Watching The Mind

This week I tuned into a very interesting Webinar that was run by the One World Academy on Inner Life . It explored how we need to be consistently aware of our thoughts , so that each time we are faced with any kind of emotional disturbance, we can prevent our feeling from becoming over exaggerated ,which in turn affect our psychological behaviour. By doing this continually, we can start to develop insights about how the mind is structured and how our minds operate in certain situation . With practice , it is  possible to  question what the mind  is trying to make us believe and how we often end up behaving as a result.


" to see is to be free"


Therefore, the work we need to do  is nothing more than observation. Krishnaraj, the founder of the One World Academy, described this kind of work as requiring  Passive Effort as it requires very little work at all. However, the simplest things are always the hardest things to master . Our minds are so full of noise and chatter  most of the time, that we are not even aware of the stories we are continually telling ourselves in the course of a day , that is until we actually stop and become aware of our thoughts !


Becoming aware ...


Having always had a very busy mind myself , it was only after reading an amazing book by Eckhart Tolle called the Power Of Now, a few years ago, that I actually became aware of  it ! I'm not quite sure at what point that happened exactly , but I realised that at that stage of my life ,I had a constant stream of  dialogue going on  in my head pretty much all the time ! Some days I would be consumed by long heated altercations in my head . Continuations of conversations that had happened before, things that I was upset about, things I wanted to say to people, things I hadn't said yet. The list went on and on.  My mind and the incessant thoughts were keeping me locked in a place that was unhealthy and  served no purpose other than to perpetuate feelings of bitterness and anger.  

Noisy Mind....

Eckhart Tolle  describes this very well  in A New Earth as "the voice in the head." Once we become detached from that voice and see that our mind has a life of its own , then we reach a new state of consciousness . We have created a" little gap" between ourselves and the mind that allows us to stand back and observe exactly what the mind is doing !


Become The Observer .....


Becoming the silent observer is like playing a game with yourself . I started by imagining  a room in my mind - a dark cosy little alcove where I could sit to be the silent watcher of my minds activity. Whenever my mind raced off , I ( being the conscious I ) would go and sit down in my seat and, to my surprise, my mind would immediately become silent ! The Mind does not like being watched ! Its has no power when it's being observed and checked . You just have to remind yourself to stay alert and detach yourself and sit down to watch it.


Practice Makes Perfect....


As with anything the more you do it  the better you get and the easier it becomes. Thankfully, I now have a pretty  noise free mind and as soon as I hear even the hint of a story starting I sit right down in my chair and that soon puts an end to that ! When I think of how my thoughts affected my behaviour , how they made me feel towards certain people and about certain situations for an awful long time its incredible the power they had over me . "Life isn't as serious as my mind makes it out to be." The mind is a wonderful thing , but it can cause us damage and bring us unnecessary pain if we allow it . Therefore doing inner work is important and after all it only involves a little bit of observation .So next time your mind is racing ,why not pull up a comfy chair, sit back in your favourite corner and just LISTEN ! Smile at the mind , laugh at it and  never take it too seriously .