Control Your Mind
This article appears courtesy of Healing Headquarters www.healinghq.com.
When building a spiritual practice, it is most important to have a strong foundation in place. This will support you during times when you are experiencing challenges, and rapid growth or change. Many spiritual traditions use the metaphor of the tree to describe our human energetic physiology. When we observe a tree in Nature, we are only looking at the half of it that is above ground. The tree spans two realms – its root system penetrates the earth as wide and as deep as it reaches upwards and outwards into the air. The root system of the tree enables the tree to weather massive storms, sustain upward growth and expansion, and feed itself from the nourishment found in the soil.
When we are developing our subtle bodies – the energetic, etheric, and spiritual – it is very important to have a strong foundation, just like a tree. It is readily apparent when individuals are engaged in practices that develop their upper chakras (heart, throat, third eye, crown) without equal work on their lower chakra centers (solar plexus, sacral, root). Increased energy flow in the upper energy centers with little or no engagement of the lower energy centers creates individuals who are unbalanced—
- Unable to complete projects;
- Unable to earn a living to meet their physical needs;
- Spaced out;
- Unclear in their actions and speech; and,
- Psychotic.
This is common among seekers, but is also preventable and rectifiable. It is important to understand that, like the tree, we are entities that move in two directions. The yin/yang symbol illustrates to us the principle of polarity in the universe, and our need to seek balance in our life practices. The way to correct an imbalance is simply to pursue its opposite until equilibrium has been restored. This is natural, and effective.
In order to support the kind of clearing and personal growth work that is the process of self-realization, a meditative practice is essential. The mind is a major energy center, and it has the ability to direct and focus energy. Obviously, this can be both a boon and a pitfall. If you have an increased amount of energy flowing into this center, the activity of the mind becomes magnified. That means that your personal subconscious and habitual garbage becomes magnified, and it becomes essential to have tools in place to begin the work of sorting, organizing, and cleaning things up.
Clean Up the Content of Your Mind
The mind is a kind of portal, as well as a repository. Certainly, there are things stored in the mind, such as old memories (frequently visited or abandoned), facts, skills instructions, and habitual loops of self-talk. There are also things that move through the mind that come from outside – other people’s stories about us, their judgments and opinions, and random thoughts that show up seemingly out of nowhere. Because this is the nature of the mind – a sort of video and audio player for stories and events – it becomes very important to begin consciously and purposefully controlling what is allowed to occupy your mental space.
Meditation Techniques
Meditation is the act of:
- Observing what is going on in the mind;
- Choosing between what is beneficial and destructive; and,
- Controlling the type of environment that is frequently held as our personal, mental space.
In the beginning, one starts by observing the mind. Before meditation practices, we have been unaware of the mind, for the most part, and it has run amock, and we’ve simply accepted all its goings-on as our true experience. When we first begin meditation, we start to separate the goings-on of the mind from our own will and consciousness, and this is an enlightenment in itself. Realizing that we are not the mind, we have been, rather, sort of victims of our undisciplined mind, gives us a bit of freedom and relief. It dawns on us that we can actually gain control over our personal experience and we don’t have to be just suffering at the hands of our random, uncontrolled mental play.
The Exercise: #1 – Observing the Activity of the Mind
Sit down in a quiet place for 10 minutes per day and focus on what is going on inside your mind. Every time you realize you have gotten carried away on a train of thought, take a deep breath, abandon that internal storyline for now, and come back to a quiet mental space. Do this for 10 minutes a day, until you have learned to catch yourself more quickly. At that time, you will have learned that your mind generates internal stories for you to get carried away on pretty much non-stop! You will also have learned that it gives you a feeling of relief to know that you can actually choose not to go along with the inner stories whenever you want to. Sometimes, if the inner story is particularly compelling or emotionally-charged (a fight with a friend, a problem you want to solve urgently), you might notice that you feel a bit of anxiety at the idea of letting that storyline go. Try doing it anyways – promise yourself you can always pick up on that storyline later – it’s not going anywhere. Try to keep this small period of time – 10 minutes a day – just for yourself, as a practice of creating some peaceful space free of the endless inner storylines. If your mate, your kids, the phone, or the dog try to interrupt you – don’t let them. Tell them – this is my time, 10 minutes a day – you cannot approach me at this time. It will have to wait. Don’t speak to anyone, or get up to answer the door, or anything. It’s only 10 minutes. It is just for you. See what happens. I guarantee you, if you do this properly, it will be profound.
Once one has gotten a sense of these two things: 1) the endless storyline generation of the mind; and, 2) the spaciousness and freedom that comes when you refuse to follow along; you can begin to expand this practice. You don’t need to sit anymore – you can if you want to, but it really isn’t necessary. You see, meditation isn’t about sitting. You could sit your entire life on a cushion, and if you are not practicing mind-control exercises, you are not going to get anywhere except to hurt your body by forcing it to remain still in uncomfortable positions for extremely long periods of time. That is not what this is about. Take your meditation practice ‘on the road’, so to speak. Now try practicing when you are waiting in line at the grocery store, at the bank, on the bus, peeing in a public bathroom. Suddenly it gets much harder. There are more distractions. But with practice, you will master this too, and be able to create a quiet internal space for yourself out in public whenever you want to, by quieting your own mind. If you find it hard to hold your focus amidst distractions, try focusing on your body: pay attention to your breath going in and out, or put your awareness down by your ankles – what does it feel to hang out down by your ankles? You are not just a head floating in space, you have an entire body – bring your awareness to your body and hang out there in silence instead of listening to your mental chatter. After all, it gets tiresome, doesn’t it? All that whining and complaining and judgment and wanting. What happens if you just refuse to listen to all that? You can increase your practice from 10 minutes a day to practicing whenever you want to! What a relief!
Exercise: #2 – Choosing Between what is Beneficial and Destructive
At some point, you will have become comfortable enough and quite successful with the practice, and you will feel like you want something more. If you have been practicing long enough, you will have become much more familiar with the contents of your mind, and at this point, I suggest you take up a daily journaling practice. If you journal a few pages every day and allow yourself to write down all the spontaneous drivel that is flowing through your mind, you will begin to be able to really analyze its contents. If you do this for long enough (say a few seasons and then a few years), you will really begin to see some patterns emerge. “Oh, god, I have been complaining about this relationship for 6 months,” or “I have been asking myself to take that class and train for a different type of work for 3 years now, and still haven’t done anything about it!” The key is not to censor yourself when journaling. If you can trust yourself enough to write down everything you think, and let yourself be ugly and honest on the page, then you will really see the contents of your mind and be able to begin working with your subconscious in earnest. Important: do not show anyone your journals. You are working to create a personal space. The practice here is that once you have the contents of the mind on paper, and you begin to see patterns of habitual thinking, you can begin to choose to take action. If there are requests for action that have not been acted on (ending a relationship, making a career change, losing weight, taking up an opportunity, engaging in healing or training exercises), then you can put those things to rest by completing them. If there is an abundance of negative self-talk (I can’t, I’m not smart enough, I never finished college, I am ugly), then you can make the choice to stop speaking to yourself like that. Your meditation practice becomes extended – first, you have learned to create some quiet space, and now, you can choose what kinds of thoughts you are going to entertain in that space. You are gaining more control over your mental space.
Now you have been working with your mind for awhile. It is not allowed to just run amock anymore – now you catch it and reel it back in. You are also becoming aware of negative patterns that are present in your subconscious and working to uproot them. At this point, you may want to begin bringing some new content in. How about some positive affirmations? You can begin reading books by seekers that have gone ahead of you, and fill your head with some different, more expansive ideas. I recommend:
- Allan Watts;
- Osho;
- Rumi;
- Mary Oliver; and,
- Jane Hirshfield.
Try to keep it simple – you don’t need to read every book in the New Age bookstore, and it will likely only begin to confuse you. You don’t want to create a cerebral tangle – you want peace. So choose carefully what you expose yourself to. If it’s complex and puts you in knots, get rid of it.
Exercise: #3 – Creating & Sustaining an Expansive Mental Space
Now you have worked with the mind for awhile – you’ve learned its habit of creating stories out of nothing, its tendency to replay old patterns of thinking, and you’ve introduced some more positive and expansive ideas to it. Now it is time to move outside of your mind, involve your body, and connect to Nature. Remember the yin/yang symbol of polarity and balance? You’ve been working rather intensively with your mind – please do not forget to balance it with your body. It is time to connect your meditation to a physical practice. Yoga, tai chi, qigong and hiking are excellent ways to bring your meditation practice into connection with your body, while drawing on the wonderful atmosphere that Nature provides. Evergreen trees are particularly wonderful to be around, as are mountains, streams, healthy forests, and large bodies of water. Wherever you choose to place yourself, take in Natural settings that hold the kind of mental space you wish to cultivate. Avoid storms, volcanoes, fault lines, electrical power lines and generators, high winds, graveyards and swamps. You want to align your mental space with Natural settings that are peaceful and energized, without being stagnant or agitated. This is a lesson in feng shui. You may sit if you want to, but I recommend involving your body in your meditation practice, by moving it, stretching it, exercising it, incorporating your mind in a balanced way. Spend time regularly in a Natural setting and learn to draw upon the sensations of that place when you are away from it. Cities, malls, crowds and freeways are places of agitated energy; learn to bring your personal sense of stillness to you whenever you need it.
There are many different meditative exercises, and many meditation groups for you to explore. Just make sure that you are actually learning these key elements, and not just being trained to sit still, count beads, and hold yourself in uncomfortable positions. In other words, it's the inner work that's important here - make sure your external practice is not distracting you from the real goal - to create a calm, stable center harmonized between body, mind, and Nature.
The ability to distance yourself from agitated states of mind and draw upon the memory of calm will be an invaluable resource to you when:
- You go through deep clearing work and are required to feel very powerful and painful emotions;
- You go through the "death before dying" process and your ego is stripped away and you feel disoriented and lost;
- You experience a large amount of new energy in your system and you have to keep a firm grip on your states of mind;
- You begin to open up to astral awareness and become aware of the existence of other beings outside of our normal perception that might frighten you; and,
- You begin doing dreamwork and night meditation to explore dimensions beyond your daily reality.
The enlightenment process brings many challenges, so have this foundation in place - you will certainly need to draw on it at every step along the journey.
For more information, check out the Resource Guide.