What my mind throws up is not ME

Meditation helps us to achieve a peaceful mind, stable mind and equanimity.

This is important because it is through our mind that we experience “suffering” (I prefer the word dissatisfaction). Through our mind we experience our problems, our stress, guilt, fear.

The nature of our mind is constant mindstream. Which is why it is not correct when people say “meditation is to empty the mind”. It's not possible to empty our mind. We can calm it, we can concentrate our attention on a single object like our breath, for example, but if you find your mind is completely empty, you should see someone about it. :)

It is simply not the nature of our mind to be empty.

Two things about mindfulness meditation and our mindstream are important to remember:

1.) Thoughts do not define us, and

2.) Thoughts are not real.

Most people take what's happening in the mind very seriously. We pay huge attention to our mind. We take all our thoughts at face value – even fabricate whole stories around them. And then we make those concrete.

If we sit still for 5 mins, we'll quickly see that our mind keeps throwing things up – thoughts, feelings, impulses, sensations, emotions. In meditation we call this alaya, or alaya-vijnana. Directly translated it means “storehouse consciousness”. Alaya - our mindstream - works even when we are asleep.

Even though it's with us day in and day out - and although we are taught many skills from when we are at school, we are never taught how to deal with this mindstream.

And because we are not fully mindful of what is happening in our own head, we do not always fully understand how our mindstream influences our actions, reactions, perceptions, perspective – we believe what we think. It defines us, we think what we think is real.

We also don’t always fully understand - or are not always fully aware of - how our mind projects what we feel inside onto the world outside. We see the world the way we are. Not the way the world really is. We see things through our filters of past experience.

The whole purpose of meditation, then, is to understand our own mind - and consequently the world around us.

One of the first things that's really important to understand about meditation - and as a “direct experience” (not just hearing the words but actually feeling it and understanding it in the heart, in the gut) is that what’s happening in our mind is not us.

What my mind throws up is NOT ME…… Crazy? For some people this is a complete revelation. We are separate from our mind? Yes, we are.

When our mind throws up fear, guilt, shame, anxiety, planning, remembering, we then think “I AM” those things. We feel like it’s in the fabric of us.

How often have you heard someone say “I am an anxious person, that just who I am”.

We get caught up in our fleeting thoughts (because they are fleeting) and the feelings they cause, and we identify with them, even taking them to be who we are.

In meditation we learn that whatever our mind – alaya – throws at us, this is not ME. I am not these things. These feelings are not me, these impulses are not me, these imaginings are not me, I am not these things. I am separate from them.

(Exercise: what would your answer be if someone asks me “Who are you?” What do you identify with? Your name, your job? Your personality? Your problems? The role you play as mother, father, sister, brother, head accountant at XYZ company, etc.? And if you were not that tomorrow, what would you be?)

Secondly, we learn to watch what our mind throws up without judgment. That's really important, because we are often judgmental about ourselves. We learn to observe and have a balanced acceptance of what is being thrown up by our mind. We learn to accept whatever is going on so we can work with it. (that comes later)

Thirdly, we use meditation to learn to balance our mindstream without reacting. We merely observe. For the purpose of training our mind to be the observer, not getting caught up in our stories. In this way we can begin to understand our habits, our tendencies, our self-talk, our stories. And we begin to recognise that we don't have to follow our thoughts. We don't have to get caught up in our old stories.

The way to change – to solve our moods, our problems etc. doesn’t mean we have to work like a slave to change our inner landscape, or the people around us, or the place we live in, or the job we have.

Rather it involves a subtle shift in how we pay attention to all of those things.

Mindfulness meditation is not the amount of thoughts you have or don’t have, and it's not about the thought itself. Its our awareness of the thought.

_/\_

See you next week!

Mx