What is the Deodorant of Stinking Thinking?
Winnie the Pooh says the deodorant is to know who we are. A noble ambition, akin to Socrates’ credo Know Thy Self, but what and how does that process work??
Deodorizing begins with investigation and gathering tools. Tools are often the keys to most successful project.
The first tool is a mirror, an object that allows honest feed-forward to see yourself. Take a lot of good long looks. Look from another angle, many angles. Catch your points of view. Keep an eye open for a flash of insight. This is not vanity, it is honesty.
Then we need a judgment eraser that lets what is, be what it is. Like a fair witness, seeing what the as is, is. Let today be your day of The Last Judgment.
Then the Questioners -Who, What, Where, When, Why & How.
These are tools to Deodorize your mind.
It’s all about asking good questions.
And, Paying Attention is your Best Investment.
It’s A way to smell the Roses.
There was a Buddhist monk who had been meditating for months. He knew one of the tenets of Buddhism was desire is the root of all suffering. He tried mudras, mandalas and mantras. He found he could not force his desires from his mind and finally succumb to his desire. He left the ashram and went for a pizza.
At the pizza parlor when the waiter arrived he said,” Make me one with everything.”
The waiter chuckled.
The monk enjoyed the pizza, eating each slice with care, savoring it and when the bill arrived, he gave the waiter a $20 bill for his $10 pizza. He waited for his change, for 5, 10, 20 minutes, and finally after 30 minutes caught the waiter’s eye and asked for his change.
The waiter eyed him and said, “Change must come from within."
Here’s a favorite speech of mine on Deodoization.
Many years ago there was a comic strip, the Katzenjammer Kids. They were eternal brats, who on occasion offered wisdom to us readers. They had an obnoxious Uncle with a whisk broom of a mustache who they loved to pull pranks on. The kids have been punished by their Uncle, so to get even they took some particularly ripe Limburger Cheese and while he slept, they rubbed the cheese in his mustache. The next morning, he awoke to such a stench that he jumped out of bed and threw open the window, stuck out his head and took a deep breath. The stench was overwhelming. A light bulb appeared above his head, and in the next comic pane he screamed out the window, “The whole world stinks!”
He had it partially right, only it wasn’t the world it was inside his head.
STINKING THINKING!
Our Words form a consommé, a soup, that began as children and for many it has consumed us. I have met elders who have fallen into this kettle of soup, called by the French P Ti Pot and translated as PITY POT. The odiferous mix from our own private speaking, the ingredients of our mind.
Most people have it.
Few recognize it.
Fewer yet have begun the process of deodorizing the STINKING THINKING.
These are not the words TV censors listen for or that George Carlin has celebrated in his rants.
These are not words of war, although they have instituted many battles.
These are generalizations, nonsense, and overused words that over time destroy our intentions, limit our creativity, annihilate relations, and keep us in the same patterns of doing the same thing and expecting different results. The INSAMEITY of STINKING THINKING
Words that control us more than, power, $, and security, more than sex, governments, religion, or family.
Words that are the building blocks to depression, discouragement, disease, and defeat.
Words we want to believe are true but are the gardens of our excuses, justifications’, agendas, and our ultimate demise.
Words are egos live by.
Words that come together in the soup of our three ego beliefs:
1. I HAVE TO BE RIGHT
2. I CAN’T MAKE A MISTAKE
3. I ALREADY KNOW THAT.
Here are the main culprits:
Should- If you should, then do it. Get on with it. Telling yourself you should act’s as an excuse for procrastination, guilt or the consommé of the PITY POT. Should may be enthused with intention, but when used as YOU SHOULD it is the stinking thinking of upset and blame. No one should, BUT everyone can if they choose too.
