Posted on 27 Jun, 2008 -
How to flick the ‘OFF’ switch for the mind
Drop the heaviness of your SELF and make room for more bliss and lightness
It is ironic, perhaps, that words like ‘lightness’ and ‘bliss’ send a lot of people running, groaning or sneering. It is partly 21st Century cynicism no doubt, but also partly due to our addiction to the heavy.
In the modern age we carry around with us egos the size of cargo ships - laden to sinking with guilt, worries, negativity, self-doubting, self-obsessing, hypocrisy, fear and guilt. Not to mention the last episode of Big Brother or East Enders, a shopping list for the next three day’s meals and a virtual map of your local shopping centre.
But what would it be like if we were able to literally ‘drop’ our heavy load. In the same way as you may drop a heavy boulder if it was giving you pain to carry it.
Getting rid of the heaviness of the mind
In his best-selling book, The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle tells the story of how he awoke one night feeling miserable, loathsome and with the thought in his head ‘I cannot live with myself any longer.’ Then suddenly, he says “I became aware of what a peculiar thought it was. “Am I one or two? If I cannot live with myself, there must be two of me: the ‘I’ and the ‘self’ that ‘I’ cannot live with.” “Maybe,” I thought, “only one of them is real.”
He then proceeded to have a profound spiritual experience where he completely lost the whole of his ‘self’ and spent years walking round in a state of bliss just marveling at the world around him.
Few of us will be lucky enough to kick the self to touch so rapidly, but how much happier would we all be if we can at the very least manage to lighten it a little.
You are not your mind - it is out of control
The mind, says Eckhart Tolle is really a tool that we use but it has become so increasingly all-present and powerful that we have now got to the stage where we believe that we are it. We have come to associate with it so much that we actually believe that we are all that stuff going on inside the over-active machine gone mad which is our mind.
The first step in lightening ourselves and freeing ourselves of the pain of the mind and ego is to realise that we can disconnect ourselves from it. Try to be more the ‘I’ that is observing and just being rather than the ‘me’ that’s eating itself up with anger, resentment or anxiety. Observe the mind at work as if it was seperate from you, not as if it is you.
Whenever you can, focus on the present moment right now. The mind is forever thinking about the past or the present but when you are truly being and living as yourself you are strongly present in the NOW. In the world around you. In your physical being. In your spiritual presence.
Switch the mind off when it is not currently needed.
In everything you do be lighter
In everything that you do, be lighter. Walk around with a lightness yet brightness of presence. Be a presence of light in a room rather than a brooding heaviness weighed down by stuff going on in your head. Allow heavy emotions and manic thoughts to evaporate into the air above you.
If your mind sounds like the dark engine room deep down in a huge steel ship, throw open the windows and expose it to the light around you.
If you are walking around thinking ‘woe is me’ or ‘I am so depressed’ try disconnecting yourself from that self you are observing and just be that person who is aware of that woe and heaviness in the ‘me’ that is actually just your mind grown out of control.
When you find yourself brooding or over-worrying or lamenting, realise that the mind that is thinking is just a tool that is out of control and that you can switch it off. Reducing the size and activity of your mind will take some work but it will work if you try it.
Lighter in body, lighter in presence
Be lighter in your thinking.
Lighter in your mind.
Act with lightness.
Think with lightness.
Be lighter in your being so that you are always ready to float on rather than being stuck or sluggish.
Be light in your decision making so that you can flit where necessary - but settle for as long as you are comfortable.
Feel lighter in body too and you will become that lighter being.
Perhaps to some extent we are even scared of the true lightness of our being - as we might be scared of a bright light or an angel appearing above us. But if you open your mind to the light you will be blessed by its presence.
