Friend: Hi Magdi,
Can you say more about the nature of the mind?
When you say – monitoring the mind and its tendencies – I
start thinking of the mind as a separate thing that needs monitoring(!).
Which leads to the question who or what am I if I’m different from my mind?
Sometimes I feel like I would like to lose my mind – but
in a good way! That’s assuming that it actually exists.
Are there stages of understanding at play here?
Thanks
Dear friend,
By the mind I refer to thoughts, sensations and perceptions. You are not the mind as you are the witness, the knowingness of the mind. Thoughts and sensations are appearances that arise to you and dissolve in you, the vastness of Being Awareness.
Given ignorance, which is the mistaken belief that I am the body mind born in time and space, the mind is polluted and infected with the virus of separation. The mind is impersonating the Self by believing that the body mind is the reality of the Self.
Due to this usurpation, thoughts, sensations and feelings are misleading you in believing that you are a form in time and space surrounded with external objects.
You monitor the mind like you monitor your body temperature when you have a fever. When thoughts arise which are referring to a separate you and a separate other, you may notice the negative emotions and therefore you refrain from going deeper into that rabbit hole.
You remain alert to the mind since you are its witness and its guide. When judgmental thoughts arise, whether they are judging yourself or another, a student of the Way engages Viveka, discriminating between the false and the real by dropping the false.
In dropping the false, you remain as you are, the formless Aware Presence, the Self of Isness.
You say that sometimes you like to lose your mind. The mind is a useful tool. Thoughts and sensations are important guides. Instead of being interested in losing the mind, the student of the Way contemplates losing ignorance and looks deeply into the belief that I am born and that I am this separate body self.
Contemplate the teachings and allow them to guide you. There is no distant goal to attain.
You are the Self. All is the Self.
Relax into this knowingness like the relaxation between the inhalation and exhalation. Live with simplicity and openness. Let go of old patterns by choosing to live as the transparency and not as the past character you imagine yourself to be. Be watchful not to personalize yourself. Allow the Self to be the absence, the innocence, the not-knowingness that it is.
Live according to the highest virtues and principles.
Love, M
