A man must realise that he is more than his mind if he is to live a full life for himself and his loved ones.
The mind is a tool designed to help your body survive, to regulate your systems, and to filter the information you receive through the five senses.
It can do amazing things. It can store and combine information to make new things. It can recognize patterns and use them to predict what’s going to happen next. But crucially, it keeps you alive.
The mind is a beautiful instrument.
Even while you’re not paying attention, it is still working in the background – looking out for danger, reminding you to breathe, to eat. Most of what it does you’re not even aware of.
The mind creates an identity for itself – the ego.
When you first zap in to consciousness as a child and see yourself in the mirror, you make an automatic assumption. As you become aware of your body and everything around you and your mind starts arranging information for the first time, the mind assumes that this strange thing in the mirror must be you.
It is at this critical moment that the grand delusion occurs. Because the mind cannot see anything other than the body, it assumes that the mind and the body is all there is. From day one, the instrument that was designed to help is now in charge. You become the servant of an identity that your mind has created – the ego.
You can observe the ego.
The reason the ego is called “the false self” is because we are more than just our minds. You might have already felt this before, either by intuition or by accident. It’s that sense of separating yourself from your thoughts and observing them from a distance like you would a toy village.
You can watch thoughts bubble away in your mind, see the questions firing away, senses tingling, and fears zapping around but you are floating somewhere behind all of it and watching quietly.
You might have had glimpses of this state while you were completely relaxed on a beach or rolling in ecstasy with your partner. It’s an escape from the cage and pressure of the mind’s work. Indeed, you might already sense on some level that there is more to you and your experiences than just the ego’s impulses and reactions.
We are more than our minds.
This separate awareness that is watching your mind is calm and non-judgemental. It is your “true self”. You can separate from your ego and watch it as your self. This is your natural state.
The mind is a faithful servant or a destructive master.
With enough practice, you can take power back from your ego. As you observe your thoughts from a distance, decide that the mind’s way does not serve you any more. Once you reach this state, your observing self becomes the driver of your actions and decisions, and your mind – your faithful servant.
The priority of the mind-made ego is survival. The priority of your real self is to have the most vibrant and electric human experience it can. The two can work together but you have to take responsibility for it.
Turn the table on the ego – make it work FOR you, not against you.
Photo: Enrico/Flickr
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