Fake News

The term “fake news” gives rise to so many strong emotions. Whether we are outraged by the sensationalism or bold face lies that we see in print or cable tv .. or when we hear a verifiable by-line being called fake just because it is not favorable to the person pointing fingers. Either side of the coin the emotion, the outrage, the resistance that illicit a distinctive stress response in the body .. is the same.

Many of us are born of the Walter Cronkite era when we put our trust in the nightly news. We believed what reporters saw and we valued their insights. Believing the news is an important function of a free society. It can take many forms … there are publications in print, on line, on-video or on the street. However we take in the news it becomes part of our own internal dialog. We digest the news and that which resonates with our beliefs becomes part of our personal broadcast system. And that is the news that we rely on the most, everyday, every moment .. our Personal Broadcast System .. or our Thoughts.

We treat our thoughts as if they were our most trusted news source. We never question their authenticity. We don’t debate their legitimacy, we rarely if ever question if they are wrong. Or as I often say … “I could be wrong, but I don’t think I am … ” Even when evidence or experience tells us otherwise, we are often reluctant to notice that the veracity of our thoughts is deeply questionable. They are .. for much of the time .. Fake News. Our thoughts feed the emotional drama of our mental miasma. We bolster our beliefs by repeating the same broken record of what-ifs worries and wallowing. Rinse and Repeat.

I tell people … think about your current set of worries and decide if you want to resolve them or not. Because if you do … your mind will just fill the void with different worries. Are you sure you want to get rid of these? Because the next batch may be even more of a burden on your bliss.

What if we noticed the thoughts that come to us .. and instead of instantly believing them because they sound like they are coming from our own first person narrative, we consider that they may be fake news. Notice the resistance that comes up as you contemplate the possibility. We are invested in our thoughts. We coddle them and pretend they are somehow important to the essence of who we are. Indeed who are we if we are not our thoughts? I think therefore I am. Right? Who am I to suggest otherwise. I am certainly no Walter Cronkite. I am as much a slave to the mental machine for most of the minutia of the day unless I take a conscious moment to breathe and consider that even my own thoughts are not personal and may in large part simply be irrelevant distractions to the true nature of our Being.