Substitution

One has attitudes and moods that are the result of the pressures of day to day living. One has debts to pay and the added burden of expectations of ones employment and from friends and relatives. At times one seems surrounded and overwhelmed by the demands of life. One may want to escape from this perceived turmoil, to find some way of coping. So one may employee any number of escape methods. Relief may be in the form of drugs or alcohol. It may be found in religious pursuits or in a psychological relationship of some kind. Any activity that involves motivations of self interest only strengthens that which one is trying to escape from. One is always looking to benefit the self or to in some way justify ones actions and ones mental state.

One is engaged in the activity of substitution. One tries to find answers in the opposite of that which one perceives as wrong behavior or attitude. One was approached by a person who had said that she had a new found attitude about paying her bills. She related that she thought of all the people that she was benefiting by paying her bills, the jobs and security that were provided by the payment...how that it benefited and helped people directly and indirectly. She was really quite serious about this new found attitude and thought that all should see and understand as she does. She was substituting a negative attitude with a perceived positive attitude.

Would it not be more beneficial to find out why one was initially disturbed by this negative attitude and if its opposite is the actual elimination of the former. If one can understand the source then there is no need to seek its opposite. To seek its opposite means that one is still in opposition. One is still disturbed by the burden of paying ones bills. Its just that one has substituted its opposite in order to escape the truth of what is. In the understanding of what is there no good or bad no right or wrong. There is only what is and staying with what is the beginning of understanding oneself. Then paying ones bills is not an issue, one just does what one can. There is no attachment to an attitude of resentment or justification through its opposite. One is completely free of any psychological attachment that creates an identity of either negative or positive. One understands completely the origin and projection of self through the relationship of the known.

Ones mind is very subtle in its conclusions about the relationships of various life experiences. One tends to rationalize ones attitudes and opinions. This activity of rationalization is the result of substitution. One is continually substituting what one perceives as wrong attitude or behavior with its opposite, without understanding the truth of what is. One escapes the moment by creating its opposite as future behavioral attitude. But one is still caught in the origin of ones initial attitude which is the projection of self. Understanding that is not a projection of the accumulated self is the dissipation of all position and opposition. When one is experiencing the dissipation of the self as the center of conflict, then one may have a profound realization. The realization that ones attitudes and opinions are the self created conflict of all humanity. That one is the whole of existence, and that which is within is the projection and creation of that which is the world. Then one may see that the the violence in the world is ones responsibility. When one changes, is transformed, then the world is transformed.