You Are Not Your Mind (3of4)

In therapy when there isn't something specifically that I bring up to talk about I'm asked about my week. When I tried to think of the past week, I went backwards day by day, trying to think about Tuesday, then Monday, then Sunday, etc. There were two days that I couldn't remember what I did. I had to think about it. Eventually I remembered what I did, and it was funny, cause those two days were really good days, days that I had a lot of fun. My therapist made an observation: it seems that I was having trouble remembering my happy times. This really boggled me. Why was it so it easy to recall my bad/sad days and hard to remember my good/happy days. It was clear at this point that my mind was playing some tricks on me.

Enlightenment: Rising Above Thought

You might be thinking to yourself that thinking is important to do, and that how can it be a good thing to stop thinking. You might say that thinking is essential in order to survive in this world.

Your mind is an instrument, a tool. It is there to be used for a specific task, and when the task is completed, you lay it down. As it is, I would say about 80 to 90 percent of most people's thinking is not only repetitive and useless, but because of its dysfunctional and often negative nature, much of it is also harmful. Observe your mind and you will find this to be true. It cause a serious leakage of vital energy.

This kinda goes with my previous tool analogy. The mind is useful only for certain tasks, and most of the time it is being used for everything. Me being an introvert, I spend a lot of time in my mind thinking to myself, this would be my 80 to 90 percent of useless and repetitive thinking. I want to be without that repetitive thinking because most of the time it does cause me harm, dwelling on things I would rather not dwell on.

This kind of compulsive thinking is actually an addiction. What characterizes an addiction? Quite simply this: you no longer feel that you have the choice to stop. It seems stronger than you. It also gives you a false sense of pleasure, pleasure that invariably turns into pain.

There have been times in my life, usually when something bad has happened to me, that I seriously lose control of my mind and it goes to places that I don't want it to go to. The only thing I can relate it to is a flashback. Anything such as a sound, a smell, or a sight can trigger it for me. Once the compulsive thinking starts for me, it becomes painful, and as much as I want it to stop, it just needs to run it's course. Luckily, this doesn't happen too often for me. I know it doesn't sound like an addiction, and I don't feel like I'm addicted, but my mind is. So then how am I addicted?

Because you are identified with it, which means that you derive your sense of self from the content and activity of your mind. Because you believe that you would cease to be if you stopped thinking. As you grow up, you form a mental image of who you are, based on your personal and cultural conditioning. We may call this phantom self the ego. It consists of mind activity and can only be kept going through constant thinking. The term ego means different things to different people, but when I use it here it means a false self, created by unconscious identification with the mind.

Since I believe I am my mind, and my mind is addicted, I am addicted, sounds weird. The author defines what he means when he uses the word ego, so when he talks about ego, he refers to false self you are identified with because of your mind. I never thought I had ego issues because of my own definition I formed, but when I look at his definition, I see I have some serious ego issues.

To the ego, the present moment hardly exists. Only past and future are considered important. This total reversal of the truth accounts for the fact that in the ego mode the mind is so dysfunctional. It is always concerned with keeping the past alive, because without it - who are you? It constantly projects itself into the future to ensure its continued survival and to seek some kind of release or fulfillment there. It says: 'One day, when this, that, or the other happens, I am going to be okay, happy, at peace.' Even when the ego seems to be concerned with the present, it is not the present that it sees: It misperceives it completely because it looks at it through the eyes of the past. Or it reduces the present to a means to an end, an end that always lies in the mind-projected future. Observe your mind and you'll see that this is how it works.

After reading this, I became aware of how my ego was controlling me. It is true for me that I spend a lot of time in my past. I also became aware that I was not really in the now, just the now that my ego creates based on my past. Even recently when I try to look back and ask myself, who I am, what kind of person am I, I always end up defining myself based on my past. I must be this person based on my past. That was my ego controlling me, trying to stay alive, trying to stay the same as it was in the past. This may be why I have a fear of change, or a hard time accepting change, because my ego doesn't want things to change. This may also be why I don't remember my good days. My ego has its roots in negativity, so it only wants to see negativity in the past and in the now.

Enlightenment means rising above thought, not falling back to a level below thought, the level of an animal or a plant. In the enlightened state, you still use your thinking mind when needed, but in a much more focused and effective way than before. You use it mostly for practical purposes, but you are free of the involuntary internal dialogue, and there is inner stillness. When you do use your mind, and particularly when a creative solution is needed, you oscillate ever few minutes or so between thought and stillness, between mind and no-mind. No-mind is consciousness without thought. Only in that way is it possible to think creatively, because only in that way does thought have any real power. Thought alone, when it is no longer connected with the much vaster realm of consciousness, quickly becomes barren, insane, destructive.

I like this paragraph because it talks about creativity. I see myself as a creativity person, or at least as someone who has the ability to be creativity. The way the author describes how to the mind should be used is appealing to me, and this is something I want to achieve. No more destructive thinking!

The mind is essentially a survival machine. Attack and defense against other minds, gathering, storing, and analyzing information - this is what it is good at, but it is not at all creative. All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness. The mind then gives form to the creative impulse or insight. Even the great scientists have reported that their creative breakthroughs came at a time of mental quietude. The surprising result of a nationwide inquiry among America's most eminent mathematicians, including Einstein, to find out their working methods, was thinking 'plays only a subordinate part in the brief, decisive phase of the creative act itself.' So I would say that the simple reason why the majority of scientists are not creative is not because they don't know how to think but because they don't know to stop thinking!

I really like this paragraph too. I have a lot of friends who are artists and I feel they would agree. Their art doesn't come from a place of mind, but a place of no-mind. Deep down I feel like I am truly an artist, even though I went to school and became an engineer. This blog is a piece of my art that I am creating. I like the last part of the paragraph too. I can be of the scientist type, since I'm an engineer. In school all you do is think, problem solve, think more, and think. I believe that six years of school contributed to my compulsive thinking, it's what engineers need to do, but I also believe a good engineer needs to be creative. Many times we have our great thoughts not when we are focusing hard in thinking, but usually when we are not thinking. These moments can come when we're driving, or on the train, or in the shower. It's funny how it happens that way. Just stop thinking about it, and the solution may come.

Actually, it's funny because I was thinking about why I don't remember my good days so well, and an idea about why came to me when I wasn't even thinking about. It came to me at a time when I was clearing my mind before bed so I could sleep. I realized that maybe my ego craves conflict. This may be due to my engineering conditioned mind, which likes to solve problems. It occurred to me that my ego may like to focus on conflict, this is why I see only conflict in my past. When my mind isn't hard at work solving engineering conflicts, my ego creates conflict in the now, in my life, to give it something to solve. The issue here is that these problems that get created in my life have no solution. They are not like the engineering problems I like to solve. These problems involve other people, emotions, feelings etc. For some reason my ego wants to create conflict so that it has something to solve. I'm keeping this on my mind now as I "watch the thinker". I'll know in time how right I am.