The thoughts in your brain are like a virus in your body cell

When a virus infects a cell, the so called host cell is forced to rapidly produce thousands of identical copies of the original virus.
Wikipedia

The belief in a thought

Believing a certain thought can make you unhappy a long life long. The source of a thought can be a traumatic experience or a clumsy message from your mother or father when you were a kid and everything in between.

An example of a message that may come in deep is that the child may be ugly or too fat. The deep belief of a child in the truth of such a message, may cause a life long pain, misfortune, eating disorders or other misery. The child took over the perspective of the messenger and started producing thousands of thoughts, confirming the first message, ruining the original carefree state. There is your virus.

Suffering as result of a thought or conclusion

I would like to give an example of drawing a conclusion (by ourselves or by someone else) after being abused or raped. The conclusion could be that it was our own fault, we deserved it to be punished. This thought cannot be released and causes a deep fear, shame and guilt. As long as we believe we are bad and guilty, we will keep producing thoughts confirming this belief. And there again is your virus. It may have been a onetime event in your life, coming in in a painful way (infecting), but it is the emotional conclusion that you keep repeating, that can keep your life unhappy and cramped a lifetime long.

Corona is showing us something essential

The basics of staying healthy in times of powerful viruses or convictions are staying on distance, creating space. That corresponds with taking care for not getting infected by a virus. Often we don’t like this. We believe we are more connected when we are nearby, which maintains our identification with thoughts and feelings.

But nothing is less true. Try to create space to the continuously thoughts producing mind, in and outside yourself. By observing closely, you can recognize how unhappy you become when you lose space for reflection. See what happens when you let yourself be taken by thoughts, believing them without criticism, and even repeating and following them.

You get sick because many thoughts are supporting your (ideal) image (mask) and not your pure self. You get sick because you are following thoughts and feelings that come from them and they are not connected with what is happening here and now. Thoughts are usually not in line with what is occurring in reality. They are usually endless, mechanic repetitions of thoughts rooted in the past and in limited visions on the environment of your youth.

If you don’t succeed in keeping distance and you are influenced strongly by what others think or expect, you will be infected by convictions and the needs from others. What matters is learning yourself a structure to examine your thoughts and feelings over and over again and recognize what is real and what is not real. Thereafter you will be able to make free choices.

A solo retreat intensive in Tanzania

During a solo retreat in Tanzania we will, layer by layer, examine, clean and see through your viral convictions. Because of that chronic stress or heaviness can be released and you will be able to rediscover the real you that is buried under the weight of all these reproducing untrue thoughs and feelings. In doing a intensive, you will train your mind to observe, not giving your mind the time to fall back in old and familiar images and patterns.

As soon as you start to feel space towards deeply rooted conceptions and the feelings that are connected with them, you will start to experience a deep happiness. The moment the next conviction is showing itself without quietly observing, hup the happiness disappears again.

The importance of learning (meditation) techniques

With the help of diverse methods, you will learn to make a clear distinction between the real you and your image. You will mainly learn how to relax in the fear that comes up when you let go of your image. What’s mostly important is to get very familiar with the methods, you get to know the subtlety, encounter the moments where you need more explanation and get support to make the next step.

During the intensive retreat, you will learn the way to your new home, and walk it independently.

Karibu Mwanza