It's All About Perspective

"What we think, we become."

I've been thinking about this quote, attributed to Buddha (Prince Gautama Siddharta), all day.  It's a quote that pops into my mind a lot, but many times when I am working to manifest and bring about a better mindset and vibration for myself. 

As I was driving home tonight, watching the weird Tron-esque tail-lights of the car in front of me, I began to wonder.  Why is this such a big deal?  Why does this quote mean so much to me?  Why is it so powerful and what frame of mind do I think about it in?

I realized that often, when I begin to think of the statement, "What we think, we become" I am thinking of it as a warning to myself.  As in, think better thoughts or else things will get crappy.  That mindset.  I started to think of the root of it.  Why do I approach this thought from the perspective of a warning rather than a blessing? 

I know it;s deep in my family; my mom, my uncles, and I have always had that kind of sense of humor.  I've even had it, and in a way, it's served us quite well.  After all, if you can laugh about something then you don't have to completely fall apart.  I've often viewed it as a survival mechanism.  For me, utilizing humor is like using a shield in some circumstances.  It's a way of protecting myself, of not fully throwing in all of my cards so I always have a way out.  Of poking the holes in something so that it doesn't have to be what it is, so I don't have to be hurt or even disappointed.

Over the last few years I've learned that humor can be about so much more. But ingrained in me is this part of me that has a very morbid sense of humor.  It's part of my family and part of my lineage.  I'm not going to say it's wrong, because it's the way it is and it has brought me some relief, a pressure-valve of sorts, when things have been emotionally too intense to deal with.  But lately I've come to realize that, in my efforts to manifest the brilliant possibilities of life, I need to address the part of my humor that is a defense mechanism and an escape that no longer serves.

And that's where I started to think of B.F. Skinner.

B. F. Skinner was a behaviorist.  He was a psychologist who developed many theories on behavior.  As someone who studied behavior disorders in school, I spent a lot of time learning about B.F.'s theories and how they apply to the classroom environment.  Skinner had a way of breaking down behavior so it could be easily seen.  (I'm not sure if he's the one who thought of this initially, but either way it grew out of old B.F.'s ideas).  Behaviors occur in chains, called ABC chains. For every behavior there is an antecedant (something that causes it), a behavior (the actual behavior in question) and a consequence (what results from the behavior).  In the classroom, for example, if we look at the behavior of one student hitting another, we can examine it in terms of a behavior chain.  If we can find the antecedant and look at the consequence, we begin to find keys to unlocking the chain of behavior and changing it.

Which is where it gets fun.  This is where it also gets more complicated, but not really I guess.  The complex things about behavior chains it that they really don't occur in ABC sets - a behavior is never 'just' a behavior but can also be an antecedant or a consequence.  So that means behavior occurs in layers of chains rather than just in straight chains.  This also means that we have to look at the function, or the reason behind the behavior.

Typically, there are three functions of behavior - escape, access, and intrinsic.  Someone wants something, someone wants to get away from something, or it's a part of someone's biology that they really can't change.  So basically, according to basic behavior theory, all of human behavior can be broken into ABC behavior chains and classified into one of three functions, or reasons why.

Which is great if you're trying to manage behavior in a classroom, but not so great if you are trying to figure out the why of really crazy things, like low incidence high violence behaviors.  Why, for example, does someone suddenly decide to pick up a gun and go shoot someone one day?  Skinner and basic behavorial thought really didn't have a great explanation for this... after all, it's hard to establish the parts of the ABC chain if you don't have a baseline because it only happened once.

This is where the idea of the "cognitive filter" comes in.  This is the lens through which an individual sees the world.  So this, in my chain of thought, is where I started to think of Adrienne Rich.  

Adrienne Rich is a poet and feminist.  In my women's studies classes, she was also treated as a feminist theorist.  She wrote a piece called A Politics of Locations.  It speaks about how we are all affected, every one of us, by where we were born and how we are raised and what communities we live in, and no matter what we try we are, in many ways, born with and therefore must exsist within and work to acknowledg the privelige and or lack therof inherent in our 'location.' Adrienne writes:

As a woman I have a country; as a woman I cannot divest myself of that country merely by condemning its government or by saying three times "As a woman my country is the whole world." Tribal loyalties aside, and even if nation-states are now just pretexts used by multinational conglomerates serve their interests, I need to understand how a place on the map is also a place in history within which as a woman, a Jew, a lesbian, a feminist I am created and trying to create.

Our 'location' influences how we see the world.  This 'location' impacts and is part of our cognitive filter, our lens with which we interpret and disseminate information; how we interact with the world.  This cognitive filter impacts how we behave.\Life is not just a series of ABC events but a very complex, mushy conglomeration of thought and feeling and event and emotion.  It's beautiful.

So what does this have to do with the macabe humor of my family, or more importantly what I need to shed that no longer serves?  I don't want to let go of my roots - I do enjoy laughing with my mom and friends - but I want to shed using humor as a defense mechanism and an escape.  More importantly, I want to change my perspective - to work with all these bits and things inside of me, to see things like this quote:

"What we think, we become"

As not a warning but a blessing.

How beautiful to see the world in a way that sees the Buddha's statement as a blessing.  What possibilities are opened!  What opportunities for manifestation!  It's the chance to ride the universal wave!  If we are fully commited and fully open to recieving the bounty of the universe, anything is possible.  I truly believe that we create our own future - how affirming and amazing to realize that truly, the Buddha is right - what we think, we become. We can manifest our own amazing futures.

I fight my location, my cognitive filter, my every day behavior a lot - but now I've found that I'm fighting less and less and flowing more and more. It takes practice.  At first, I didn't notice when my filter changed and I began to think of warnings instead of blessings.  Now, with practice, that change in perception often seems like the change in a guitar when it's left too long; it sounds dissonant. Ever so slightly, but I can tell, and I am so blessed now to be able to see it.. to feel and hear it... when things are not as resonant as they can be.

I still need a lot of practice, but the universe provides many opportunities.  As a friend so recently told me, it's all in the perspective. 

"What we think, we become."

An amazing and wonderful truth.