Episode Transcript
We Americans enjoy a wonderful and powerful way of life, but internally and in relationships we may wish for better. Join me as we look beneath the surface and gain insights to transform every aspect of your life. My name is Dr. Anne O'Hare, and this is the Spiritual American. Hello everyone and welcome to the Spiritual American. My name is Dr. Anne O'Hare, and I'm your host. And today we will be talking about the Mind again, but this time we're gonna talk about mastering the Mind or becoming the master of the mind. Wonderful topic. So the first thing that's on my mind is when I say master, let me make clear what I mean by master. I don't mean master like with force or master with violence or master like I'm better than the mind. I'm not better than the mind. I need the mind. How else am I gonna experience anything? Don't we experience things in our mind? So if you look at the conversation, the other episode, all about the mind, it really goes into what is the mind? How does it work? What does it do? And everything. But today, just for the sake of this conversation, I'll just recap it briefly. So the mind is our field of experience. And how do I know that You can have three siblings living in a home and something happens in the home, and if you talk to each of the three siblings, you will get a different account from each one. Maybe some of the details will be the same, but the unique perspective of each of us is different. So that's very important to understand. When we start looking at spiritual practice and we start thinking about using our mind, we need to understand that I am a unique being. There's no one like me. No one can help me in my mind, no one. I have to help myself. This is why sometimes when people start meditating, they get discouraged. Because they sit down to meditate and they feel like, okay, I'm gonna feel more peaceful. I'm gonna help myself. And then their mind goes crazy while they're sitting there trying to meditate and they think, "Well, I guess I can't meditate." That's unfortunate because the mind needs our attention. The mind is suffering. Mind is not disciplined. It's all over the place. It's filled with memories and hurts and ideas and maybe lots of things that maybe aren't serving us. It could also be filled with things that are serving us. It's not all bad. Some things are good, some things are neutral. Like let's say being able to drive a car is kind of a neutral thing going on in my mind. Maybe the information and understanding that I need for my job. Off. That's important. That's also in my mind, so it's not all negative, but certainly when we talk about why do we want to meditate and why do we want to become the master of the mind, it's because we wanna get control over the stuff that's not good or not useful. So I'll start the conversation by when we say the mind, it's a field of experience. It's my unique field of experience. I'm remembering one of our students who was talking about how he gets memories sometimes when he doesn't want to, or painful ideas come when he doesn't want them to. And I'm sure some of you can relate to that. The mind seems to have a mind of its own, so to speak. So I'm gonna talk now about what we can do to be the master of the mind, and part of that is controlling. But first, we're gonna talk about the first step or the first idea about controlling the mind is being able to see the mind. Observe the mind. How can you change something or develop something or transform something if you don't know what it is. Sometimes I say, if your house is a mess and you wanna clean it, you're gonna have to face the dirt. Not that my mind is dirt, but certainly the things that I wanna change maybe are painful or unwanted or something. So I have to face them in order to transform them. How do you face your mind? Meditation. And maybe this is a different way of meditation than you thought of before. Meditation. Sometimes they say, okay, I'm gonna visualize or I'm gonna use a mantra, and it's fine. 'cause even the use of a mantra, the whole context of using a mantra or a word or a phrase that's gonna get you into an experience is that, that word and phrase acts as a trigger for you to get the experience. That's fine. Same thing with a visualization. You can use a visualization to trigger the experience that you want, and that's fine. In this case, I'm talking about using meditation as a method to see the workings of your own mind. What happens when I start watching my mind? So yesterday we had a class and I was saying, just like I just said, that, you know, you sit down to meditate and you have a good idea and you have a good attitude, and you sit down there and your mind's going crazy. You can't focus. I'm thinking of this thing to do, that thing to do. What happened last week? What happened yesterday? What's going on? What am I gonna eat? What's going on with my body? And so forth. It's all going on and I'm not really peaceful and I'm not really paying attention to the meditation that I have playing in front of me. I'm fidgeting in the chair. I'm wondering, how long? How long do I have to do this? All of that is going on in my mind. Sometimes when we sit to meditate, it's so chaotic that the thought is, oh, forget it. I'm not doing this. So for those of you out there that are like that, for first step of Mastering the Mind is having the courage to look at it. And not just look at it any old way because you can look at it with a judgmental, critical, self-critical attitude. I can't believe I'm thinking about this. Why can't I meditate? What's wrong with my mind? What's wrong with me? No, no, no, no. That's not the kind of observation. We're looking for. We're looking for what I sometimes call merciful self-observation. Merciful self-observation. What's mercy? Mercy is I am a little bit detached. I have some distance. I have love, like I care, and I understand what's going on. So merciful self-observation. I'm watching my mind. I'm watching it go here and there. I'm watching, watching, watching, and I'm noticing, let's say I see a thought pattern. Let's say I notice as I'm watching that every day at a certain time or every day at work or whatever, I start having this recurring anxious thinking. And then I can look at that. Maybe when I'm calm and at home and peaceful, I can look at that and say, wait a minute, let me take another look at that. What's going on there? Maybe I can realize why I have that. Maybe I can trace it back to another incident or maybe understand how long it's been there. What is it all about? And maybe, so we call that looking at it like broadening my view of it when I broaden my view, like the past, present, and future of it. Once I start doing that, you'll see it starts to dissipate. There's some science out there that talks about when you start observing something, it automatically changes. We had that thing with the water crystals scientific experiment. I believe there was one where they had just the, just the fact that they were being watched started to change. Then of course, they used different emotions and stuff and it changed the crystals so. Just watching and with the merciful self-observation, I care. I want to get better and I'm not reacting. I'm a little detached, I'm a little bit neutral and I'm watching, I'm trying to get an insight and I'm trying to understand it, trying to understand what's going on. So the first step to mastering the mind is observing merciful self-observation. I want to get better. It takes courage. Maybe you have some traumatic experiences in there. Maybe there's, anxiety, maybe there's depression, maybe there's all kinds of things in there. We had a student yesterday who said that she started meditating and she was depressed, like she had depression and she got off her medication just from meditating. When we start watching, it starts to change. So that's the first step is seeing it, being able to watch, observe, understand, and care with a little bit of detachment. Merciful self-observation, that's the first one. The second one, once we do that for a while and the feelings and everything inside start to feel like, okay. She's not gonna attack, it's not the end of the world. I'm starting to feel a little more comfortable with this daily practice of meditation. Then you can start looking at discipline and a little bit of what we call check and change. What's check and change? I'm, I'm in the practice now of watching my mind. I haven't changed anything yet, but I've been watching. So I know, and I'm trying to understand and I'm starting to understand my feelings. I'm starting to understand my thoughts. I'm starting to understand the patterns of behavior and where they come from and what's going on with me. So now I'm starting to notice that on a regular basis, I'm starting to feel comfortable with that. And now I'm gonna say, okay, I'm ready to start changing something. I wanna change this now. I don't wanna be like this anymore. I actually wanna change it. So this is where we start doing a little bit of transformation or like I said, check and change. So. In the middle of a situation, you may become aware because you're used to observing now. You may become aware that, oh, I feel upset now. Oh, I'm feeling that upset feeling again. Well, maybe I don't wanna automatically go with the upset feeling. Maybe I wanna check it. Okay. I feel upset. Why do I feel upset? All right, in the moment, why do I feel upset? Well, I feel upset because I'm a little jealous, or I feel upset because I still have some residual discomfort around this person. Okay, well then I can change. I don't have to sit with that feeling. Maybe I can remove myself from the situation. Maybe I can change my thinking. Maybe I can do something different in that moment. So I'm gonna change, in this case, the example of having hurt feelings. I really, I'm a big proponent of do whatever you have to do to make yourself feel safe so that you can look at it. I feel really strongly about this. I'm gonna take a little detour for a second. I don't know how many of you out there are like me, but I spent a large portion of my life focusing on what other people are doing, and trying to respond or react in a way that would keep them happy or keep them liking me or keep them close or whatever. So I became basically a vacuum, like nothing inside, no self, pretty much. I was always just focusing on what everybody else is doing. And of course, what was that like? I would change for them. I would, 'cause I'm always reacting to everybody else. When I started doing meditation, I started realizing that I didn't know how to get in touch with my own feelings. I didn't know what I wanted or who I was or what I really felt was important. I had to discover all of that, and it wasn't easy because then all of a sudden everything fell painful. Family work, everything was painful. Why? Because now I'm trying to wake up out of what I was doing and I'm trying to change it. Does it change overnight? No, but if any of you are like I was, if you wanna change and you want to get better and you're trying to become the master of yourself, but you're really starting from a place of zero, like I don't have any clue, I'm gonna say, please take care of yourself. If you feel uncomfortable, do whatever you have to do to make yourself feel safe. What does that do by the way? That means that you are telling yourself, I'm here for me. I'm here for you. You're telling yourself, I'm here for you. You're sticking by yourself. I'm talking about emotional life here now. This is not intellectual. Because if I can check and change my thoughts or whatever, but the thoughts are not gonna change. If I'm sitting in a room with a bunch of people and I feel really uncomfortable and I haven't been able to distinguish out why I feel uncomfortable. I'm here to say, sometimes it's okay to remove yourself from the situation temporarily. Because you have to feel safe in order to be able to see what's going on. I hope that made sense. So you do this self-observation. As you get stronger, you're gonna realize more and more of what is uncomfortable and what's not working. As you're doing that, take care of yourself and learn, little by little, how to check and change. Here's another example of check and change. I, as you probably can guess, like to talk and I been a big talker and sometimes they get excited about what I want to talk about or what I think is important, and that's why this podcast is great for me because I'm here sharing what's there, and it's a wonderful way for me to use that personality trait. However, that personality trait was being used everywhere. No matter what. No matter if the person wanted to hear it, no matter if I'm interrupting the meeting, no matter if I'm in a meeting and I'm sucking up all the oxygen and nobody else gets a chance to say anything. So you see how that personality trait, that's not necessarily bad, if you don't have any control over it, it can cause disruption in different circumstances. So I was like a bull in a China shop, right? Too much force, too much talking, too much excitement, too much they say reading the room. I don't know, I sometimes people use that as a, as an attack, read the room, but I. Yes, we need to read the room. You need to re be able to read the room. But let's say you have behavioral tendencies that you never checked before. Maybe I'm passive aggressive. Maybe I'm, I talk too much, maybe I'm insensitive, maybe I'm whatever. Maybe I never looked at that before. So for me, with this talking, it's taken me a long time to pull it back. Because the excess talking and the excess, is really covering up insecurity. Like I don't feel comfortable with silence. I don't feel comfortable with being alone. I had to understand some of that and work on some of that and little by little, I'm becoming quieter. Not on purpose. It's not, by force, but this check and change. I've been using that to transform that personality trait. It's not going away completely. Obviously, look at this. This is a perfect opportunity for me to use it, but now I'm able to check, is this a good time to use this? Maybe not. Maybe. And then if it happens, then afterwards I can say, well, wait a minute, maybe that wasn't good. I can see it. So you see how I'm observing self-observation, but then also I'm observing my behavior. I'm observing the situation. How did it work? Later on, when I feel safe and I feel comfortable, I'm able to review it. So I'm teaching myself, I'm becoming my own teacher. So you have to observe the merciful self-observation, get used to that. Then a little bit of discipline check and change. What's going on, and how am I gonna change it? Finally, after the check and change for a while, you'll start to have moments where the mind is actually cooperating. This takes a long time. So I'll give an example. I, in this raja yoga practice, there's two aspects of it. One aspect is meditation and one aspect is knowledge. And of course, being the active mind person that I am, my personality traits that I had coming in, I would be much more attracted to the study, to the knowledge, to the information than I would be to the silence. So after many years, I would still meditate. But it wasn't peaceful meditation. It wasn't silence. And I've shared this on this podcast too, that for those of you out there who don't have an automatic attraction to silence, it's okay. Study the knowledge and meditate anyway. Keep observing. Observe, observe, observe, observe, observe. Merciful self-observation. After a while the fear level will start to come down. The discomfort level will start to come down, and I'm proud to say that after 14 years of practice this year, I really have felt like I'm starting to feel like I like the silence. I'm finding value in the silence. I want to discover more. This is a huge transformation. So here, cooperation. I'm gonna say that's the mind. Now cooperating with me. I observed gentle check and changing, working with the mind. It's like children, right? You have to discipline them, you have to work. But eventually, hopefully they're gonna work with you, right? Eventually you're gonna get cooperation from the child. So the mind now says, okay, I feel safe enough. Now I'm gonna be quiet. Okay, let's try silence. Big deal. Big deal. Just like me saying I'm not talking as much, or whatever. Naturally I'm getting quieter or I'm discerning when to use that trait and when not to use that trait. Same thing with the mind. The mind is starting to understand, well wait a minute, okay, now's the time for meditation. Okay, I feel secure enough now I'll try. It's a big deal, so cooperation. The mind will begin to cooperate with whatever you want it to do, whether you want it to be quiet, usually it's being quiet because I don't think any of us have trouble with getting the mind to be active. I think it's more getting the mind to be peaceful and cooperative. So little by little the mind will begin to cooperate. And then the last one I said finally before, this is the last one. Eventually the mind will begin to be happy. There will be happiness from within, a natural happiness, and actually it's the happy. I'm gonna say it's the happiness of the soul, the natural, happy of the soul that's now being reflected purely in the mind. So there's happiness in the soul and the mind is letting you experience it, experience yourself as happy. It has nothing to do with the body. It has nothing to do with time. It has nothing to do with anything physical. It's a pure feeling of happiness. And the mind gets to feel that. It's funny 'cause there's one thought that we sometimes we talk about with the mind. The mind's always looking for happiness. But we've trained the mind that you need happiness here, happiness here, happiness here, happiness here. So what is being master of the mind, and maybe I'll leave it here. Master of the mind means that we're actually gonna retrain the mind to feel happy just being alive, because I'm the soul and I'm alive, and my nature is happiness. And the mind can be quiet and feel peaceful and happy. It is possible. So the merciful self-observation, understanding, discipline, check and change all gets, all of the unprocessed feelings processed, gets maybe some ideas or belief systems that we had, maybe we don't believe in them anymore. Maybe we're able to change them and so forth. We do some of that work. We must do some of that work because we've been going along like, and we wonder why the mind is going crazy. So in spiritual practice, we are, we're sorting out that, and then we're getting closer to the mind. Now in the check and change, I'm saying, this is what's happening. No, we need this to be the way it is. Then the cooperation comes and then finally the happiness, and then you are the master of your mind. You've earned it. You've earned it. It's not master by force. It's master of understanding care, gentle guidance, cooperation, and then like a pure mirror, the mind will let you experience the happiness of the self. So I'll leave it there. I hope that, is inspiring and gave you something else to think about. And remember, our slogan is Heal, Empower, and Serve. And until next time, take care.
