Seeing is Believing Is Not Always True

Pema Chodron does a great teaching in Pure Meditation  on the mind and how it can trick you into believing impossible things.  The story is of an Indian who went into a coma and awakened in a white man's village.  The mythology of the Indian was that when you die you go through tunnels to get to the other side of death which was water.

When he awoke in the white man's village they took him by train on a long journey through many tunnels to a town on the ocean.  How he got to the village is a mystery and why he was transported by train is unknown but the point of the story is he lived the rest of his life believing he was dead.  He saw the rest of his life as his life on the other side.  This is mind blowing to think he actually thought this.

Your mind can talk you into anything.  This five senses life has great influence on what we think, so uncertain at times, that we can easily be convinced to be afraid of something new.  In time with life experience we begin to see answers more clearly.  Fear is a natural reaction we all experience at times but as we become older we begin to fear less.  We begin to see new situations as an opportunity to use reason and logic to find solutions. We also learn the freedom to change course and try something new if needed.

To live each day seeing every challenge as a situation to be navigated instead of a problem to be solved does eliminate a lot of stress.