Conditioning

It’s easy to feel trapped in your own negative conditioning—acting in impulsive, counterproductive ways and suffering in avoidable circumstances. Tempting it is to recondition yourself into “positive” ways of being, incorporating “better habits” with “more productive” ways of acting. This too is conditioning: the same mechanism that brought you suffering in the first place. Eliminating conditioning cannot happen by deconditioning yourself, as this is simply reconditioning by another name—a clever trick of the brain. Eliminating conditioning can only be done indirectly, through awareness of your conditioning, seeing it clearly for all it is, without trying to change it.