Your mind is a beautiful servant, but a dangerous master.
Your mind is a beautiful servant, but a dangerous master.
Do you control you or does your mind control you?
To many, this question appears arcane and mostly irrelevant. For most people are of the understanding that they are their mind and hence, there can only be one answer. But the reality is that you are not your mind and there is a wonderful lesson to be learned here.
I spent the first half of my life operating under the presumption that my mind and I were the same. Then I discovered The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle. In that book, he gave me an alternate perspective, and from that point forward, many things changed for me.
He postulates (from other prior sources of wisdom) that we are not our mind, but rather, we are awareness. Before you check out on this paragraph and dismiss it as new age woo woo, stay with me for a second. In this chapter, he gives you an exercise in which you lie quietly on your bed (when you are not sleepy) and you work to vacate your mind of all thoughts. He uses a metaphor of watching your mind like a cat would watch a hole in the wall where a mouse might pop its head out, searching if all is clear. Every time a thought comes into your mind, you note it and quietly vacate it and continue until your mind is very still. When you get to that complete silence, you have achieved the exercise. Then, he reasons that what is it that is watching your mind? He calls that Awareness.
One may argue that this is semantics, and perhaps that is so. But in the exercise, I have found that when my mind is ablaze with all of the chaos of trying to run an organization full of the myriad variables that I am working to keep under control, understanding that my awareness is able to quiet my mind, has become one of the most valuable lessons I have ever learned.
Working to stay in the present (the Now) is critical, because the future does not exist (yet) and the past is only memories and no longer exists as anything other than reflections. Keeping your mind concentrated on the present is the only solution that facilitates rational, controlled behavior.
Your mind is a beautiful thing. It is the portal through which you experience life in all of its positive (and negative) variations. It is the center of your imagination, emotions, hopes and dreams. But when it is working very diligently to overwhelm you with fears, worries, disappointments, despair, and other intense, negative emotions, it is most critical to remember that you are always the cat watching the mouse stick its head out of the hole. You can always turn the thoughts off. And when they return, you can do it again and again, until you deliver yourself to safe harbor.
Happy Wednesday!
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