The ever-losing game: “And what if...?”

Throughout my former life I lived as follows: an anxious thought came to me, I easily accepted it, started thinking and expanding it. And I expanded it exactly to the most terrible extent. During such expansion the most unfavourable things were drawn in my mind of how events would develop (those that didn’t take place yet). It looked approximately like this: “And what if suddenly…? (and a whole sequence of plots of mostly negative character were imagined).” Thus, day after day, year after year my life was flying by, while I was thinking and thinking about a probability of something bad. And nothing of those bad things actually took place in my life, though they could as well happen if I were thinking more passionately.

Here’s an example of how it was. “And what if… I run across ruffians!?” At that very moment as if a huge screen appears in front of me, and I begin to watch the situation. Please, note that nobody forces me – I start doing this myself, it’s totally my own choice. That is I accept a mental provocation, and it becomes my mental reality for a while. Let’s see further: “I have run across ruffians. Then a boorish dialogue is plotted, down to concrete words and intonations. I think what and how I will respond. Then I consider options of whom and how I should strike (a stronger negative emotion arises at this point). Then I usually gain victory, but…! Law enforcers appear, and there are probable issues associated with injuries caused by my strokes, some of “moderate severity”, but some injured may be even in coma… And so I am searched to be made answerable. Next come more complex plots, and if it’s easy to cope with ruffians, police causes more difficulties.” You see?

Thus I accepted the Animal Nature’s proposal to play the “And what if…?” game, and even if I won in the first round this didn’t mean I would win the entire battle, for I never knew the number of rounds: after the first one came the second, then the third, fourth and so on, just to ensure that I would invest my attention; and with every next round it’s further more difficult to stop the negative emotion.

Experience indicates: no matter how you play you lose anyway. So, the question is what’s the sense of such game? There is surely no sense! Yet, everyone of us play this game daily, worrying, being upset or anxious, spoiling our own temper and ruing our whole life by negative thinking. This is how we live.

There is only one way out of this – stop playing!

As soon as you are offered to imagine “and what if happens so…”, and a mental screen appears which is a TOTAL ILLUSION (!!!), the only recommendation is to say to yourself: “not interested!” No matter what is rolling in our mind, this rolls only in our mind so far. In the material reality such event, dialogue, conflict, etc. does not exist yet! In actual fact it’s the most widespread fraud of the Animal Nature which thus simply shatters our composure and draws us into negativism.

I have arrived at an opinion that for a human being this game is always losing as a matter of principle, and I’ll repeat the only way out of it is to stop playing, i.e. to promptly suppress relevant alien thoughts in your mind.

Received from Evpatiy K. (Kiev, Ukraine)