Being successful at anything always requires thinking about things in the right way.
At some point in my life, I had so many things I was doing and being good at them required so much thought that life became a real chore… I felt like I have to struggle so hard, do so much. I took a step back and decided: there has to be an easier way. A happier way of looking at the world.
It reminds me of these people I would meet at dance parties who say they’ve been dancing for 8 years or more. “Wow”, you think, but when you see them dancing, or dance with them, you realize they haven’t improved much. More often they think about things in a formulaic, fixed way, with a structure that they never realize they can break out of.
Through David Hawkins' books Power vs Force/Eye of the I, I think there is a better way. You might think: it's not true! But as long as a mindset helps... does it need to be true?
No need to try so hard
Look at the things happening in life. You do not claim ownership of the images that happen before your eyes - they just happen.
Similarly, your thoughts just whiz by like cars on the highway. You don't own them - they just happen.
Thus your mind, its thoughts, are not you. What then are you?
Just as black cannot exist without white, something cannot exist without nothing. You are the nothingness within which the mind spontaneously exists.
"In turn, consciousness, which is a field of potential energy, is detectable because it is illuminated by the light of awareness, which is the Self."
To quiet the mind, you must give this up:
1. The desire to think.
2. The desire for the pleasure of thinking.
3. The comfort that things might be better if you think.
I notice my mind trying to make sense of new events. It wishes to understand the world. But it is not adequate to understand all of it - that's why it has heuristics, models, assumptions. Shortcuts that sometimes don’t work.
You might not want to let go of thoughts, because they are "me". But when you do, you become truly humble. There is no need to know. Positions, opinions become truly worthless, and you can forgive everyone.
The mind cannot really "know" because it only has information, mindsets that cannot cover everything. To really know is to be, after all.
Causality
We think, and physics teaches us, that A causes B causes C.
It sure looks like that in the physical world, but in the invisible world, ABC are intertwined and interdependent.
Thus there should be no need for me to use my mind and think of this and that.
I envision a future, making it exist in the invisible world - I setup the conditions for this situation to exist in the physical world, and it unfolds, much more easily than if I had tried to think my way through uncertainties, incomplete information, wrong assumptions, consider every other possibility, and other pitfalls.
Think back to when you were a child and you first got good at something. Did you think your way through it, or did you get a feeling for it eventually?
Observe the adults around you trying to acquire new skills. How do they go about it?
Through dancing I knew that the conscious mind sucks at controlling the body. It's slow to learn, and often just “doesn’t get it”, from the POV of a natural. Better to use the feeling of the movement, which more often than not results in the movement being done beautifully.