There is a river of joy flowing inside you. Find it; Go there; Get in it; and drown.
Michael A. Singer's paraphrasing of Yogananda's Teachings
I want nothing more, as a parent, than to have my childrens' lives flowing with joy. They aren't. Like most of us, they are trapped in and tripped up by their reactivity to Life, instead of living it fully. One common thing I see in today's youth, because of their samskaras, is the presence of "debilitating" anxiety.
An Annoying Companion
I often tell my daughter who suffers from social anxiety to think of her anxious mind as a poorly socialized companion called "Annoying Annie". I want her to imagine that Annie is always following her around 24-7, jabbering on and on and on in her ear, never shutting up in her unrelenting speech which is most of the time very negative, fearful and shaming. Sometimes Annie is somewhat subdued and quiet, other times she is loud, obnoxious, and very demanding. I reminded her that we all know people who do that, that talk for the sake of talking without even realizing what they are doing or aware of how they are impacting others. Much of what they say is self-serving, has no meaning in it, and is not worth listening to. And though such friends' heart and original intent may be good, their presence may be interfering with our everyday life and need to be dealt with. It is not so much the annoying companion we need to deal with ( we can't off them) , but our reaction to them.
I ask my daughter to consider this anxiety she is dealing with as "Annoying Annie" because I want her to see the mind as a separate entity...not who she is. I don't want her to view her mind ( and its anxiety) as an evil enemy so I encouraged her to view it as a peer, albeit not a great one. I want her to see the distance that is there between her and it so she can observe it and therefore slip into "Witness Consciousness", rather than be so caught up in the mind's anxiety that she believes it is who she is. I want her to realize that Annie's thought's have nothing to do with her. They are Annie's ( the mind's). I want her to be able to replace her chronic mantras, "I am so anxious!" with "My anxious mind[Annoying Annie] is bothering me again." I want her to rename her mental and emotional experience as "Annoying Annie"...so she can see it as just annoying rather than debilitating. If she can view anxiety as separate, a distance away from her and not who she really is; if she can see it as something on her level that can be observed from a distance; and if she looks at it as more annoying than debilitating...I figure she could feel empowered in dealing with anxiety and the mind.
So How Do We Deal With the Mind?
I asked her then how she would handle a friend that did the same thing as her mind is doing. She probably wouldn't be rude. She probably didn't want to fight her. She could seek to see the good in her. She probably wouldn't run away and hide from her becasue she knew that would be too obvious, She could try talking to Annie, to let her know that what she was doing was interrupting her life....though it would be hard to get a word in. It would likely not change Annie's behaviour either. She is, after all, what she is. She could listen to the content of Annie's never ending speaking for a while and once she realized the nonsense and self serving content of her friend's speech, she would less likely be inclined to listen or follow any directions or advice offered. She would be less likely to own any of Annie's fears, worries, blame etc either. She would eventually get to the point where she would hear and see her friend speaking but would not feel inclined to listen. She would not personalize or own anything Annie had to say. She would stop focusing on Annie altogether. She would put her attention back on Life in this here and in this now. She could then go about seeing and hearing what was unfolding in front of her instead of being consumed by this annoying companion's antics. Even though Annie may never go away, she would not be bothered by Annoying Annie anymore. She would not be bothered by the mind's anxious tendencies.
Appliance: Thought Machine
So I use Annoying Annie to describe the mind but but Michael A. Singer describes the mind as an appliance, a thought machine that is constantly generating automatic thoughts based on our stored impressions or samskaras. The mind and its thoughts, Singer reminds us in the below linked podcast, have no more to do with us than Mount Everest does. They are "just thoughts" that are pumping out. We do not have to listen let alone own them.
Garbage In; Garbage Out
What thoughts come out of this appliance, and what words come out of Annie's mouth are determined by those deep impressions or samskaras we have stored inside, our suppressed and repressed memories with their emotional energy entwined around them. We put the data in at some point..."This was painful, do not want any more of this." "That was nice, want more of that" and these machines spit out the thoughts and internal dialogue when they encounter whatever they encounter "out here".
The mind isn't doing anything wrong really. It is doing what we asked it to do. We put the garbage in and it is just spitting out the results. What we need to do is clean up our insides. We need to get the garbage out or at least let it come up and out when it is ready. What the thought appliance is spitting out or what Annoying Annie is saying really doesn't matter. What we do with the garbage does.
The source of your misery is how you are processing the imprint of the past now. You maybe carrying around a sackful of stinking garbage. Either you can smear yourself with it and get terribly miserable, or you can make good manure out of it and create a wonderful garden.
Sadhguru, page 42
All is well.
Sadhguru ( 2021) Karma: A Yogi's Guide to Crafting Your Destiny. New York: Harmony Books.
Michael A. Singer/ Temple of the Universe ( August 28, 2023) Cleaning the House of the Mind.https://tou.org/talks/
No comments:
Post a Comment