Imagine you changed your beliefs and the way of life dramatically.

In such a way that you let down people whom you respect, they are disappointed in you, people despise you, nobody wants to talk with you, they will not support you anymore, they think you are trash, you lose all your friends

What would you feel?

Would the pain be too much for you?

Imagine changing beliefs to the opposite

If the pain from repercussions would be too much, can you be sure that you hold your beliefs because you truly independently believe them to be true

Or do you hold those beliefs because you cannot afford to change them?

Our mind is a place where our thoughts, feelings, temperament and sensations are all connected.

If you like a person you will tend to agree with him, if you don't like him you will tend to disagree with him.

Shame puts pressure on your thoughts and opinions

Hatred or praise are like magnets that influence your thoughts and change their direction.

People have potential to be very smart

Engineering doesn't involve feelings, numbers and math don't have feelings, that's why we are very smart around those things

But when feelings and social pressure are involved we can't get our thoughts straight

Because everything is connected in our mind

Imagine…

Change in your opinions leads to negative social response

It makes you feel pain and suffering, which is too much for you, you can't handle it

Because it would be too much for you, you keep your opinions unchanged

Basically, feelings control your thoughts

Let's talk about temperament

Movies and music influence your temperament, they make you overly positive, enthusiastic

Temperament influences your thoughts and personality

Thoughts, your personality traits, feelings, temperament and other things are connected

Some people think "be positive", they try to be happy all the time, they listen to such music and watch movies, get likes at internet social networks

It changes their temperament, they become overly positive

You know what's the problem with that?

Fun and too much enforced positivity are enemies of sincerity, being genuine, real. They are enemies of simply being yourself, simply opening your heart and releasing love which is there.

Often you need to be serious to show your true love and other feelings/attitudes

Being overly positive is a form of running away from dark scary things in your soul, running away from uncertainty, important emotional problems

When this excessive positivity becomes your personal trait and it is embedded in your temperament it will skew your thinking, behavior and personality, it will make it hard to be sincere, fun will overshadow love

We feel good when new connections are being made in our mind

We feel bad when they are being destroyed

When you are in relationships you feel good, associations/connections are created in your mind.

When you break up the old connections and associations are being erased and you feel bad, sometimes for a long time

Don't you think that sometimes our mind needs cleaning up?

If we keep building more and more there will be a mess, which is there.

If you have wrong thoughts, negative feelings, bad temperament, overcoming all of this will require going through pain.

Life is not only fun and happiness. Suffering and pain are unavoidable parts of our life.

Sometimes for new trees to grow old ones need to burn

Sometimes for new understanding to emerge old ones need to be destroyed

>>4244

I imagine that people put shields around their hearts so as to avoid being hurt.

But it also takes away the potential of experiencing the best things in life. Trust, understanding, love, intimate emotional connection.

The shields are Defense mechanisms that I mentioned earlier and other things

Delusions, excessive positivity, not taking things seriously, intellectualisation, repressions and many other things

If you remove the shields you make your heart vulnerable to being stung and experiencing pain

And then you have no choice but to endure the pain. Get used to it. Then you will not care about it anymore.

When you open up your heart you open up the flow of information, feelings and experiences.

You are more 'in the moment', 'in the real time'. You have better connections to people.

You are spontaneous, sincere, your own real self.

You experience things differently.

_______

Some things that I read here look silly, some look unbelievable (still an interesting place).

I don't know the specific teachings and the author that you mentioned.

But Buddhism sometimes rings true to me.