Can an old elephant learn new tricks?

 https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2020/09/21/more-covid19-news-from-sweden/#comment-182120 

Jeremy May said:

...Simply, despite 5000 ‘cases’ there were only 17 covid’ deaths yesterday for which the nation is in fear and straightjacket.

A baby elephant in training as a domesticated tool, I am told, is chained to a log – and at some point the conditioning enables the log to no longer be required.

Gery said:

Says it all……sadly.

Well I could say a bit more... ;-)

Can an old elephant learn new tricks?

That is, can we recognise habits or conditioning and reclaim the capacity to bring ourselves present, as a new choice, rather than act out from a past framing running AS IF present?

The theory of this is not too hard to grasp, but the practice of such a willingness is demanding of really turning up - when everything in your current state wants anything else.

Fighting against old habits can seem to work in the short term, but actually feeds the underlying fear or conflict by setting more layers of strategy over it - not unlike symptom suppression.

Uncovering who you really are/what you truly want, is the freedom to align positively in what you are, rather than identify against what you fear to be. This can be 'leaning' or a persistent incremental shift. The key is not changing the world to fit some predetermined or problem framed outcome, but changing our mind about the world so as to see it from a perspective that is not defined from the mindset of the problem. And the 'problem' is in this sense 'problem' is derived from the 'elephant log' of formative adaptation to core sense of self and world.

But no one wants to go there - the mind is predicated on ensuring you never have to go there again. So much so as to operate an amnesia that actively protects against re-opening curiosity.

'Hey Doc - can you just make the bad stuff go away!'