I have been pretty enthralled with Michael Singer’s teachings for quite some time now. After listening to one of his talks the other day, Ceasing to Build the Falseness of Psyche at https://tou.org/talks/, I was flooded with a slew of questions and experienced a massive shift in perspective.
The main take away from this shift in perspective was that the majority of us have the same addiction. And we allow it to sabotage our lives on a daily basis. But, most of us don’t realize it’s a huge problem. We don’t realize that because of this addiction we don’t truly experience our lives.
What’s the addiction you ask? It’s our mind. We don’t listen to the person talking across from us most of the time. We are more interested in what our minds reaction to what they are saying might be. We don’t experience a sunrise or a sunset letting it completely blow us away, we listen to our mind comparing it to another time when it may have been better.
We are constantly missing our lives because we are engaging with our minds reaction about whether it may be better or worse than the previous times we had a similar experience. This leaves no room to truly experience the present moment.
Many would argue that this is what our minds are meant to do and I won’t deny that. It’s our brains way of scanning for danger and keeping us safe. We would never want to ignore a true threat. However, we get to consciously decide whether or not to engage with the incessant chatter that comes along with each moment.
The questions that came to me after listening to his talk were: What if we regarded our thoughts and feelings just as boring as watching paint dry? What if experiencing the here and now was 100x more captivating and interesting than what our minds had to say?
The first step to breaking up with any addiction is awareness. If you are reading this, I’d put money on you having an addiction to your mind. In the next week, notice how much you are paying attention to your mind’s reaction during your day versus actually experiencing the day without engaging with the nonstop chatter.
As you start being more aware of this, I want to remind you that nothing has gone wrong. Your brain is wired to do these things. That being said, once you see this occurring, you get to decide when you will pay attention and when you will disregard what story your mind is trying to lure you into. On the other side of this process is absolute freedom. Join me in the next blog when I will post a follow up and the next step in this process. You won’t want to miss it.
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