Where does your truth live?

This morning I had “monkey mind”.  You know when you have a zillion thoughts bouncing around your head and it makes you anxious?   I was trying to slow down my thoughts, focus on something, and relax.  Somewhere in that process, I had a little epiphany and have to share.  It is this: We see in our minds.  We feel in our heart.  But we know in our guts.

As my mind wandered, ideas bounced around, and thoughts floating by, I realized I was watching them as I tried to slow them down.  I suppose I think in pictures and “see” my thoughts in my “mind’s eye”.  I even had a choice of which I honed in on, which came and went, and they constantly changed.  Heck, I can even think opposing thoughts at one time and believe in both!  If I am seeing them, then they can’t be me – right?  If they come and go, they can’t be my truth – right?  This is the scary part, I pride myself on making good decisions based on what I think about something!  Don’t we all make decisions every day based on what we think?  And those thoughts can change moment to moment.   Our vernacular even illustrates it with “fleeting thoughts” or “mind games” or “I changed my mind”.  Ummmm,  maybe I don’t want my mind calling all the shots.  So where else?

Going a little deeper - what about my heart?  When I feel things like love, joy, sadness, guilt etc.,  I literally feel them and experience them in my chest.  Are these feelings my truth?  Should my life be about what my heart feels?  I have less choice on what I feel as it tends to relate to the people, places and things going on around me - external things, but there is a choice.  One can have a “change of heart” or “get their heart broken” or literally be “heartless”.  Thinking the heart may not be such a reliable guide.

So one-step deeper and we are in the guts.  Way down in the belly where we can’t change the truth and there is no choice.  You have a “gut reaction” and there is no time to study it.  It just is.  When you “know it in your guts”, there is no denying it.  Have you ever said “I knew in my gut it was the right/wrong decision” and it was?  I think our hearts and our minds spend a lot of time and energy trying to keep us from “following our gut instinct”.  There are a few things” I know in my gut” that I am going to spend a little more time on.  And a lot of things flitting in my head that are going to have to take a back seat!  Maybe your gut is telling you something – something true that you have been avoiding.  Maybe you should listen?  You know the saying “No Guts, No Glory”.

Patricia