Discover the Difference Between Your Self and Your Mind
2 September 2021 (with subtitles)
It's very important to be aware of your mind ...
Be aware of your mind, what your mind is.
Yesterday, I was hinting a bit at the beginning of Satsang,
that most people, if you let them sit down,
even for, say, 5 minutes, without anything happening,
their minds start to make up things because they're not used to it.
You're not used to being by yourself and not thinking.
If you're by yourself and not thinking, it's because you've gone to sleep.
The mind automatically comes up and activities start, very much.
So I say, observe your mind, and see what your mind produces.
Then, as you keep watching ... But don't identify.
Just watch the suggestions that come through the mind,
and the sort of restlessness, that all is just ...
Be aware of them, be aware, be aware, be aware.
And gradually, by knowing that you're not that, and you're watching that,
your attention comes back to awareness.
You become naturally Self-aware.
Because a lot of times we are identifying with the mind
without intending to,
because you're looking and you're kind of into something,
and it's like you're obeying the mind's suggestions.
So, if you start to watch the mind,
automatically it creates a separation between the mind and Self.
This is very good, a very important thing that I'm sharing.
If you are observing the mind,
rather than just serving and acting out the mind,
its thoughts, suggestions and so on, just be aware.
Sit, even for 5 minutes, just watch every thought,
every suggestion that comes in the mind without identifying with it,
then automatically, a gap opens up where you can see that,
the mind becomes an object of your attention
and leaves you as the subject which is witnessing.
And so, automatically, it throws you back into Self-awareness.
And I say, You must know the difference between your Self and your mind.
That is the exercise I'm saying.
So again, you just stop and just pay attention to ...
Just be quiet and then watch the movements from the mind,
which you will know: thoughts, feelings, memory,
sort of like projections, imagination, images,
all these are coming from the mind.
It means that they don't actually belong to the present moment.
They don't belong to anything around you.
Everything around us is totally innocent.
Nothing is attacking you. Everything is just as it is.
But the mind starts to create relationships,
intentions and what-to-do lists, and so on.
So when you're conscious of that activity by just witnessing it,
but not identifying with it, like this,
then somehow, immediately, this thing, just like this, it just opens up
and you can see that that is the mind activity.
And you become naturally Self-aware that you are not that activity,
you are the witness of it.
So again, when I say, We must discover the difference
between your Self and the mind, that's what happens.
The more we do that, the more, somehow, we can be Self-aware,
which is not just mind-aware.
You are aware of the mind, you can work with the mind ...
When you are Self-aware, you come into shapelessness,
you're shapeless awareness.
And inside that, there is a shape of the mind and activities.
When you are shapeless, you can deal with shapes,
OK, you can work with them, because the background is the shapeless.
That's a simple exercise! I was trying to get that across yesterday.
Just observe. Observe your mind.
Again, for most people, if they sit down for, say, 3 or 5 minutes,
and they are not told what to do ... But if they're told what to do,
if you say, 'We're going to sit for 5 minutes',
the mind says, 'We're going to sit for 5 minutes, and then',
he can just about handle it.
But if you let people sit and you don't tell them what to do,
they'll start to play with their mind,
they play like this, 'Over there, something is there ...'
In fact, you are in a state of waiting.
You are waiting for something to happen.
And we are almost always in some gear, let's say a mental gear,
you're up to something, you're on some programme.
And so we never quite learn to rest,
or to acknowledge the natural resting place and the peace of the Self.
It's like we are unaware of our natural peace.
Your being should not be governed by your mind.
But in the state of the functioning consciousness,
you should be in the background awareness.
So you can watch everything,
you don't reject it cynically, you're aware of it.
But when you're Self-aware, then your actions become cosmic manifestations,
meaning they're actions that it was made to perform.
And that's why everything becomes easy,
because you don't have to plan that.
It's just that life is already supporting the activity
which is the cosmic manifest functioning.
The other functioning, I call, mind activity.
A lot of the time, we are living in mind activity, mind-generated activity,
meaning the activity which has no real fruit.
It's like a fruit tree that bears no fruit,
except the fruit of just disharmony and suffering.
So that thing, the mind-generated activity
which is where the ego lives,
that activity, in the world, is very highly engaged with:
procrastinating, fantasizing, wishful thinking,
memory, subjective interpretations and stuff like this.
And that makes the house busy.
So, when it comes time for conscious resting,
it's like we don't know what to do!
So much resistance is in the system, it feels like ...
You say just to close your eyes, and people start to feel restless.
I said, Don't try and stop the restlessness.
Let the restlessness come, and begin to observe it, with detachment.
Don't try and shut it down, or find some kind of distraction for it.
Let the restlessness come. Feel it in the body.
That's the beginning of your healing,
and the beginning of your Self-awareness.
Feel the restlessness, and say, 'OK, let that happen'.
Don't try and stop it. Be in the place of just Awareness.
'But, I can't do it!' Even the voice that says, 'I can't do it',
is also something observable. It's not the Awareness.
Little bit by little bit, you persevere, you start to see a gap opens,
and you can feel the difference, 'That is mind', and the witness is still.
And you begin to discover the witness.
You be where the witnessing is, and you can see the mind.
Then you can discern more, the functioning that is right to happen.
Like when you move naturally in your life,
the people you meet without planning,
that is part of your cosmic activity. Do you understand that?
Whatever you do, as you go down the road,
things you can never plan by the mind,
these are called, 'That which is ordained by God'.
That activity, you will see, when you pay attention to it ...
Because everyone is living that, but not consciously.
And what we do when those activities come, because they're not arranged,
we tend to feel, 'Not this time. I haven't got time for this, man.'
Because you prioritise your mental activities,
rather than your cosmic functioning.
It makes sense, doesn't it, like that?
And so, we begin to recognise more and more,
and co-operate with the cosmic functioning.
And you find that your day happens in such a way that
you could not have planned it any better than that.
You find that, somehow ...
You say, 'Whoa, it's so fulfilling! I met so and so today.'
'Did you have an arrangement?'
'No, we just bumped into each other,
we got talking and so much came up, like that.'
Whereas the activity is like, 'I planned to do this, it never worked out.
I feel so frustrated! And it's not working!'
And of course, it's not working,
because you want life to obey your personal projections.
But life is flowing by itself.
When I say that even disharmony is part of the total harmony,
it means that even your mind-projected activity
is swallowed up in the cosmic activity, which makes use of it,
but you will not benefit from it. You will suffer it,
because you are not conscious of where it is useful.
Where it fails for you personally, it succeeds by God's grace.
He will use your malfunctioning
to support something else that was the intention of the cosmic functioning.
Because when I said, many years ago,
Consciousness never wastes any of its activity ...
What you think is waste for you, it already used it.
It turns everything into compost.
Everything is working, but you are not conscious.
When you are conscious of your consciousness,
then you're full of praise and gratitude to God.
You say, 'Wow, no human being could plan that!'
The greatest planner could not arrange this,
because this happened by itself.
This is what I'm pointing out.
It's so beautiful! Everyone is ...
At the highest part of yourself, in your core, you are That!
We are That.
But in our expression,
because we entertain and believe ourselves to be the ego,
which is part of the total functioning, but very, very narrow ...
You are living in this very narrow path,
but that narrow path is just a little blip
in the infinite scope of consciousness.
So, if people could just understand that
and just somehow register that internally,
already the fruit of that is amazing.
When I say this is a fruit that never becomes over-sweet,
then every day becomes your best day, something fresh.
If it's not like that, we're living too much in the mind.
Mind is like that.
When you realise where you are, and what mind is, and you honour this,
then the mind returns to what I call the natural mind.
It means the mind without antagonism.
The mind is antagonistic to the ego,
but is in service to the being-ness;
that's the lord of the mind, not the person.
So, good.
Good, good, good pointing, no?
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