Right Attitude and Altitude

Right Attitude and Altitude

A powerful tool in the Work is intentionally selecting and using psychological attitudes. Much of my mechanicalities are automatic and are almost always knee-jerk type reactions to the world around me. My sensations, feelings, and thoughts happen to me.

“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.” − Marcus Aurelius

Because the intellectual center is slower than the other lower centers, there is an opportunity to sort of reprogram my reactions with more intentional, thoughtful responses. By applying what I have learned based on observations and efforts to resist sleep, I can reliably predict the things that recur and keep me asleep. You can think of the right attitude as an intellectual preset or a muscle that is conditioned with new muscle memory to respond differently. The use of the right attitude helps me overcome tendencies to spiral down into identification and imagination.

For example, I woke today to a rainy morning and the mechanical ‘I’s were predictable and said, “Oh no, what a yucky day!” As fast as a ninja, I was able to conjure up thankfully an attitude with greater objectivity and calm. (My computer just autocorrected “calm” to “clam” as I typed. So, yes, be as calm as a clam living in water. That is another attitude I have adopted, a humorous view of autocorrections.) A right attitude sees that there is nothing inherently wrong with this moment.

Another attitude that helps with this kind of identification with weather is realizing or remembering that the sun is always shining above the clouds. This has metaphorical value too. Remembering the image of flying over clouds in an airplane—a marvelous benefit of living in the 21st century—I can reorient my mind and grasp that the rain is merely a stratum of clouds. I can choose to fly over them at 30,000 feet and not be pulled down by negative associations and get lost in my gloomy feelings about the day’s weather.

This tool is one of the greatest tools for overcoming my many mechanical traps. Again, as I type this next sentence, it is abundantly clear to me that the adoption of new psychological right attitudes is a life-giving gift. Life is truly too short to degrade one moment over another. I must not fixate negatively on what is on my plate, but instead rearrange my sense of self wherever I find myself.

Do what the moment calls for (yet another attitude). What might a child do on a rainy day? I must lead myself to what’s fitting of a rainy day. Children might put on their galoshes and play in the curbside puddles, splashing one another. If I can bring the essence of a child to my day and merely play with the day, rather than fighting the day, my opportunities unfold for Presence. Let me end here and find my boots . . .

“Never imagine wisdom to be more than the understanding of a child.” − Rainer Maria Rilke

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The Horseback Ride, William Bouguereau