Internal State of Affairs

As some of you may know, I have enrolled myself in the Introduction Leadership Program (ILP) with landmark education (thanks to Angie!), the program is about seven months long and I started resisting the course the day after I signed up for it. Ever since I enrolled myself in this course, I have been challenged to keep my commitment by my unpredictable circumstances and wild emotional roller coaster rides. It is as if the universe is testing my commitment and battling my will. Therefore, I have decided to record my feelings and my resistance to better understand my mind and reflect upon my emotions. Through this course, I am learning to observe my internal state which I often mistaken for reality…

So there I was on Sunday morning, watching Linked TV while scrambling to pack for my upcoming trips. (I was blaming the ILP course for ruining my Friday evening in the back of my mind – although I had plenty of time to pack after the class ended) A documentary made in 2003, “Words of My Perfect Teacher”, caught my attention. The film was about the teaching of Khyentse Norbu, a Tibetan monk. I thought one of the most profound teachings from Khyentse was the notion of reality. Often, what we perceive as reality is merely an experience of our minds, not the reality.

Emotional experiences such as anger, happiness, inhibition, excitement, infatuation, sadness, cynicism, satisfaction, etc. can seem so real to us that these experiences become our reality. The experience in our minds makes us believe that our emotions and feelings are the reality. Once we have that experience established, then we set out to proof that these emotions and feelings are in fact the reality, the truth. The concept was confusing at first, but it makes perfect sense to me now. The uneasiness that I experience when I present to my credit committee is my perceived the reality. The anxiety that turns my stomach and makes me nervous is created by me, in my mind, not the reality. If the anxiety is in fact real and in existence, everyone in that meeting should experience the same thing as me, but they don’t - the audience is usually well composed with very pointed questions!

So, if our emotional experiences are not the reality, but our internal state of affairs, I can’t help by wonder, why are we confining our future to love, to share, to trust? And why are we propelled by our past to be cynical, resigned, and angry? When after all, our minds created these emotional experiences that are neither the reality nor the truth. Whatever our minds create and we experience exist only in our thoughts. They are simply our internal state of affairs, not the reality.