Realizing what the mind is each day
What begins, needless to say, has to continue, unless being interrupted. What has not been interrupted will continue to develop and transform, or mutate, and have its end result based from the original cause and what comes along with it. It is a determined path, a path that has all its prerequisites of what it has gathered along its way. Whereas where there is an interruption, the process itself is put off tangent from its otherwise fixed path and enters into a new horizon of potentiality, of new experiences all together.
This knowledge is common sense to me, and probably to you, as a reader, too. But strangely, when it comes to the mind, I am oblivious to this process also occurring in it. I seldom question the mind, seldom interrupt it, so to speak. And if I don’t question it, the mind will follow the path that it is used to. It cannot be otherwise. Each questioning or inquiry is an interruption to what the mind is predetermined to do. In other words, if I am experiencing a certain pattern in my life, I am already not questioning my mind. It can be an event, a situation, a relationship, or even the same note of emotion that seems to haunt me again and again in a certain familiar fashion whenever I am triggered. If this emotion is historically repeating, isn’t it common sense for me to realize that an old program is still running in me, irrelevant whether the storylines or dramas that unfold are different?
No, I don’t. I am ignorant to that. I don’t see it as common sense. Hence I don’t inquire within the mind. I keep solving it outside instead of addressing the mind – by fixing the world. I try to fix, and if it doesn’t work, I would gladly escape from each drama and go on with life, to be hit again by another; like a tsunami; albeit with a different storyline. There are times I am cornered with an issue, nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, and you know what? I give excuses, to buy time, hoping everything will be solved by itself. One of my favourite ways, which is what a guy normally does anyway, is to keep silent – a silent war within, though there seems to be a silent war without. But does it calm the situation? Fat hopes. When it comes again, as another wave of tsunami – shucks, the pain, the hurt, the agony, of those familiar emotions and again it is the routine of blaming whoever victim that is there for me to target. Come to think about it, isn’t it dumb and insane to keep hoping that my life will be hunky-dory at the very near future, with the same old programs running in the mind? Isn’t that what we are all doing – putting in action the same thing again and again and expecting the result to be different? Albert Einstein called this insanity. I call it a nightmare!
And we are fully aware, or should I say expert, on this field of ancient emotions; except that we can’t get rid of them, or rather do not know how to, and thus keep it a secret in our closet – the mind – as if, we are abnormal compared to the world. But as you would have known by now, the mind runs according to what you give to it and thus what you hide is what it runs! Oops! The things that I least want becomes my experience now – horror of horrors! Isn’t there a way out of this rut?
It is always about abandoning issues, needing approval, fear, insecurity, victim mentality or self esteem, so common to each and every one of us, that we become familiar with it. It is a secret but yet, an open secret! The more we hide those stuffs, the more it takes on a new twist. Since we deny it and find more ways of doing that, we keep manipulating this reality to the extent that it no longer shows itself as it is, but in a new mutated way of something beyond our recognition. As they say, same stuff, different packaging. Superiority is just a facade of inferiority. Inferiority is just a facade of insecurity. Insecurity is just a facade of fear. Fear is just a facade of guilt. They are all one. What about then the so-called love, need, friendship and many more found in life? What about anger, jealousy, discontentment, restlessness and even happiness (yes, happiness!) that we keep chasing after? Are you getting a hint by now that they are our demons in disguised – the stuff that we hide which becomes a projection out in the world? What is real within becomes real outside but since we deny what is within, our reality now focuses in the world, forgetting that the real stuff is actually in the mind – the cauldron of experiences.
I frequently asked myself this pertinent question – why am I perceiving something as I have done before? Can I not look at it differently? Could it be that I am so stuck with my views that I am not allowing myself the chance to see things differently or even accurately? What if my ‘accurate perception’ is a denial of my misperception? You get what I mean? Since I have been so intimate with the mind, albeit a sly relationship, is there a possibility that I become intimidated by it? Possible. Am I denying something within me when I make a conclusion of what I am experiencing? Am I running away from the truth of what is going on in me and thus making the world a scapegoat for my escape – so that I need not face what is within me? Surely, if I am looking at things the same way, the mind has already taken a predetermined path that arrived to exactly the point of what I am experiencing now. Isn’t that common sense?
If this is true, why am I still judging and blaming the world for what is occurring to me? Have I missed the mark somewhere? Have I unconsciously settled on a determined path the mind took on to conclude my experience or could I have interrupted it with inquiry so that it may have started taking on a new highway? Am I taking the responsibility of what I am experiencing now, irrelevant whether it is a new story or drama that unfolds, recognizing that they are merely a facade of a task to what I have given the mind?
And to support this journey of inquiry, I have this maxim in hand – if I see something as I have seen it before, I am not seeing it at all. Inner inquiry is an interruption – a healthy interruption that provokes the mind to look at things differently. You see, the nature of the mind is, should I say, pretty dumb, or, merely a perfect follower. It repeats accordingly to what it has been given. It is a good follower of a “manual” given by me, consistently changing according to what ideas I add on it. It will think, see, speak, feel, smell or act the same old way, without having the cheekiness of changing its course, so long as there is no new information given to its database – simply because I am that. More than that, when it comes to a brand new situation – an all new experience altogether where the mind does not know how to act, the mind will work according to its limiting resources in finding a solution, which many a times caused me much embarrassment. Do I have a choice not to? Have you not notice this before?
For the mind, although being a forerunner of all things; is merely a tool – its function is to follow what instructions I give to it. If I perceive myself a victim, I have started the ball rolling for the mind to take on that meaning. From there it becomes an idea, not just an idea mind you, but it churns out to be my reality. It works according to that idea – it cannot be otherwise. What I put in, it works accordingly. There is no me in the mind, except a tool for me to experience what is in the world. What I hide, what I deny, becomes what the mind is working. There is NO hiding place, sad to say, in me. Not even a cave, a universe, or anywhere else to tuck my fear. It is in ME! Goodness gracious!
When I don’t interrupt it, the mind takes a pathway that it has always taken. It does not have a life of its own, so to speak, except to run its old program the master has given to it. Its purpose is to continue what it knows. When I am not mindful or aware what I inject into the mind – the ideas and views that I took on unconsciously – the nightmares and horrors begins, as that is what the mind is exactly receiving from its end and do not hesitate to start working on it. It works 24/7, all the time, churning out experiences according to what I perceive. Do you not see this? Now, instead of me being a master, I have positioned a switch of roles, giving the mind the function of a master instead – like the dog leading its master during a walk – who is the master here?
And without interruption, life is a mediocre, trapped in its suffering of what I gave to it. The mind is not the problem. I am. So, for me to return to my helm, instead of ignorantly playing the game of hide and seek, not with anyone but myself – indeed a dumb game – I have to bring in inquiry, to allow inquiry as chief in recognizing the game I played in the mind. I never questioned myself, you see. Even if I question, I’d give it an answer that is from the same level of the mind – the space of my hidden fear – a horrible mistake I repeatedly make upon myself. Isn’t that what sin is to mean – missing the mark of what I have mistaken. What else can I expect the answer to be when I answer my own question which comes back to me much like a simile of a dog chasing after its own tail, forgetting that it is one with it? How ignorant can it be!
For that I have to inquire, but not answer to my own inquiry. Even if I were to inquire, what questions would I pose to the mind? It makes a difference – a darn great difference from where my questioning is coming from – in short, intelligent questions, and not questions that fix or try to escape from an issue. It is a question of needing to understand what is occurring in me – a journey of education, a journey of understanding, a journey of undoing, instead of creating a way to resolve. See, the mind has mastered the game of impostor which I have taught so well and now it looks like it is against me – forgetting that it was me who once upon a time placed those information, which at that point, seemed harmless; only to have the tiny mad idea become a reality that had taken a monstrous form to haunt me now. My, oh my, what illusion have I created?
For that I have to open my heart deeply to observations, and end to all judgements, including those of myself for judging. For that I will have to allow wisdom to unfold instead of being clever myself. For that I have to be true to myself. I will have to end all blames, acknowledge my arrogance and cockiness and give myself up, so to speak, in order to live again. For that I will have to surrender totally to what is and just be still, ending all doing and just be – being in the space of awareness with common sense again; to remember not to forget to be in the now for each now is the doorway of where my mind is – in other words, to be mindful instead of, mindless. And, so it is!
How can we say that we have lived fully everyday by simply experiencing the same emotions that we are addicted to every day? What we’re actually saying is, “I have to reconfirm who I am” and my personality is, “I have to do this, I have to go here, I have to be that.”
A master is quite a different cat. It is one that sees the day as an opportunity in time to create avenues of reality and emotions that are unborn, of realities that are unborn, that the day becomes a fertilization of infinite tomorrows.
– Ramtha
Slipping Through My Fist
I have drifted down a ways along the shoreline,
I just watched these ropes give way
where they were tied.
I could have reached out quick when the ropes first
slipped, if I had tried,
but I was wondering where the wind was trying to take me
overnight, if I never did resist, and
what strange breezes make a sailor want to
let it come to this,
with lines untied, slipping through my fist.
It is downhill, all the way to the ocean,
So of course the river wants to flow.
The river’s been here longer,
It’s older and stronger and knows where to go.
David Wilcox