Chapter One: The mind

Chapter One - The Mind: Did you know that you experience up to 100,000 thoughts per day? Most of us wouldn’t either believe this statistic or realize that our minds are constantly being bombarded with thoughts to that degree. To add to this, a majority of them are negative. In this chapter, we explore the mind’s tendencies, how to better manage and use our minds, and why it is so important to just be cognizant of the realities of what is going on with our mind day to day.

Transcript

Chapter One

The Mind

Positive affirmation: My mind is a gift that was given to me for my use. The quality of my life is determined by the choices I make … not the thoughts in my head. 

Getting out of our thinking minds is one of our greatest challenges. All our lives we are taught to think and are praised for it. We are told what to think, how to think, and to keep on thinking. Being able to set down our mind is just as important as being able to use it. Being a great thinker does not lead us to happiness or peace. If it could, our planet would be in great shape. In my study of psychology, I have learned that scientists have discovered that our genes predispose us to multitudes of preferences. Our personal psychology, what we pick up from our family and external influences tell us how and what to think in every moment of our lives. Between our genes and our programming, the voices in our heads sometimes become an obnoxious, outspoken guest that demands all our attention. 

There is, of course, a place for thinking. And we need to think. It is a valuable resource that utilizes our experiences and training. It is also equally important to be able to not think. In this three-part chapter, we will explore the difference between thoughts and thinking, how not to be affected by our thoughts, and the natural tendencies of the mind. With some simple tools, we can learn how to set our minds down.

I start this first chapter by talking about the mind. Growing up, I was soft-hearted. What would be a mild upset for some was very bothersome to me. I was sensitive, caring, and full of emotion. Later, at the height of my struggles, I was deeply lost in my thoughts and thinking. My mind had become an elaborate maze, and the walls had grown too tall to see over. My world felt like it was closing in on me. By my early twenties, I was desperate and suicidal. My crowded mind was full of fears, insecurities, and a propensity to lash out in anger. 

Getting out of my troubling thoughts became a real need for me, but understanding my mind and emotions proved to be a challenging task. I learned a great deal of what I talk about in this chapter from my time with the Ishaya monks. Learning from them brought a great deal of balance to the landscape of my mind.

Chapter One contains some valuable keys to your journey toward experiencing peace and self-empowerment. By applying the tools shared in this chapter, you could experience a radical shift in consciousness. Don’t be fooled by the simplistic nature of the concepts shared here. This is only the groundwork required for you to digest the deeper concepts that will come later in this book. 

Part One: Thoughts and Thinking

For years, I was at war with myself. When I decided to set down my mind, the war was over. You can only leave the battlefield when you begin looking into the mind and understanding its parts.

Thoughts and thinking are two completely different things. Thoughts come into your mind. You have no control over their frequency or their quality. The easiest way to illustrate this is to ask yourself: “What is my next thought?” You cannot predict that. You can decide what you are going to think about—you can even decide how long you will think about a topic— but you have no control over what thoughts are going to come to you. 

The nature of thoughts is that they may be untrue, unreal, or even other people’s thoughts.

Untrue Thoughts

Some of your thoughts may contain lies you have been told or lies you have told yourself that have become your truth. It’s like telling a story in a circle of people. By the time the story gets back to you, it has changed. We do this in our minds as we rethink old stories. Sometimes our thoughts change. They can change enough that they become untrue in the process. If you tell yourself subtle lies, over time you will come to believe these lies. But we can avoid doing this by taking some time to review our thoughts before they become our beliefs. For example, when I struggled with insecurity, I had many thoughts that re-enforced my insecurities. I had thoughts running through my mind like, “Nobody likes me” or “I’ll never be good enough.” These thoughts were not true. 

Remember, just because you think that something is a certain way, doesn’t make it so. 

Unreal Thoughts

The mind has a strong propensity to throw you into the past or the future. You can spend a lifetime talking to yourself about the past and the future. If what you are thinking about is not happening now, categorize it as unreal and set it down. Fears and catastrophic thinking tend to fall into this category of thoughts. Our mind can create elaborate scenarios, all of which may not be happening. The following quotation by President-elect James A. Garfield illustrates what I’m talking about.

“I remember the old man who said he had had a great many troubles in his life, but the worst of them never happened.”

James A. Garfield 

Other People’s Thoughts

A portion of your thoughts may be someone else’s words that you have been replaying in your mind for years. You may not even notice that those thoughts originated from someone else’s words. Once you realize this, it becomes much easier to let go of them each time they return. 

I was taught by the Ishaya Monks that: “Your mind has thousands of thoughts a day and will experience 60 to 80 % of the same thoughts, day in and day out.”

You are programmed to be a good thinker, but you were not taught to let your thoughts go, or that you don’t need to respond to every thought you have. You tend to grab every thought that comes to mind but, in truth, very few of your thoughts are even worth your attention. 

It is a staggering fact that 60 to 80 per cent of your thoughts are thoughts you also had yesterday, as if they are stuck on repeat. Daily, you have enough thoughts to create a small novel. Let’s think about that for a minute. Would you read the same novel every day of your life? That is what you do in your mind every day without even knowing it. When the same things are repeated daily, they can become an addiction over time. 

The word “addiction” is usually associated with substance abuse, but addictions are not limited to just drug usage. I define addiction as a habit you can no longer control, including compulsive acts, behaviours, and thought patterns. Overthinking and replaying the same thoughts daily is an addiction, since it is a habit you no longer have control over. Anything to which you have conditioned yourself through repetition may be an addiction to you. When you no longer feel that you have a choice, you have become disempowered. 

Furthermore, every thought you have creates a feeling. The body responds with a chemical process and, over time, you become dependent on the chemicals that are released during repetitive experiences. An example of this is how you feel when a friendship or a relationship comes to an end. Even if you are the one who has ended the relationship, it can still be a difficult experience. You have an awkward feeling the first time you wake up alone, and you feel deprived when not spending time with that person. Change can feel very odd, like a discomfort in your own skin. This sensation is your body craving the chemicals experienced when you were with that person. 

            Stopping your thoughts is impossible; however, you can change your relationship to them. Examining your thoughts and making changes in your mental landscape challenges the structure of your mind. By changing one thought, you can change or challenge several supporting thoughts. This can cause you to feel uncertain or even unstable while you adjust your beliefs. During these periods of uncertainty, I encourage you to embrace loving yourself. Make time for something that feeds your soul. 

Part Two: Learning How to Not Be Affected by Your Thoughts

When you have been having the same thoughts for years, it can be very difficult to suddenly stop yourself from thinking in certain ways or replaying the same stories in your mind. Your closest friends or family members may be happy if you stop telling your stories but, for you, it can be very difficult. The stories in your head may never grow old, mainly because you play the lead role. However, to others, your stories may be like nails on a chalkboard. 

The key is to notice your repetitive thoughts. What is occupying your mind? Are those thoughts worth keeping? The answer can be very enlightening. Taking inventory of your mind is a great practice. You may be alarmed by all your negative thoughts, but when you discover what is going on between your ears, you will recognize that you need to change your relationship with your thoughts. You will see that the contents of your mind are not only self-deprecating but also deeply disempowering. 

            What you think about has an impact on your consciousness and the degree to which you are empowered. Holding thoughts that are not rooted in truth only takes you away from your ability to become strong and empowered. The following chart is a useful tool in identifying which of your thoughts are empowering and which are disempowering. It can be used as a tool to bring greater awareness into your life. 

How to Use the Chart

First, identify a specific issue that you want to overcome. Then locate where your issue is on the chart. Go to the top chart and embrace one of the words you find as a way to rise above your current situation. 

For example: You are feeling anxious about going shopping at the mall. Anxiety is located on the bottom chart. Now go to the above chart, “Empowering Emotions and Mindsets,” and find a word or words you can identify with around your situation. You can replace “anxiety” and embrace your situation with “trust” or “courage” instead—or any other word located in the above section. In your mind you can say: “I trust that I will be alright during my time in the mall today” or “I have the courage to face the mall.” This sets up a positive affirmation for you to empower yourself. It gives you a way out. 

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Overcoming my self-defeating thoughts was liberating. My mind was swimming with judgements toward myself. I felt being overweight meant that I would never have a girlfriend and that I was worthless. I was drowning in my mind. The irony here is that I didn’t have a problem finding a partner. In my youth, I was convinced that I wasn’t good enough for my partners. I had a strong belief that my girlfriends were going to cheat on me. This caused me to hang on for dear life, because I felt like my options were slim to none if I became single again. Changing the dynamic in my mind created a shift for me. It wasn’t easy to adapt this new outlook, but I knew it was an essential one for me to get control of.

A Way Out

When an unwanted thought drops into your mind, just let it be. Instead of thinking about it, just watch it. Resist the urge to talk back to it or to even feel the thought. This can be tricky. Remember, it is not the thought itself that is the problem. Allowing yourself to feel the thought is what releases the flood of chemicals in your body. When you stop yourself from thinking about or feeling a thought, you slowly change the relationship you have with that thought/feeling. 

Over time, you will rewire your brain. You don’t have control over what thoughts come to you, but you do have control over what you think about. Thinking is the voice in your head that is talking to the thoughts that have dropped in to visit you. Many people think the voice that is talking back to their thoughts is who they are. The voice in your head is not you. Thinking happens by choice. It can be stopped at any time you choose.

Note: For those who live with untreated chemical imbalances, this next part may be difficult or impractical. I caution you, however, do not dismiss this information to support your own disempowerment.

People will often say, “I can’t stop thinking.” The truth is you will not stop thinking. That is a choice you are making. Just as walking, sitting, and standing are choices, so is thinking. It is easy to claim defeat before you even try. People often use the word “can’t” when they mean “won’t.” The truth is, though, they don’t want to change or are not ready to commit to change. Allowing your brain to control your life is a complete misuse of it. You were given a brain for your use. My question is: Are you using it, or is it using you? When it comes to retraining yourself to stop thinking about your thoughts, be sure to love yourself through all your changes. You can have a radical shift in your mind; however, for most this is a gradual shift that takes place.

Think of it this way. Suppose that, every time you got into your car, it decided where you were going to go. Is that car of any use to you? The same goes for your brain. You can choose where you want it to take you. You have the power to direct your mind and, in doing so, it becomes a valuable tool for you to use.

Think of your mind as a screen onto which your thoughts are projected. When your relationship with your thoughts is healthy, you don’t get lost in the screen. Thoughts come and go, but when you lose a healthy balance with your thoughts, there is a tendency to grab hold of every thought that comes into your mind. Every thought sticks like glue. After days, weeks, and even years of attaching yourself to your thoughts, you can lose sight of the fact that your thoughts are separate from you. When this happens, the line of where you end and your thoughts begin gets blurred. Eventually, you begin to think that you are your thoughts. When you reduce yourself to a voice in your head, you significantly underestimate the depth of who you really are. 

Your true self is found under the voice in your head. It is by going deeper into yourself that you discover a greater depth to your existence.

Discovering What Was Beneath My Mind

Being an artist has given me many opportunities to be still and go deeper into myself. During these times, I experienced a quiet space inside of me. Some call it The Zone, Getting in the Gap, Silence, or The Stillness. It is all the same thing. It is a deep, meditative state that I fell into during my artistic endeavours. 

As a child, I was first introduced to the silence during my visits with my grandmother. She was deaf, so her home was very quiet. While visiting her, I would just sit in silence as she often did. By doing so, I discovered that there was a comfortable, silent place inside me. These were peaceful times during my adolescence.  

Then, during my early twenties, my discontent with life grew stronger, as did my growing angst toward the world. Simultaneously, I started to have deep internal experiences where time and space slipped away. Ironically, this was happening during a period when I felt the most frustrated and angry. 

These moments of timelessness first started to occur while I was tattooing my clients. I started to notice the disappearance of time and space. If I stayed with the experience long enough, it transformed into moments of bliss. While tattooing, I managed to step out of my mind and rest in the presence of the moment.  However, the experience would always fade away after my client left and I returned to the busyness of my mind. 

These events were very jarring when they first started to happen, as they were in huge contrast to my internal experience. I was very volatile at that time and suffered from bouts of depression.  I hid my depression from everyone, and it became the dark secret that lived below my anger. It was frustrating to fluctuate between these deep experiences and my anger, so in an effort to make sense of what was happening, I began to write poems about these experiences.

These blissful moments were changing me. During these brief experiences, I was no longer identifying with the thoughts in my head. I was able, for a moment, to disassociate with my thoughts, causing me to find a much truer sense of self inside of me. But at the time, I didn’t have a guide to help me. 

By removing the belief that the thoughts in your head are you, you create distance between you and the thoughts. From this place, it is much easier to let the thoughts go. It is not you that you are letting go of. It is just a thought that is flowing through you.

If you suddenly had no thoughts or stopped thinking, you wouldn’t cease to exist; therefore, it must follow that your thoughts don’t make up who you are. The dis-identification from your thoughts neutralizes the experience of your thoughts. They are now happening in you, not to you. From that place, your thoughts become more of a matter of fact, or a non-event in your experience. This opens you for a deeper experience. By letting go of what you are not, you gain access to who and what you really are.

A practice to create space between you and your thoughts is to pretend that your mind is a movie screen. Much like in a movie theatre, your thoughts are projected onto your mind. When the theatre lights come on after the show, the movie has no effect on the screen. It is completely unaffected by what was projected onto it. 

When your thoughts are projected onto your mind, you don’t have to be affected by them. If you remain neutral and unaffected by them, you have the power to respond to your thoughts rather than react to them. When you allow the insignificant thoughts to just bounce off you, your mind remains clear and ready to better interpret the present. It allows you to see a much bigger picture, giving you the ability to focus better because you are only concentrating on one thing, not a mind-full.

Part Three: The Nature of the Mind

The mind tends to think in a linear fashion where everything happens in a straight line and progressive manner. It likes order and to have things unfold in an orderly manner. Life, though, does not work in a linear progression. Instead of going from A to B and B to C, it moves more like A to R to H to Q. Life is a non-sequential event that rarely fits into the context of your mind; however, your mind will reorganize what it interprets to fit into a linear progression. This helps it to make sense of things. 

Once the mind reorganizes things into a linear progression, it then projects its assumptions and judgements and tries to predict what is going to happen next. But it rarely succeeds in its attempts. If people truly possessed this skill, it would make gambling much more entertaining and rewarding. 

By not judging and predicting outcomes, you allow yourself to see what is really happening from one moment to the next. When you relieve your mind of this duty, you eliminate a great many of your thoughts. This helps you relax into the unfolding experience. It is a good practice to be optimistic and real with what is happening during your day. By doing so, you are less likely to fall prey to expectation. Life rarely produces what you expect. Predicting outcomes before they arise sets you up for expectation. Expectation will frequently leave you either disappointed or upset. 

A Visit from a Friend

One day a friend dropped by. I was angry about something a person had said to me, so I immediately apologized for my mental state. When I told my guest I was angry, he said, “What did you expect?” 

This baffled me, so I asked him what he meant. 

Again he repeated, “What did you expect?” Then he said, “You’re angry, right?” 

 “Yes,” I answered 

“You must have expected something to go a certain way,” he replied, “and when it didn’t, you became angry. Anger is unfulfilled expectation.” 

It felt like he took the thoughts right out of my head. Not only did his words apply to that scenario, but when I look back at most of the things that make me angry or make my blood boil, these are the grounds for my upsets. I expect something to go my way, and when it doesn’t, I get mad. This incident gave me insight into how to avoid most of the upsets in my life. 

The Dysfunctional Rooms in Your Mind 

Your mind is made up of many rooms. What you fill your rooms with is unique to your life and your experiences. These rooms pull you in and steal all your attention. But decluttering your mind can take time, depending on how many rooms you have created and how full they have become. All the rooms below represent things that disempower you if they are out of balance. 

1. The money room

It is practical to have a healthy relationship with your money room, but the money room likes to draw you in to worry about money. Still, some people will go to great lengths to feel safe in this room. When they feel that money is out of their reach, they will spend a great deal of time sitting in this room, worrying and fussing about their money or lack thereof. Other people don’t worry whether they have money or if they don’t have it. 

2. The self-image room

For some people, the self-image room can be an elaborate room full of things, while for others it might be just a closet. The elaborate, overcrowded room will be full of voices saying things like “You need to have a great body, nice clothes, expensive jewellery, and cars.” 

In this room, you will sometimes feel good and other times you will feel badly. While visiting this room, you will notice your wrinkles, lumps, and bumps. You will find little tiny hairs growing in the most unusual places, and you will find discoloured spots in unwanted spaces. It can chatter your ear off all day about your defects, things that nobody will ever notice or even care about. A nice haircut and colour and some spiffy duds might make you feel like you are the master of this room, but any mishap, like a spill on your shirt, could make you a slave to it. This room can burn up a great deal of your time and energy and drain your money room dry in the process. 

3. The lemming room

There is a little monster living in this room that demands you follow all of life’s protocols, like moving out, getting married, have kids, hating your life, or working at an unfulfilling job. It also requires you to conform to all the expectations of your family and friends, like keeping up with the Joneses and submitting to gender roles. To top it all off, this room has a special coating that completely blocks out the voice in your heart.

4. The sex/addiction/pleasure room

The sex/addiction/pleasure room can get you into all kinds of trouble and awkward situations. For some people, it can also cause inappropriate behaviour or steal away precious time and energy from important aspects of their lives. The efforts you will go through to satisfy the demands of this room can greatly diminish your self-empowerment. What makes you feel in control in one moment can turn around and be the thing that controls you in the next. Having this room under control can be a great asset to enjoying your relationship room. 

5. The relationship room

This room is where you store all your relationship baggage, all the dysfunctional ideas and conditioning you carry from one relationship to the next. It is full of all kinds of stories about relationships and all your distorted and complex needs, most of which are not even close to being practical for a healthy relationship with another human. The skills required to having a great relationship with this room are really simple, as you learned most of the things you need to know in kindergarten. Play fair and be nice.

6. The fear room

This room can be a very cluttered space that takes up a large portion of your mind. You can collect many fears over the duration of your life; however, most of them will be illogical, because this room has the power to invoke your imagination like no other. Thoughts that are not true, real, or yours can grow into phobias or cause you to become paranoid, leaving you powerless in the process. Not only can this be the largest room in your mind, it can have a closet in all the other rooms. The fear room in one’s mind can disempower the strongest person. 

7. The guilt and suffering room

The guilt and suffering room is a great hall of disempowerment. This room holds all kinds of whips to punish yourself with. It also holds your most self-defeating thoughts, which will leave you feeling worthless. These two emotions will deplete your energy and, if you spend any amount of time in this room, it can greatly diminish your life force. 

These are just a few of the common rooms that we all share. If you are to learn to transcend the mind, you must take power over all the different rooms living in your head.

Transcending the Mind

The mind has an insatiable appetite for knowledge, and it wants to keep having thoughts and thinking about them without ever stopping. The only way to subdue the mind’s thirst is to do the unthinkable … STOP THINKING. 

When you allow your thoughts to pass through you without giving them your attention, your relationship with the mind begins to change. You may always have thousands of thoughts a day, but, with practice, you can learn to not think about every thought that comes to you. This will be a very liberating experience for you.

What’s Holding You Back from Transcending Your Mind? 

Your mind can hold things beyond the expiry date. As milk expires when left too long, so do some of the thoughts you keep. Mental house cleaning is a good practice. It sets you free from thoughts and memories that are keeping you stuck in the past. Your mind can be conditioned to be healthy or unhealthy. 

Getting out of the mind may be one of the most challenging things we face; however, it offers great reward. Life is peaceful and quiet outside of your mind. The mind is the barrier to your freedom. By making the choice to set it down, you remove the barrier and set yourself free. You do this by exercising the choice to stop the dialogue in your mind. When you talk back to your thoughts, who are you talking to? Your true self resides beneath your mind, it holds the wisdom of your purpose and what to do from one moment to the next. Your life does not require a running commentary. 

Don’t take my word for it … try this out for yourself and see what you experience. Remember, your mind can only perceive life, but your heart experiences it. By letting go of your mind, you are free to drop into your heart and flow with life rather than reducing your life to a voice in your head. 

It is true, you can stop thinking.

Tools to Deepen Your Experience of This Chapter

1. Take inventory of your thoughts. Start documenting all the different thoughts you have. 

2. Once you have worked at this for a few days, look at what you have written and identify which thoughts are untrue, unreal, or not yours. Notice what thoughts you get caught up in. This is a great exercise for you to get to know what’s happening in your mind.

3. Just watch your thoughts. Try this out for an hour or even a day. When you notice that you have started to think about the thoughts in your head, just gently return to watching your thoughts as if they are a movie. When I refer to “watching your thoughts,” I mean you don’t get to talk to them or even silently think about them either.

4. Pretend that your mind is a movie screen. Everything you see and hear is being projected on you like a movie. As in the above lesson, just watch the movie, but this time, include everything happening around you. 

5. Pay attention to how your mind pre-determines outcomes before they happen. This happen a lot in situations that you are most familiar with, like at work and with family. When you notice that you are doing this, be willing to stop and return to the moment. Keep working at stopping yourself from leaving what is happening in front of you. When your mind starts to pre-determine an outcome, you have left the presence of this moment.

6.  Do you have things that make you angry or frustrate you on a regular basis? If so, practice removing your expectations and see if this changes your experience.

7. Take some time and make a list of the things you think might be out of date in your beliefs and thoughts.