– I am going to explain something very important to you – my guide said seriously. It's also complicated so I want you to pay attention.
– Another cause of human conflict and the main reason for his suffering is the fact that he lives in his mind. He thinks it's his mind.
Just as he identified with his personality and relates to others only through a mask, always living in the "as if"; likewise, he lives in his mind and living like this is not living at all.
- Wait a minute. If I am not my mind, nor my personality, then who am I?
– You are not your name, nor your history, nor your personality, nor your tastes, nor your expectations, nor your desires, nor your memories, nor the voice you hear in your head, nor the sum of your experiences.
You are not your emotions, or your feelings, or your fears, or your traumas. You are neither your mind, nor your body, nor your ego.
- Then? I'm nothing.
You are what holds it all together. You are the agent that unified all those elements. you are the observer.
- No, well, I'm lost.
– Look, your mind is just a tool. A wonderful mechanism capable of solving thousands of problems, accumulating millions of data, planning for the future and capable of processing incredible amounts of information. A true miracle...
– However, if the man believes that he is his mind, he fills his life with problems, any possibility of being spontaneous is subtracted and he suffers irremediably.
– He also responds blindly to her.
– That's right, as if the servant had become the master and the master did everything the servant ordered.
On the other hand, your mind is full of limitations:
Your mind cannot live in the present; she always jumps between a past and a future, created by herself. Your mind is programmed to compare the information it receives with what it has stored. So, when you try to admire the beautiful sunrise that comes before you, you immediately compare it, "yesterday was more beautiful." You immediately want to fix it, “it could be more orange. “
– And it does it automatically. Without us intervening in the process.
– That's right, the mind is incapable of experiencing reality. The mind interprets, assumes, supposes, deduces, compares. The mind is always influenced by what “should be”, by what “has to be”, by what it “wants to be”, never by what is.
– And how does that make us suffer?
– Your mind cannot realize that the present reality is the only one that exists. That is why you suffer so much, because you imagine that reality can be otherwise because reality does not fit the image that your mind has created.
Suffering is nothing other than not accepting what is.
– Another example please?
Imagine a person who for some reason is losing his sight. Your mind tells you, “How is this possible? Why me? Something must be done… This is not fair… I must be paying something, etc., etc. “
While this is happening and due to the dialogue of his mind he suffers tremendously.
The dreaded day arrives and, after the adaptation period, the person who loses his sight accepts reality and begins to take action on it. Accepting reality, suffering ends.
– Not accepting what happens is the path to frustration.
– Worry, anguish, resentment, remorse, guilt and stress do not exist in the present, they are emotions created by your mind using past events or imagining events in the future.
– But it is almost impossible to avoid them.
– Of course because the mind, the slave, gives orders to you, who are the master. And since you don't know that he stole your place, you answer verbatim.
– But then, do we accept everything that happens without doing anything?
- Nope! Acceptance is not resignation. Acceptance is to stop fighting with life.
– I'm understanding now.
– Another of the great limitations of your mind is that it hates change. Your mind doesn't want anything to change. This is why situations in your life and relationships seem to repeat themselves over and over again.
And isn't it life itself that repeats itself?
- Nope! That's what your mind makes you believe! Life is infinitely creative, situations never repeat themselves, each meeting is different, each day is full of new possibilities. Your mind repeats the same attitudes over and over again, makes the same decisions and repeats the same situations.
-He loves routine.
-He likes the security of the old. His motto is "better bad to be known than good to be known". Therefore it does whatever it takes to repeat the same results over and over again.
-Even if you don't feel satisfied.
That's right, the mind only cares about surviving. Maintaining the state of things, she is terrified of change, she avoids the unknown at all costs, she is a coward!
-And boring, ruminating over the same thoughts, the same problems, repeating the experiences over and over again. I read a long time ago that the only constant in life is change.
– Do you now see the inconvenience of believing that you are your mind?
- Of course. That is a very limited life. It's like being trapped in a small room and looking at life through a pinhole.
- Very well! The mind is limited by your personality, by your fears, by your traumas. Because of the ego, because of that set of attributes with which you describe yourself. However, your essence, the observer has no limits.
– You said that in my essence is my connection with the divine. Tell me more about that.
– Imagine that you draw a circle and mark the center with a dot. That is your being.
On the perimeter, on the circumference, is your mind and everything that forms it: your personality, your ego, your mask: everything you think you are.
That's where you live now.
In the center of this circle is your consciousness, your essence, the observer, your buddha: what you really are.
You lived there when you were a child.
– Until I was filled with all the garbage that society gave me, with my conditioning.
- Exact. The circumference is very fragile, it is just a bunch of customs, ideas, beliefs. But, since you identified with it, since you live there, you invest all your life energy in defending it, in polishing it, in improving it.
In the circumference is your internal dialogue, the annoying little voice that you always hear in your head; that worries you, anguishes you, drives you crazy.
There are all those things that you think you need, all those neurotic games with which you relate to others.
In the superficial you are always, or remembering and comparing or imagining and preventing. In the past and in the future.
– And in the center?
– Oh, in the center! In the center there is a deep silence. In the center is your observer; your emperor, the one who needs nothing.
In the center you are in the here and now, there is no problem.
In your essence there is nothing to defend, explain, or justify. Nothing to fight for, nothing to prove… just peace.
– And the divine? – I interrupted curious.
– Oh, the divine!…
– Tell me something of the divine! – I asked anxiously seeing that he did not get answers.
– That can't be talked about, there's no point in even trying. The divine you have to feel for yourself.