Noticing the Unhealthy Mind

 

Spirituality is about noticing what you mind is doing and noticing that it ain't too healthy. 

Michael Singer

I have been struggling to meditate lately with a clear and empty mind. I get pulled into thoughts about all the drama going on oustide me and inside me so quickly.  I catch myself and say" Just a thought"  "Just thinking" and I ask the question, "Who is thinking these thoughts?"  "Who am I?" I might find a second or two of shunyata before I am pulled back into a thought stream again. My addiction to thinking is pretty prevalent in my life right now.  This "drama" induced thinking is so powerful.  I do forget that I am not the personal mind that creates this type of thinking. I become the character in life's drama.

I know thoughts are just thoughts, and 'personal'' human events...regardless of how intense they might seem...are just statistically insignificant. Yet, this drama playing out in front of me is so compellling...so well scripted and orchestrated to draw my personal mind into it...that I get lost in character both when I am facing the events in present time and when I am thinking about them in future and past tense.  I forget that I am simply playing a role here. I forget that I am just the actor and not the tragic heroine in this play. I really get lost in character.  Hmm! Everything seems so real and so tragic. 

I miss "empty mind" moments. I miss being the actor enjoying playing this role. I miss being in the Seat of Consciousness.  I am still able to be the "witness" for a while but there is state of being that exists beyond the witness consciousness that I long to reconnect to. It is a struggle to get back to it. Personal thinking mind is just so powerful right now...it is hard to seperate from it. 

I had a quick visualization last evening during my practice.  I saw myself sitting in meditation like a well lit lamp and then I watched as this cloudy veil or shade kind of descended over the light dimming it...making everything foggy.  I realized that who I am at the core level is light but this focus on thought and life event is veiling that light of who I am.  It is dimming the experience of peace. 

Why is this veil so thick right now?

I have fear in my heart. Fear is of ego...of this veil or shade...and it makes us forget who we are.  I have fear over what the people we have been dealing with...lead by one toxic personality...will do next. My body is actually in fight or flight.

I had another visualization...or maybe it was a dream (I only remember waking up with it in my head)...of a large cement culvert around a large deep and dark  hole.  The rim of the culvert was fairly narrow and challenging to walk around.  My son and I were needing for some reason to circle this culvert to prove something to someone. We had to make so many circles around to prove ourselves...and it was deterimental that we did. But there they were standing and watching. This one toxic person ( the ring leader of the family, someone I once thought of as a friend) began  pouring oil all over the cement in an attempt to make it slippy so we would fall in.  We cannot stop to stop her because we have to make so many circles in order to prove ourselves. We try to tell those that are ordering us to complete these circles what she is doing but they don't care. We still need to make our circles and it is sooo slippy. My son, who is walking in front of me, slips on the oil and I reach out to grab him, losing my own balance, before the dream or visualization ends. 

This is just a fear-created thought but it weighs so heavy on me. I felt so much in that visualization or dream: powerlessness, fear, worry for my son, desperation, the injustice of it, the complete disbelief over how far humans will go for control, and hate. 

It is a very negative thought and it haunts me. I pay attention to it.  I focus on it.  It pulls me in and it pulls me down. It pulls me away from empty mind and I begin to believe it, instead of the peaceful center, is my reality.  I begin to believe this charcater I am playing in this drama is who I am...a victim whose destiny is controlled by a villian. 

Man...what do you do with that?

I need to remind myself that it is just the personal mind that is talking, not who I really am. It is my ego not my soul.

Syncronistically, I listened to Michae Singer today talk about this. In somewaht paraphrased form this is what I heard:

You are in there is noticing what the mind is saying= witness consciousness= witnessing the mind instead of being the mind. You are the consciousness experiencing what the ego is doing

You are so attached to staring at the perosnal mind...Ego is like a little computer program running constantly inside the mind...built on past experiences and the development of preferences and aversions

Thought patterns are built in a tiny part of the infinite mind...

We need to examine our relationship with our mind...we are not our personal mind...it is just a copulation of things we collected and stuffed on top of this field of energy we call mind and we identified with these things

We created a self concept...not who we are...something we made up in our mind to define this 'self'

We need to just stop listening and put our attention somewhere else...We don't have to listen to what personal mind says...

We need to learn there is always  peace inside despite the fact we have this ego and we need to stop feeding it...

Mind tends toward negative thinking...so positive thinking can be a helpful distraction fom the negative mind's effect

If you are filled with joy it doesn't matter so much what happens

I would rather feel love than fear

Soul birth= the release of samskaras that block the flow of Sat Chit Ananda

Hmm! I would rather feel love than fear.  I would rather be free of any blockages that pollute and disrupt the flow of peace and love within me. 

This experience of life events  is helping me to release some old blockages so I can get pure and clean again. I see what my mind is doing and I know I don't have to listen to it.  This personal mind is not who I am.  It is just something I am addicted to.  It is time to get sober. 

You can get more stinkin with thinking than you ever can with drinking ...

Hmm!

All is well.

Michael A. Singer ( November, 2024) The Mind Unveiled. From Addiction to Awareness. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiQY5WknNOY&list=PLyOuAoSmZkKoESr2acNWwhznusbBkKXsT&index=9

Coming to Feel We Are the Eternal Universe

 

The myths underlying our culture and underlying our common sense have not taught us to feel identical with the universe but only parts of it, only in it, only confronting it...aliens. We are quite urgently in need of coming to feel we are the eternal universe.  

Alan Watts

These are some gems of wisdom gained from listening to Alan Watts today:

• The idea of a difference between matter and spirit does not work anymore...physics stopped asking, "What is matter?" because matter could only be described by its form and what it does.  We can attempt to see right down to the subatomic particles but never arive at basic stuff because there is no stuff there
• Stuff is a word for the world as it looks when our eyes are out of focus
• All we can talk about is pattern and we cannot talk about the stuff these patterns are made of
• The world is more than some passive, unintelligent junk made by a master Potter...it is a dance of design
• Nor is the world just blind energy or random energy
• We are not seperate from nature nor do we need to fight nature in order to survive. We are nature
• Why be hostile to nature?  We grow out of this physical universe in exactly the same way as an apple grows out of the apple tree. 
• Because of these two theories...(Genesis and scientific materialism/neutonian physics)  we come to believe we are not of this world.
• We come to believe that: Only you yourself exist inside your skin?
• We are not a result of the big bang...we are the process of the big bang. We are all the primordial energy of the universe but we have learned to define ourselves as seperate from it.
• There are no such things as seperate things or events...that is just a way of talking and thinking  about our expereince. 
• A thing is a noun and a noun is not a thing of nature...it is a figure of speech...a concept
• All energy is wiggly yet we try to capture the wiggly world with a net.  A net is something regular that we can use to measure the wiggle, breaking it up into bits...and these bits of wiggles are things or events. 
• In nature...in the physical world...in reality... the wiggle isn't bitted. 
• We are all as continuous with the physical world as the wave is with the ocean. 
• Our consciousness has been hypnotised and influenced so that we do not feel a part of this continuim...so that we believe we  are just bits of the wiggle. 
• We are nothing but something that happens between the maternity ward and the cremotorium... is what we really believe in the fully automatic model...
• We only go on if the game is worth the gamble. The game is worth the gamble.
• In physics prickly people believe the basis of all matter is particle...the goo people believe the basis of all matter is waves
• If there is any such thing as intelligence and love and beauty  you found it in other ppl. ...it exists in human beings. If it is there in us it is symptomatic of the scheme of things. 
• The earth is not a big rock infested with living  organisims any more than your skeleton is bones infested with cells. 
• This geological entity, Earth, grows people. 
• When as a scientist you describe the behaviour of a human organism you describe what a person does....you cannot define yourself by what this person is inside the skin. Need to describe the environment.
• We really have one system of behaviour.  What I am involves what you are. I don't know who I am unless I know who you are. ...We are not seperate.
• We and our environment and all of us are interdependent systems. 

What you call the external world is as much you as your own body.  Your skin does not seperate you, it is a bridge from which the external world flows into you and you flow into it.

All is well!

Official Alan Watts Org. (2020) Alan Watts-What is Reality? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpHqYnFELLE&t=3175s

The Unspeakable World

But now a great thing in the street

Seems any human nod,

Where shift in strange democracy

The million masks of God

C.K. Chesterton

Imagine seeing behind every human nod...God behind the mask every human wears. Imagine being able to see infinite colour and hear endless sounds. Imagine acting with nothing but inspiration in your heart and absolute stillness in your mind. Imagine experiencing all the things the senses are picking up from this world around you without naming, labelling, or conceptualizing any of it. Imagine. discovering the magic of the most ordinary moment the mind so often ignores. Imagine, seeing no difference between the transcendental world and the everyday world. Imagine fully living in the "Unspeakable world." (Korzybski)

Alfred Korzybski, a polish born engineer and philosopher, also said that " The map is not the territory." ...meaning that the experience of Life cannot be adequately reduced to symbols: language or the mind's interpretation of what the senses are picking up. Life  is not our thoughts. 

Alan Watts tells us in the below linked video:

Just as you have to stop talking to hear what others have to say, you have to stop thinking to find out what life is about.

You can only be truly creative when the mind is still

When you don't name things any longer you start seeing them

Imagine truly "being" in Life instead of just thinking and talking about it.

All is well in my world.

Alan Watts/T & H (August, 2024) Alan Watts For When You Need To Stop Thinking. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVerqpMjYYg

Wikipedia ( January 2025) Alfred Korzybski https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Korzybski

No Shame! No Blame!

 Acknowledgement has great power. ...Merely acknowledge and accept as valid everything that goes on inside you and who you are....Whoever you are at the core, just let yourself be that way....There is an old saying in therapy that captures this principle well: You have got to be where you are to get to where you are going. If you resist and deny where you are and who you are, its hard to move onto where you want to be.

Bill O'Hanlon 

We have tendency when we resist events, what others are doing, or what we are feeling...to shame or blame.  We feel shame for our inadeqauacies or we blame others or Life for theirs. 

I goof up so much in my practice...and sometimes I sink into shame for my lack of evolution or spirituality.  I sometimes blame others for their lack of evolution or spirituality. I am not always very forgiving. If I didn't judge either as "bad, wrong, shouldn't be"  there would be no need for forgiveness...there would just be acceptance and appreciation of being where we are at. 

Hmm! There really is no room for shame or blame in this growth and learning we are here to do as human beings. 

All is well!

Michael A. Singer (January, 2025) Reconnecting with your Natural State of Joy and Love. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6EJWp20Kpg&list=PLyOuAoSmZkKoESr2acNWwhznusbBkKXsT&index=1

Ceasing to Be Distracted by That Which You Are Not

You are in the world doing your thing but you are not...You are literally God descended playing in His universe and you are aware of it every single second...Realization is not a philosophy...you do not have to defend it...you are It.

Michael A. Singer

 I love philsophy because I love to use my thinking mind to contemplate higher ideals. Of course, the more I philosophize, the less I realize and actualize. Sigh.

Philopsphopy, according to what Michael Singer shares in the below linked podcast,  is what your mind does and truth is simply who you are. Philosophy is of the mind and truth is the experience of  reality. As I evolve I am seeking truth over a philosophy. (But I am still drawn to philosophy!) 

I have, obviously, been intrigued by yoga philosophy for many years. The yoga philosophy did not come from mind...but some very great being who sat down one day and all of a sudden had the realization that they were the one that was looking at things and not what they were looking at. This is experiencing reality directly.

You are not going to know consciousness by thinking about it or looking away from it to what it is looking at. No one can know consciousness more than you can.  Why? Because you are it

Why don't we know this consciousness that we are? Because we are distracted away from it into the drama of a self concept called "me". Our "me" is riddled with samskaras that block the realization of who we are.  We need to cleanse away these samskaras.  

Cleansing means knowing that stuff stored inside needs to come up ...don't hav eto go down to pull it up...just need to let it come up ...just let go of your stuff

That way we can become free of the distractions and instead of being pulled into the play of thought and emotion we can stay where we are and have always been: In the Seat of Consciousness.  We begin to experience truth directly.  That is yoga.

All is well.

Michael A. Singer/ Temple of the Universe/ Sounds True (December, 2024) Beyond Philosophy: Experiencing the Truth of Consciousness. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xj8GD_JXL6U&list=PLyOuAoSmZkKoESr2acNWwhznusbBkKXsT&index=1