So with all our feelings and action-our tears and our smiles, our joys and our griefs, our weeping and our laughter, our curses and our blessings, our praises and our blames-every one of these we may find, if we calmly study our own selves, to have been brought out from within ourselves by so many blows. The result is what we are.
Vivekananda, Complete works, Location 2537
I have been reading the Complete Works of Vivekananda every night now for over a month and it is still only 5 % read lol. There is a lot of noted wisdom to get through even though the book was just recorded notes from his lectures and he only lectured for a short period of time before dying an untimely death (Oh, how can a death be untimely?...It happens when it happens.) Anyway...it is very interesting and inspiring to read such wisdom.
In the above quote, he is basically describing the psyche in regards to karma. He is telling us that any disturbance experienced (positive or negative) is a result of what is being pulled up into our awareness from the inside Our psyche is a collection of all these emotional energies and suppressed stuff. It is the psyche, the personal self, the ego, the little me (however you wish to describe it)that is responsible for any disturbance we may experience, not the situation we are facing. He stresses that we would know that if we could "calmly" (relax) and look within these minds of ours to see the mess they are creating in our lives.
Michael A. Singer, in the below podcast, teaches this as well. He tells us we need to observe our minds to discover that it is the source of all our problems, and not what Life is handing us to experience. We are here on this planet for the short time we are on it, to experience all it is. That would be a simple and enjoyable thing to do if our minds did not get in the way. Psyche gets in the way of the true experience. It creates noisy static we can not hear through and a dirty lens filter we can barely see through. So busy is our amazing light of consciousness shining and focusing on psyches noisy mess, it doesn't shine on the Experiencer and the experience, it is here to experience. Too many of us are stuck in our heads and the stress and fear it creates, and we do not live the full experience of Life.
It is not what is showing up in front of us; it is what the mind does with it. ...that creates most of our disturbance. We got that, right? If you are feeling overwhelmed and anxious with your job...the employment circumstance you are in is only, at most, 5 % of the problem...95 % of the disturbance comes from the personal mind, the psyche and what it is saying about it. So if the problem is not out there, either is the solution. You could quit your job and go elsewhere but it is almost guaranteed that you would become disturbed again. Why? Because you are bringing your disturbed mind with you!
So what is the solution?
The solution is to "calmly study ourselves". The solution is to look inward to ask, "Why am I so bothered by this? Why am I anxious and afraid? What do I need to change "in" here?" This is going to be a challenging set of questions to ask ourselves if we see the outside world as the source of all our frustrations and fears....but ask it we must. The more we examine the mess in the mind, the more we see it as the source of our disturbance.
Relax! Stay Calm and Carry on!
Of course, we need to be calm when we do this, to relax. Singer calls relaxation the highest technique in dealing with suffering. "Just relax and experience life", however, is not an easy suggestion for most of us to follow when our amygdala's are calling out their warnings and the sympathetic nervous system is screaming "Run or Fight! Do something!!!" We are so programmed and conditioned to listen to these minds and will want nothing more than to "do" something about the situation that we believe is upsetting us. It is then, more than ever, we need to do the opposite of that habitual tendency and relax.
Not the Mess or the Stress
Remember you are not the mess or the stress. You are not the mind with all its dramatic reactions or even the body with its sometimes terrifying physiological ones. You are the One in there, here to experience all that Life is. In order to reconnect to that Experiencer, we need to get beyond the mind. We get beyond the mind by relaxing away from the stress, tension, fear the mind creates and into what is.
Relaxation is a practice.
It is not the mess and the busy mind we are going to relax. No, that will do what it does. We are going to relax despite the mind. We going to remember who we are beyond the mind and lean back into that. We start by learning how to relax which many of us do not know how to do. Most of us don't even know how tense we are. So we observe mind and body and then we relax into mind and body so we can get beyond mind and body. There are valuable relaxation learning techniques out there that we can begin practicing in times of lower degree of stress. Hatha yoga is amazing for that reason. The more we practice Hatha yoga, the more we relax into the body and mind, as we see beyond it. It helps to prepare us for those times monkey mind takes over leading us into fear and stress reactions. Eventually it will help to decrease the amount of times, mind is able to take us away in this manner. Meditation and mindfulness is also an amazing tool to help us "calmly study ourselves" and help us to tap into that peaceful center of who we are, helping us to access it easier even in times of great stress. Then there is pranayama or breath awareness, progressive muscle relaxation etc. There are so many tools out there. We can experiment until we find one that works best for us.
Life is not meant to be a day to day struggle with fear and worry. It is meant to be a fun, joyful and awe-some experience. The only thing preventing it from being so is our attention on the mind and the world rather than on the Self within. Let's do as Vivekananda suggests and learn to calmly study our own selves. Let's do the inner work necessary. We can start by learning to relax at this very moment!
All is well.
Vivekananda (n.d.) The complete Works of Swami Vivekananda: Volumes 1-9. Kindle Edition
Michael A. Singer /Sounds True (Sept 13, 2023) Relaxing Behind Your Inner Disturbance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYGBrG_fDoo&t=120s
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