In Love with What ?

I read some time ago of how support groups are formed so that people who suffered similar diseases could get together and support each other but there were cases where the support group itself became a means for a person to perpetuate their condition.

There was a woman who was in a support group for an illness and as she got better, the leader of the support group told her that she is now cured and need no longer be in the support group. She got very upset and accused them of being unsupportive and mean. However, what has actually happened is that she was going around wearing a sort of invisible badge telling everyone that she is suffering from a disease and hence deserved to be given attention and preference. So if she was cured, she would no longer enjoy the attention and preference. So, in this case, it was clearly that she was in love with the illness that she could not live without it though her initial plan was to be cured of it.

Now, how often do we hold on to certain beliefs or ideas for dear life and defend it to death ? I have been doing that many a times unconsciously where I defend some ideas or belief and later realising that it was unnecessary as it create additional stress in my life. I felt rather foolish later. Like the movie title "Rebel without a cause". Come to think of it, it was rather funny, when I realised that I defended a belief because I did not know what else to believe. So its also a case of familiarity breeds ignorance.

So, I have been observing what triggers me and observe what is the belief that is underlining it. Its interesting for me to observe that when I believe something, all actions are to support it.

Grey Area

Recently, I have been noticing how I have been viewing life in clear distinction of Black and White. What I mean by this is that when an experience happens, there is only 2 ways to see it, its good or bad. There cannot be a maybe .

Because of such a mindset, I will not be able to see a wider scope of a situation or experience because i have capped the experience. If I view an experience as "Bad", unpleasant feelings would be felt and mind would go into a spiral down thinking pattern fraught with worry and apprehension.Because of such exclusivity in the view, there is no way that I could see that MAYBE.... what is happening.... is for me to learn something from the reflections

I noticed because of "maybe", I get to see beyond the experience. For example, I have been chatting with a friend lately and he was sharing about his experiences with his bosses that were not pleasant. I notice, during the sharing, there was an immersion into the experience and perspective that they are "bad", "unkind" etc, there was no way that he could see beyond that. And even if he could see that there were some "good" , it was very quickly flooded over by the "bad" stuff. It was easy for him to see that his misery is all due to them.

It dawned to we that, if he went down this path, the logical thing to do was to leave the job. But after talking awhile, I slowly prompted him to see a little beyond the experience and look for the pattern in his experiences. He could see that it was repeated in almost all his employment where the bosses were perceived as prosecutors and him as victim. As we dive in deeper, it did seem that there was some other issue that were causing all his unpleasant experiences which was a view he had of himself.

So from this experience, I could see that if we learn to see something in the Grey Area or what I call the "Maybe" space, we could look deeper, inquire more and be curious as oppose to just seeing situation as BLACK and just react to it negatively.