult email to compose, as I really have no business taking up your precious time, so I'm apologizing up front. My hope is, you will read it, and make some sense of it.I am 64, two time cancer survivor, divorcee,  and full of unrest. When I was sick, I lost everything, and to make a long story short, I was one week from becoming homeless, and all I have been able to do is put bandaids on my entire existence and financial situation. It is the only way I can describe it and as truthfully as I can. "Reality!" LOL! I was able to keep my home, although like many, I am living month-to-month, and so close to the losing it all. At my age, job prospects are very slim to none when the income level I need is higher than most. My biggest regret is not paying cash for my home when I could have. I listened to everyone BUT my own wisdom. Here in America, we get brainwashed into going into debt, so we have a credit rating, AND, supposed tax benefits that have all gone away. Who knew I would get sick, lose everything,  and not have anyone or any thing to fall back on at all. Like many have said and thought............why me? I have made many, many mistakes. Am I being punished? Why would GOD, (The way I choose to define the Universe.), hurt itself, after giving us the greatest gift of all, "FREE WILL." It makes no sense. To get right to the point, I wake up every day, thinking the same "thoughts", with a feeling of complete unrest, unhappiness, and all the other words to explain the emptiness I feel. I don't have any more to say about it other than I want to hand it off to GOD, the Universe, Universal Mind. My question is this. How do I let go? Truly let go? I want to be free. Why do I keep on shouldering everything I do? We are all one?There are no more words, analogies, sentences, or ways to explain. I know in my heart I want to continue looking within, turn to the inside, my heart and soul. I want to so badly. I don't know how. If someone could answer the question of how to turn inside, to be ourselves, to just be, and could actually make it happen, it would help a lot of people. Is it possible to feel like I have never truly been me other than when I was younger. I have a medal I had made when I was a child. It says, "Keep That Winning Feeling!". I felt that "special feeling", and knew enough back then to recognize it and want to keep it. I have been chasing it ever since. I know it's LOVE. Feel free to respond if you want to. As I said above, you are very well respected, and in my heart, you are someone who "gets it". Life, Love, whatever this is. While writing this, a thought came to me that said the word, TRUTH. I have always looked to the outside, whether it was my mom, counselors, teachers, friends, stuff, etc. looking for direction. Not to get all wu wu, I would love answers from my GOD. How do I know it's TRUTH/WISDOM coming to me within?Thank you for your time and I hope this makes some kind of sense. 

'No-brainer'. Wonderful words of the week