Dread means something terrible will happen.
- True?
Yes. Feels that way. (Even if my mind tries to convince me otherwise.) - Sure?
No. Only a feeling. - What happens when I believe that thought?
- When I experience dread, I think something terrible will happen.
- Where does my mind go? It goes to images and scenarios that flesh out the dread=something terrible will happen connection. Or it just stays with the dread=something terrible will happen experience, believing it. Taking it as solid and true.
- I tend to question whatever I am doing, whatever seemed to trigger the feeling of dread. I get paralyzed to some extent. Feel weak.
- Who am I without it?
- I experience the dread – as sensation, and then a label. It is only a sensation in my body, and then the overlay of the label “dread” – or something else. I see the label as just a label, just an innocent question, a mental field creation.
- I am with the experience, allowing it as it is, as if it would never go away. I experience the fullness of it, and how that fullness is nurturing for me now that the experience is allowed.
- There is a sense of clarity. Receptivity.
- I do whatever the situation seems to call for, free from the reactions to the story of “something terrible will happen”.
- Turnarounds.
- Dread does not mean something terrible will happen.
- Right. A sense of dread is just an experience. It is not connected to anything happening in the future. It comes from habitual patterns, triggered by something here now. Or, really, I have no idea why it happens now.
- I can think of many times where there was a sense of dread, and nothing terrible happened. (Terrible, as defined in a conventional way.)
- Thoughts means something terrible will happen.
- Well, when I believe in thoughts the imagination easily comes up with scenarios that seem terrible.
- In this case, beliefs about the experience created a sense of something terrible happening. (Experience=dread, dread=something terrible will happen, something terrible can happen.)
- Dread means something wonderful will happen.
- Yes, that feels the most true. Dread means something wonderful will happen.
- Dread invites me to be with/allow experience that I often resist/push away/escape from. It invites me to notice what happens when I resist the experience, and what happens when I allow it in.
- Dread invites me to notice what happens when my thoughts add the label “dread”, and then a story about this dread. (Dread is not OK. Dread means something terrible will happen.) It invites me to inquire into it, as I do here.
- Dread is part of the human experience. It is part of living an ordinary human life, and the beauty and richness of living an ordinary human life.
- Dread sometimes has practical and useful information for me about a situation, and I can notice that information. For instance, that I may want to see if a particular situation is harmful to myself or others, and then explore alternative ways of acting. It is sometimes a very helpful messenger.
- Dread does not mean something terrible will happen.