“Just cease having opinions.” Someone said wisely at the last internet meeting, in response to someone who struggles with relationships, as a way to “Clear her mind.”
It’s this simplistic, but impossible to do advice, that keeps us wandering in circles. Opinions rise without any conscious manufacturing. They are heavily conditioned reactions that we have learned since childhood. I can no more “Cease having opinions” than I can move the earth if it’s falling out of orbit by shoving it back in place.
No one who offers this advice has never done it. At least no one has admitted to it when I ask if they have managed to “cease having opinions.” I keep asking long term Buddhist meditators if any of them have stopped having opinions, none of them have. Many keep thinking this is wise and helpful encouragement for others.
But, Opinions are a conditioned part of what I am and how I operate. Next time your people watching, instead of attending to them, attend to what rises in streaming thoughts about them, it’s going to be based on opinions. It’s when I believe my opinions are the “truth” and I cling to them that creates resistance to life, not the fact I have them.
I can’t get rid of opinions but I can recallibrate thier status, and comprehend that they are more internal noise, offered by the operating system of a Human, Being. Once I comprehend that opinions are ideas, ideas are not real, no thought is real, it only represent reality, my perspective changes, I still have opinions, but I don’t elevate them or obsess about them, like everything they will change.
Cease believing what rises in the stream of thought is reality, thoughts are forever about reality, not reality itself.
It’s raining today, I love rainy days!
Bryan Wagner
Visions of a People's Dharma 
Die Wirklichkeit der Seele, der Geist ist in uns, nicht da draussen. Die Seele schickt uns in Erinnerung, quer durch den Hochsitz in unserer Gedankenwelt, ob wir dem wollen oder nicht.
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