Guess I had a summer break without planning one. I have had some posts itching in me for the past couple of weeks, so tonight the first one is on.

I have had many experiences with getting lost, in myself and others. There are limitless ways of getting lost and limitless degrees to getting lost, but the reason for it is always the same: complete ego-identification. That is the beauty and simplicity of it. When we get lost, we have all these ways of describing, defining, defending and justifying our lostness. It makes sense to us and once we are lost, we are already fully committed. Once we’re fully committed, it gets harder and harder to see it for what it is, ego-id, and instead becomes a closed logical circuit that builds on itself. It’s akin to buying property in Crazytown.

Getting lost takes a lot of thought. Thought is at the root of our human experience of course; without it, we wouldn’t exist. Unconscious thinking is the issue and is what we employ on our way to getting lost. It may begin with a harmless remark by someone, with an action, anything really that we notice and hold on to, in whatever small way. That tiny bit of holding on, and the thought that goes with it, is like a seed. If we happen to forget to water it through repetition, it will disappear, but if we begin to repeat the notion and keep revisiting it, it will grow. This can happen over years, months or within seconds. Once it takes on some weight and thus meaning for us, the thought will swell up, gain momentum and compound. When that happens we are lost in our thinking and no longer experience it as thought, but as fact. Has someone ever come to you with an issue they had with you, often a while ago? And once they get started you are almost overwhelmed by the sheer amount of thinking they have done about it, and the level of assumptions they are relying on in their minds? It can be quite the spectacle, and we can see that they are lost in their own thinking and rationale, and it has nothing to do with what actually happened any longer. The thinker has become the thought. At that point they’re lost in that thought package, in the ‘issue’ they have.

I have done this so many times, and until I gained some insight into the very elaborate trappings of my ego-identification and how it functioned by making particular thoughts and their patterns real to me, I ended up in Crazytown frequently. Didn’t own property there, but certainly kept an apartment. It’s fascinating to me how even now my thinking can get to me and lead me into lostness. One of my favorites is still the idea that I haven’t amounted to anything in my life. If I am very tired, have an off day and my mood is muffled, this is one pattern that can get a hold of me pretty quickly. Thing is, no one knows me better than I do, so if I fall for that thought pattern even a little bit, bam!, I am right in it. It’s like a hurricane in my head at that point. ‘What have you achieved? No one likes you, you really have no friends. Everything you have ever tried amounted to nothing. Your life is impermanent as it is, and there ain’t much time left, so you may as well face the fact that this was pretty much it…’ On and on it goes. I get completely lost in my thinking. And of course I am the only person on the planet who feels this way at that point, so loneliness usually comes along with it.

The good news is that we can be found again. Sometimes it’s something or someone on the outside that snaps us out of it. It’s important to remember that even though it’s seemingly coming from the outside, we are making the shift internally, snapping out of it. I say that because we never want to lose sight of the fact that we always create the life experience we are having at any moment, and that means that we are always creating our experience. Not to be too repetitious, but it is so important for us to remember, because if we are lost and someone we meet says or does the right thing that has us stop our thought pattern and gain perspective, we often think that they did it for us, but they didn’t. It is of course wonderful to have that happen and have people like that around, but we are the ones who hear them and make the shift. Then we find ourselves again. We realize that what we have been dealing with was not a reality, but our unconscious thought pattern. That what we thought was real, was just that, a thought. A compounding thought nonetheless that kept adding to itself only to create more reality, more fact and justification for feeling the way we did. It does not matter how long we were lost, or to what extent, once we become aware of our thinking as the source, it’s over. Just like that.

In my case I feel as though I am waking up and begin to notice the present moment again. Once I am in that space, gratitude about my life flows in and my mind settles down. Getting found does not mean that I begin to recite a list of successes in my life or come up with anything that counteracts my litany of ‘poor me’ thoughts; that would be like painting my apartment in Crazytown a nicer color. Getting found is all about becoming aware of the pattern, and letting it be. It’s all about not being interested in the drama, the heaviness, the quality of it any longer. That is truly enough. Disinterest kills nagging thoughts.

So welcome back to all who are here. I hope you have had a great summer and managed to stay found most of the time. If you got lost and found yourself again, welcome back as well. If you became lost and still are, I hope that you will consider that it’s all a thought (pattern) and that no one except you gets to decide whether you stay interested in that line of thinking or not. Give it a shot, you may find it (helpful).

Cheers,

Ralf