Hello everyone,
I've been in a very reflective space lately, not doing much externally, but working from within more. I suppose that comes with the Autumn season, which I like very much. My realization this morning is that the mind is a prison. The self is essentially and completely separate from the mind. The mind is almost a separate being altogether, with which we identify with so strongly. Yet it is this ego and mind which is basically of a purely survivalist nature, a low-grade matrix of thoughts, fears, yearnings, desires, desires, desires, and hopes and dreams. One second happy, the next sad, the next worried. Christ even condemned the mundane mind when he challenged that one cannot add a single inch to their span of life by worrying.
As I've started to see and experience my mind more as a separate and unruly character, I am appreciating Bhakti more.
"One who is not disturbed in mind even amidst the threefold miseries or elated when there is happiness, and who is free from attachment, fear and anger, is called a sage of steady mind." BG 2:56
In Bhakti we can burn out the troublesome stuff in the mind through immersion in divine vibrations. Those being music, writings, dancing, images, service and sadhana. I am experiencing it now in a more intense way, as I had stopped my practices for a while to meditate in silence and engage in a lot of study and opening my heart through tantra. Now I have perhaps a more fresh perspective with which to view the mind and watch it turn and squirm and try, try.
The mind is a prison if we allow it to be. For most of us, it;s completely unconscious. The mind is a prison, but when you think that prison is you, that you are the prison, and your only means to lessen the pain is through distractions and sense gratification...whew, that's a pitiful existence.
Yet people still unconsciously refer to their being as me, and "my mind". So who is this "my"? That is who we truly are, this witness, or as Ram Das puts it, "I am loving awareness". I am loving awareness. The mind is a tool. We can use that tool to do anything: make nuclear bombs or vegetable gardens. Hurt and destroy or co-create and love. Nurture, inspire and protect or connive, exploit and curse. The mind is the most powerful material thing in the world. So we must be very careful with this mind. It must receive gratification in some way, so we can either subdue it with low-vibration gratification such as television, alcohol and fast food, or we can gratify it with spiritual sustenance like divine spiritual music like kirtan, vegetarian food offered to Krsna, spending time in nature, growing food, reading spiritual books and chanting. These things will purify us, cleanse us of fear, worry, anxiety, anger, greed and lust. And when we become more free from these things, in other words less bound and constricted in and by our minds, then we become peaceful and happy and able to serve others. The mind can be either a stumbling block or a stepping stone. What will it be for you?
