Our Mind is Not Our Friend
Excellent short movie on the basics of meditation – explains the process and the experience very well.
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‘BEING STILL – MEDITATION THAT MAKES SENSE’, Roger’s new book, is available now.
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Inspiring . I still believe, though, that we can control our minds , instead of it controlling us. But maybe trying to control it may signify resisting and fighting, which can keep me from being at peace. Observing it and letting it go away can be more satisfying. Thanks for this movie.
Hmm, control the mind … not likely I’m afraid, largely because, as is eloquently said in this short film, we do not own our mind. The mind, like the entire universe and whatever gave birth to the universe, is a pattern maker. It makes patterns out of chaos, in the same way nature does.
But even as I write this, I realize it’s not quite right … more accurately, the mind and the universe are pattern makers formed from patterns that form themselves. As such, mind thinkis itself – it forms patterns out of inspiration, information and memory – and it does this as a matter of course – not because you want it to, but because that’s just what it does.
And the patterns you think that you think, are actually thinking themselves. Just as the body is living itself. You are a community of things that mistakenly thinks it’s a person, but which, on death, will de-congregate, so to speak. And the ‘self’ that has observed the ongoing drama of your life will evaporate, and all that will be left of ‘YOU’ will be a fundamental awareness that was never exclusive to you – an awareness that is the foundation of everything – an apparent emptiness that’s limitless and ubiquitous through all things, and apparently eternal. Home.
The only power you have in this life is the ability to CHOOSE certain streams of thinking and ignore other streams – to nurture certain habits, and refuse to enact others, so the organism that thinks it is you, can live more efficiently. And this requires the awareness to catch them as they arise – which is where the skill of meditation is essential.
cheers
Rog
Do you believe we can CHOOSE to change our thoughts so that we can feel differently about anything ? If so, that is what I consider controlling our minds. Disputing some thoughts and changing them so that I can control how I feel. Instead of the mind dictating what to think and therefore what I feel.
Do I believe we can change our thoughts? No.
But I think it’s a fine point between us. You see, as I said, a thought arises spontaneously, drawn up by whatever occurred before it – be it thought or action. Each event we experience is like a magnet, drawing up compatible thoughts from the unconscious, so the mind can form a patter out of it all, which manifests as an action or reaction/emotion. So you cannot control what arises in the mind.
BUT … as I said, you do have a choice at to which thoughts you pay attention to.
And it’s the thoughts you pay attention to which are empowered.
Other thoughts you DON’T pay attention have no power and gradually fade away.
So it’s not about notions of ‘control’ as much as choice.
And it is through choice that we direct our mind in the direction we want it to go.
But trying to control thoughts and ‘change them’ inevitably leads to a mind fighting back – example, the more a person who feels unloved tells themselves they are loved, the more their mind will persist in creating thoughts of being unloved.
But if that person simply ignores the thoughts of being unloved (as difficult as it can be in the first stages), those thought patterns will gradually lose coherence, and the feelings will gradually fade away – leaving a open a potential for the opposite to occur naturally.
Sorry to be so pedantic, but I find the word control a little toxic when it comes to issues surrounding meditation and the mind.
Cheers
Roger
Yes, I agree whole heartedly that the mind has a life of its own…and attempting to “control” it only leads to more frustration than before.
Where I am worried is that the mind would never quieten. IF so, what is the point?
The mind never quietens … it will always produce thoughts. That’s what a mind does.
But what will change as a result of meditation is the mind’s reactions to what arises.
You see, at the moment, with most people, we’re conditioned to engage with whatever arises in the mind. After all, we’re constantly being encouraged to think about things, to work things out, to make sense of things – but only rarely are we encouraged to ignore the thinking in our head – to let it go. So we have a habit of giving almost every thought that arises in our head authority – that is, we grapple with them, and give them weight, and allow them to affect us. When taken to an extreme this leads to all kinds of neurotic behavior, from worry to depression to psychosis.
So when it comes to meditation, what are we practicing?
We’re practicing letting go.
Letting go of what? Well, everything, really. Whatever arises, that the attention attaches to we use the meditation methods to let it go. A pain? Let it go. An itch? Let it go. A thought? Let it go.
As this new habit of letting go develops and strengthens and becomes instinctive, we find something interesting happening. We discover the ability to witness what we think without necessarily getting involved. We no longer REACT to what the mind thinks.
And over time, as this new habit of being able to CHOOSE what we engage with develops, the quality of what arises in the mind changes. Because the mind stuff that naturally arises is not being argued with or discussed, it changes – becoming less languaged. Less recognizable as ‘a thought’.
It becomes ‘thought energy’. An intuitive stream, like clean water from a spring that endlessly flows – thought energy, but essentially characterless.
So the mind never quietens, but what it produces has no ability to affect us UNLESS we enter the flow and begin ‘talking’ the thought.
So, essentially, though the mind is never quiet, we are.
Hope that makes sense … cheers Rog
Makes sense theoretically, but it will take a while for me to feel it. I am willing to wait and keep trying for as long as it takes – short of quietening the mind, this is the best option I can have.
Fair enough LG … and a suggestion. Given that mind is a creature of habit, it’s ceaseless and compulsive habit of reacting to the thoughts that naturally arise in your head has been learnt.
Your mind, along with most other peoples, learnt to react to everything, because the culture you live in encourages it – everything is prodding you to THINK ABOUT IT … the news and media, advertising, gossip and social media … almost the whole of the environment you live in is coercing your mind to think about what it thinks – that is, to react. So it’s not the primary bubble of thought (which I call ‘knowing’) that arises in mind that is the problem. If you let it pass on through it would disappear almost in the same instant it arose. The problem is the bubble arises, and you react, but enhancing it, and adding more thoughts to it. At that point, it gains the potential to also elicit emotional reaction – ie hormonal changes in the body – which empower the reaction, and so on. You become ‘disturbed’
So it’s not about expecting a ‘quietening of the mind’ so much as changing your compulsive habit of giving meaning to the stuff that arises in the mind. Which means you must take action to willfully change the habit. Otherwise it will not change.
And that’s where meditation and mindfulness come in.
In meditation, you use the methods to be aware of thinking, but not to react – to let go of whatever thoughts naturally arise.
In mindfulness, as you go through the day, try to make a habit of the same thing. Treat thinking as just noise in the head. Ignore the words and sentences and act from what you KNOW . not what you think.
Because before we think about anything, we know. And knowing is a quiet, unlanguaged and very complete understanding which is usually right.
Thinking is just a secondary speculation, which usually only messes up the place. The fact that it’s our medium of entertainment makes it all the more untrustworthy.
If you keep on practicing, eventually, your mind will shift emphasis from what it thinks, to what it knows … and you’ll find, even though the mind remains highly active, it’s not as noisy as before, simply because it’s reverting to intuitive knowing, rather than languaged thinking.
Hope that makes sense …
Rog
During meditation yesterday, I completely understood what you just said. The thoughts were a din (I am sure you heard them in Thailand !), and there were words and sentences that just wouldn’t subside. I just observed the thoughts for nearly 20 minutes, but they seemed not to lose steam at all. This morning, however, there were no “thoughts” but a tsunami of emotions (fear). I am no where near “knowing”, but for the first time, I am able to observe the thoughts and emotions from outside.
I feel like I am touching the tip of the iceberg.
I have one more question. In practical life, during interactions with others, thinking becomes very important. For example, my partner is a very “thoughts” person and discusses a lot of his thoughts with me. There is no way I can engage in a conversation with him, without a considerable amount of thought thrown in. And it is not just him. Short of living in a monastery, it is impossible to avoid interactions with people, which involve a lot of thoughts. How can one reconcile between the need for thoughts in daily life and the need to shift from thoughts to knowledge privately?
Sorry about the delay with my reply LG … the message got buried beneath a pile of emails, which keep filling my inbox … how I yearn for the old days of letters …. too easy to write an email and click ‘send’ .
That’s good that you are able to observe the thoughts and emotions from the outside … I find it helps to frame my view in such a way that these things become natural phenomena … tantamount to me watching a change in the weather or a patch of cloud, with my view (as I note, ‘thinking, thinking’ or ‘feeling, feeling’ framed as detached fascination – watching the way my body reacts, the sensations that arise, and change. In this way I am able to ignore the story that thinking and emotions carry with them. And it all happens within a context of acceptance and surrender – allowing the thinking or emotion to be there as intensely as they need, but on my terms.
With regard to the second part – remember, there is a distinction between ‘functional thinking’, which has no impact or effect on the body, and ‘reactive thinking’, which causes all our problems.
A perfect example of functional thinking is the mental noting we use in meditation – it is thinking for sure, but purely functional, creating no reactive patterns or hormonal changes in the body. It is cold thinking. Similarly, most thoughts within a fascinating conversation are functional – they forward the conversation, but have no great impact on the body.
Another example of functional thinking is where you are doing something, and you stop to think about the next move.
An example of reactive thinking would be: ‘I hate this’ … or some thought which elicits a hormonal reaction in the body – thoughts that arise out of anger or anxiety, which provide inflammatory commentary to the hormonal reaction that is energising the body – these also are reactive thoughts. Jealous thoughts are a very good example – because the more one entertains these kinds of thoughts, the more entrenched the habit of jealousy will become.
So we’re not trying to expunge thinking as a whole – we’re only concerned with thoughts that are reactive – that create or feed reactions that can possibly become bad habits.
So just keep an eye on your thinking, and when you find yourself lapsing into reactive thinking, then note them … thinking thinking, and let the stream of thinking go. It will become easier with practice, and the use of the notes will become more instinctive – such that even as you note, the stream of thinking will vanish.
I hope this is helpful.
Roger