When was the last time you said, "I am happy," or "I am angry," or "I am frustrated"? When was the last time you explained your state of being as caused by a reaction in your mind to something that happened outside of you? "You made me angry." "He infuriates me." "I can't take her anymore." Most of us say things like this to ourselves and others pretty constantly.
Try This First: A 60-Second Exercise
Before reading any further, take just a moment and close your eyes. Allow the breath to slow and bring the awareness of your breath low in your abdomen, below your belly button. Just anchor there for a few seconds. Then, very deliberately, start repeating the word HATE over and over in your mind. Hate. Hate. Hate. Hate. Keep repeating it for about 30 seconds. Then stop. Return to your breath for a moment and then start repeating the word LOVE. Over and over. Love. Love. Love. Love. Do that for 30 seconds. Then return to your breath for a few moments.
Do you notice a difference in the way your body feels between the two words? How does each 30 seconds make your chest feel? Your stomach? Your head? Your shoulders? For most of us, hate causes contraction, tightening, while love causes opening, expansion, a loosening of tension. What about your emotional state? How did you feel during the repetition of hate and love? If you've forgotten already, do it again — it's only a 60-second exercise. How does your mind feel? What thoughts, images, memories, feelings arise from the simple repetition of the word?
For most of us, the word hate makes us think of those we hate — the anger, the grudges, the competition, the pain from our present or past. Love tends to make us feel soft and warm, like butter melting gently. We think of those we love. We feel warm, held, safe.
What This Reveals About You
I share this specific exercise for two critical reasons. First: our thoughts, emotions, mind, and body are intricately linked. There is no separation. It is one organism. The neurotransmitters flooding synapses in our brains are speaking directly and loudly to the walls of our intestines, to our immune system, to our adrenal glands sitting on our kidneys. So nothing is ever "just in the mind." We must watch our thoughts, protect our thoughts, tend to our thoughts just as much — or even more — than we mind what we eat and drink and the air we breathe.
But the second reason is perhaps even more critical and, from a spiritual perspective, far more important. It is this: YOU are not your thoughts or your mind. YOU were there whether hate or love was being repeated. YOU were the conductor, not the instrument being played. YOU were the one saying, "okay, now time to return to the breath," or "now time to switch words." YOU were the one in charge.
I didn't provide any esoteric or advanced training or techniques. Yet I imagine every one of you was able to do that. The ability to determine what we think, how we think, and the state of our minds is an inherent part of our human capacity. This is what neuroscience calls "emotional regulation" and what the yogis have called sakshi — witness consciousness — for thousands of years. Practices like mindfulness work because we have the built-in ability to turn our focus to whatever we want — whether it's our breath, the bottoms of our feet, the raisin we're eating, the feeling of the fan blowing across our cheek, or the ever-changing state of our minds.
If we are the watcher — the witness consciousness, the one who is aware — then by definition we are not the mind.
Most of us don't realize this simple truth of our own existence. We say "I am angry." Or "I am depressed." Or "My mind won't sit still." Or "I can't control my temper." Or my anxiety. Or my addiction. But what our rishis, sages, mystics, and yogis have been telling us for thousands of years — and what I hope you just experienced in the exercise — is that our minds ARE in our hands, as long as we are paying attention.
In order to recite hate or love, or switch from one to the other, I have to be present, aware, deliberate, paying attention. If left to my subconscious or unconscious programming, my mind will do what it's been programmed to do over the 55 years of my life, particularly during the first ten or twelve years and even influenced by the impressions of past lives. It will judge. It will criticize. It will discriminate. It will tell me I'm not good enough. It will convince me that there isn't enough time, money, opportunity, love — and so, yeah, I better be stressed out.
But that's not ME. Any more than the words hate or love are me. The subconscious script is what our brains pick up during the formative years of life — from our families of origin, our educational systems, our culture, our experiences, what we hear, see, learn. And then it plays on autopilot for the rest of our lives.
We are not the mind any more than we are the songs on a tape cassette or CD or mp3 we listen to. One is broadcasting outside of us, entering via our ears. The other is broadcasting inside of us — the words have been internalized and our brain has become the tape player. But we are no more the internal thoughts than we are the tape cassette.
Going Deeper: The Five-Minute Practice
A simple five-minute mindfulness practice will give you another example of this. Just sit with your eyes closed and back straight. You can sit in a chair with your feet firmly on the floor or cross-legged on the ground. Bring the awareness to the breath as it flows in and out, anchored low in your abdomen. This time don't repeat anything. Just be aware. Notice what thoughts are arising. Don't get caught up in them. Don't attach to them or follow them or become interested in them. Just notice them as they blow across your consciousness like wispy clouds blowing across a blue sky on a windy day. Keep the awareness focused on the blue sky between the clouds — the pure awareness between the thoughts.
After five minutes of this you will likely feel quite embarrassed. It happens to all of us. To see the pathetic state of our minds — what we think about, what arises, where our minds go — is humbling if you've never noticed it before. Don't worry. It's the nature of what our scriptures call the monkey mind.
But the key is to realize that you are not that monkey mind. You are the one who was watching it. You are, metaphorically, the one lying on your back in the sand on a beach, watching the blue sky as the clouds blow by. You are the one shining the light of awareness on the rise and fall of the breath and the arrival and departure of thoughts in the mind. If you don't hook your awareness into them, most thought bubbles pop in a matter of seconds.
My Personal Experience With This
I used to identify fully with my mind. I thought I WAS the intelligence and WAS the depression, WAS the A+ answer and WAS the suffering. I thought I WAS the fear, the stress, the academic prowess, and the psychological anguish. When my mind was excelling in my PhD program, I was great — worthy, valuable, enough. When my mind was spiraling, I was a mess. I was unworthy.
What I learned is that every thought or emotion or feeling arising in my mind was there due to what had been absorbed by my brain — like the itchy, blotchy, red skin that comes from too much UV absorbed by the skin. Or the state of digestion due to what the gut has absorbed — too much fat or sugar or alcohol. The state of your skin or the state of your digestion is no more YOU than the state of the chemical and electrical patterns of activity happening in the brain.
The One Who Was Always Watching
This is what the ancient Vedic and yogic tradition calls sakshi — the witness, the observer self, the silent one who is aware, who is watching, who notices. Anchoring our sense of identity in that pure, unchanging, unchangeable light of awareness is the key — not only to emotional and mental health, not only to healing anxiety, depression, and the endless turbulence of the monkey mind — but to freedom itself.
The technique is not complicated. It is simply a shift in the direction we are looking. Most of us identify with the mind and look OUTward onto the world around us. We identify as the state of the mind looking out. What we see and experience in the world around us makes us angry or happy, satisfied or resentful, lustful or repulsed, exuberant or grief-stricken. But if we simply shift our locus standi — the place from which we are watching and the direction of our watchfulness — then instead of being the mind looking out, we become the watcher of the mind itself. We scoot back from our seat in the mind into what you might think of as a backstage seat, or the seat from the balcony, watching the machinations of the mind itself. Watch it make up stories. Watch it contract in anger. Watch it expect and anticipate. Like watching different actors play different roles in a drama.
There is a teaching that says: mana eva manushyanam karanam bandha mokshayoh. It means: the mind alone is the cause of both bondage and liberation. Fuse with its monkey nature and you live in constant bondage. Extricate yourself from that identification and — through re-identifying as the knower of the mind, the witness consciousness, the observer self — set yourself free.
