Letting Go of the Adult Blankie

     Abraham Maslow's "law of the instrument" is about the common tendency to overly rely on the most familiar tool: If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to treat everything as if it were a nail.
     Most of us, including mental-health professionals, don’t realize the extent to which we overuse & even identify (cognitive fusion) with linear discursive thinking & it’s constant echo, “self-talk”.
     As a result, we subconsciously erect roadblocks between our superficial self-concept & a much deeper reality. Such resistance comes in many forms: from tending to resist meditation practice, trivializing such practices, fearful distrust, all the way to aggressive antagonism towards anything (esp meditation) that may loosen our (ego's) fearful grip on what we (incorrectly) assume to be our one & only reliable cognitive tool by which to control life.
     ALL of us, including yours truly, at some level, resist releasing this tool since it’s firmly tied to the ego. Our linear discursive conditioned egoic level of consciousness believes that releasing exclusive reliance & identification with this superficial level of consciousness is death! But of course it isn't. If it were, we'd die each time we made love - "la petite mort" refers to a brief weakening or release of egoic sense of self. Optimal health involves learning to hold our sense of self ever so lightly, not clutching it in terror like a drowning victim clings to a small piece of wood.
     Hence the incredible patience, gentleness, skillfulness, & persistence needed for us to discover, & learn to trust, our deeper post-symbolic intelligence. See:
http://jglovas.wix.com/awarenessnow#!What-Lies-Beneath-our-Thick-Armour/c17jj/56cc59920cf24bcda4714415