www.lavondastaples.com

 

Believe it or not but your mind is a place.  I always think of my mind as a kind of high rise apartment building.  It has some luxury penthouses as well as a few studio efficiencies just big enough to touch the wall of the livingroom and the eyes on the stove simultaneously.  Yes.  My mind is a place.  At times I visualize that there is a little man who lives in my brain.  He’s the maintenance man.  At night, he makes his rounds and turns off all of the lights and closes any open doors.  So, I guess he is also the security guard who makes me feel safe so I can close my eyes and assume my most vulnerable state:  sleep.  Maybe I should give that guy a raise because he’s also an office assistant who runs around searching for misplaced files while I sit and say, “uhm, err, uhm” until he produces the file and I can start spouting intelligent words or blah, blah, blah or both (depending on the listeners).  Yes.  That guy is also the guy who tells me when I should just stop reading, thinking, or whatever is taxing my resources so I won’t blow a fuse.  In this manner, he also acts in his best interest because it also his job to change them in the first place.  

Those files contain information which was set in my head from the moment of conception.  Serious stuff like how to breathe, how to see and hear, how to get attention when I’m cold or hungry or in pain.  We are all very lucky that all of these areas are located in our lower brain and out of our control.  Our lower brain, by itself, is why we are human animals.  The needs and abilities of this area create our commonalities with every living thing.  But the higher brain?  That monstrosity which houses tastes, memories, needs, wants and desires and fears, some of which we have yet to accept or even to have made an acquaintance – this is where my little man works to ensure that I’m okay.  Anything beyond that is all up to me.  I can choose to access files which might do me harm or I can choose to only attend to information which will speed me towards my destiny as a professor, author, and grandma with deep pockets to spoil all of the children my children bring to me.  

But what about those files that you and I don’t place on the shelves?  What about those files which mean us nothing but harm and were dumped, without request, by other human animals?  What about those files which speak to us, in voices which may keep us up at night, or keep us in our seats, paralyzed, when the teacher asks a question in class?  What about those garbage files which are, by ignorance and by evil, dumped into our heads by those closest to us?  Those files are tenants as well and they ultimate drain resources away from what is most important, productive, and well, good.  

How do we rid ourselves of such bad tenancy?  Like any landlord we have to do an eviction.  We have to come to grips, first and foremost, that we have a bad tenant.  We can’t be deterred by the place of origin.  What I mean to say is sometimes our sweet grandfathers and our own mothers deliver files which might have served them well, or that they may have followed all of their lives, but which would not serve us at all.  Not one bit.  Not in the least.  Maybe they only serve as an example of what NOT to do.  Maybe they were placed there intentionally, as a means of making sure that we would never fly to high and therefore have an inevitable fall.  And all things, all persons, all nations have a rise and a fall.  It may be gradual or it may be abrupt but rest assured that no one has access to never-ending sun.  Yes.  Sometimes those closest to us harm us in their efforts to keep us from harm.  Those files, those scripts, and that knowledge must be evacuated in order for the little man in my brain to not be bogged down with daily emergencies and crises which distract and detract from the primary directive given to all animals, whether they possess four legs or two, and that directive is survival.

 

For a human animal, survival is something we should only do when we are forced.  We were given an additional mind, a higher mind, so we would know the difference between existence and subsistence.  Rats survive, people thrive.  The bad tenants in your head have a primary directive as well.  It is to prevent you, the highest form of creation, from living a life of your choosing.  Again, I tell you, that you must begin the process of eviction.  Eviction is not a momentary event – it is indeed a process.  I’m not going to ask if you have a bad tenant (or two or three or four or more) because it is impossible proposition to go through life without receiving good as well as bad information (files).  I know that there have been times when you were told that you were too fat, too skinny, too smart or too dumb.  I know that there have been times when you were laughed at when you happened to let someone in on your dreams.  I know this because of my favorite verse in the Bible, “There are no new things under the sun.”  It is from Ecclesiastes.  I know this because all of these things and more have been told to me.  Yet, here I am.  I’m here.  I might be fat.  I might have a whole bunch of kids.  I might not have but seven dollars in the bank but I’m still here.  No amount of bad scripting or receipt of bad files has killed me.  I have survived.  You are no different.  You’re here.  Tell me how you’re going to move from surviving to thriving.  Name your bad tenants and describe the process of eviction.  Do you have some tenants that are on the edge of being bad?  Do you have some files which crop up, when you least expect, and corrupt your good files?  Are you going to put those bad tenants on notice?  Tell me, in 500 words or more, how do you intend to make the work of your own particular little man just a little bit easier?  Isn’t it necessary to lighten his load?  It may and it may not, there are no absolute answers for these questions.  The most important thing?  To begin the conversation.  Be advised that this particular self-debate never has an end.