Conditioning

This excerpt is from "Skinny Thinking" a yogic approach to loosing weight. I have paraphrased it here to apply to my own conditioning with regards to living with and loving someone with Alzheimer's. I have also included the original below. Both are great lessons.

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Today, make a point to notice when conditioning has been triggered and see if you can sidestep your emotional response. If you are able to do this, miracles can happen! You catch an emotion before it's been created!

When you are criticizing yourself, it's your ego, your conditioning talking--not who you are. Although there may be a sliver of truth in what you're thinking (this is what hooks you), because you are speaking from conditioning, you know that your words can't contain the whole truth. When you criticize, judge, attack, or blame, in that moment, you believe your conditioning. The best relationship you can have to yourself is one of compassion for your own suffering.

Being able to respond with compassion when you are attacking yourself only requires being able to see the truth--that your behavior doesn't reflect who you really are, which is pure love, or Essence. It's just your conditioning talking. If you can be present enough to automatically recognize conditioning when angry with yourself, you won't have time to take it personally.

In other words, if your first reaction is to recognize the conditioning, instead of taking it personally, then there will be no upset. But, if you take it personally and feel upset, then it can be hard to regroup and get back to the truth. 

If you can train yourself to see conditioning, to instantly notice when negativity is present and label it, "That's conditioning showing up," then your noticing will pre-empt our automatic response of taking it personally. 

Your first reaction will be to see the truth before any negative belief has a chance to arise and precipitate messy negative emotions.

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Today, make a point to notice when conditioning has been triggered, either ours or someone else's, and see if you can sidestep your emotional eating response. If you are able to do this, miracles can happen! You catch an emotion before it's been created!

When people are criticizing us, it's just their ego, their conditioning talking--not who they are. Although there may be a sliver of truth in what they're saying (this is what hooks us), because they're speaking from conditioning, we know that their words can't contain the whole truth. When people criticize, judge, attack, or blame, in that moment, they believe their conditioning and they're suffering. The best relationship we can have to them is one of compassion for their suffering.

Being able to respond with compassion when people are attacking us only requires being able to see the truth--that their behavior doesn't reflect who they really are, which is pure love, or Essence. It's just their conditioning talking. If we can be present enough to automatically recognize conditioning when anger is coming at us, we won't have time to take it personally.

In other words, if our first reaction is to recognize the conditioning, instead of taking it personally, then there will be no upset. But, if we take it personally and feel upset, then it can be hard to regroup and get back to the truth. If we can train ourselves to see conditioning, to instantly notice when negativity is present and label it, "That's conditioning showing up," then our noticing will pre-empt our automatic response of taking it personally. Our first reaction will be to see the truth before any negative belief has a chance to arise and precipitate messy negative emotions.

Whether conditioning is coming at us from the inside or the outside, we can approach it the same way. If we notice it right away, label it as conditioning and don't buy into it, we can sidestep both the emotion and our emotional eating response altogether.