Most of us accept the need to wash and nourish our bodies everyday. We know that there is dirt and waste that we must get rid of and we know that we must provide the body with air, water and food to keep it functioning. And we know that good air, good water and good food keeps it functioning well.
But few of us have truly grasped the importance of doing the same for our mind – clearing, cleaning and nourishing it daily.
So, day after day, we take the mind filled with the contents of the past, the dirt and the grime of all our judgements, thoughts and emotions and lacking the nourishment of our Awareness of its natural, ever-renewing presence into each new day.
And then we wonder why our life remains pretty much the same, why history seems to repeat itself and why we don’t ever seem to get out of our thinking and feeling habits…
Yet when we stop and think about it, we know that it is in our minds that everything originates, whether as a new thought or idea, or a reaction to something we see or hear or do (or is done to us) in the external world. In other words, we must realize that the mind is the control centre of everything.
Now, you’d think that, being the control centre of our lives, we’d take considerable interest in it and make sure that it is always in good condition, wouldn’t you? I mean, doesn’t that just make sense? But the fact is, we don’t.
We don’t give our mind the care and attention that we give our bodies, our homes, our social image, do we? Why is that?
Well, here are some reasons:
- We are conditioned to devalue or undermine what we cannot see and since we cannot see our mind, we don’t give it much (or any) care or attention
- We are conditioned to believe that there’s not a lot we can do to *change* or *improve* the condition of our minds. We believe we can do this to our bodies but we really haven’t thought about doing it to our minds, at least not in a systematic and consistent way
- When we take a peek at our minds (in the random and infrequent attempts we allow ourselves to ‘meditate’, we are alarmed and overwhelmed by what we observe and we ‘leave’ in a hurry
- We are conditioned (not necessarily in an overt and obvious way) to believe that we have little control over our thoughts and feelings OR alternatively, we have been taught how to ‘control’ our thoughts and feelings in an aggressive way which only builds up more conflict and tension within us – the very things that we wish to minimise
- We are conditioned to believe that the mind has no real impact on our bodies and on our lives in general or that the connection between the two is fuzzy and unreliable. In other words, it’s safer to trust what we experience through our senses and rely on that
- We are conditioned to be so impressed by the elaborate and ‘sophisticated’ theories and physical and psychological manoeuvres that are offered to us that something as simple and mundane as Self-Awareness (through Breath Awareness) seems so unimpressive and unappealing
- We are conditioned to be dependent, to be needy, to be imprisoned that the prospect of freedom from all of this actually frightens us for we do not know or trust any other way of (human) being.
What is boils down to is this:
Our collective (un)consciousness (conditioning) is built on IGNORANCE or LACK OF SELF AWARENESS. It is as if the conditioned or ego mind is so afraid of being SELF-AWARE because AWARENESS would mean that the game is up.
All the dramas and stories and pathologies that currently drive our lives and justify our decisions and behaviours would be seen for what they are – illusions or as someone (sorry, I don’t know who) so very wisely put it, False Evidence Appearing Real i.e. FEAR.
Without dramas and stories, there is no FEAR. Without fear, we return to our natural state of LOVE, of LIFE, of peace, of joy, of freedom, of power, of possibility, of innocence – in essence.
So you see, we are not terribly interested in getting to really know our minds and really taking charge of our minds – to become Self Aware – not in an oppressive or aggressive way but in a gentle, loving and compassionate way.
Yet, if we wanted to, we could become Self Aware. In fact, if we really want peace and happiness and freedom (and despite our conditioning, at the core of our being, we all want these), Self Awareness is the only way we are ever going to do it.
The practice of meditation is the practice of or the journey in Self-Awareness.
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