- I like to dialogue with my mind.
Now, that sounds quite funny to say
that you have a dialogue
and a conversation with your mind,
but anybody that does deep work with their mind,
whether through meditation,
whether through contemplation,
whether through mind power,
whether it's simply observing how your mind works,
is that you find is that your mind
is talking to you all the time.
It's telling you things,
it's commenting,
it's too cold today,
or I'm not comfortable today,
or I don't like the people that I'm with,
or I don't like my job,
or my marriage isn't working out well,
or I wish I had more money,
or isn't this a delicious meal.
So your mind is constantly commenting
and has a narrative
and is thinking all the time.
And it's very valuable to,
first of all know that
and observe it.
Because one of the very first teachings
that I give in the Mind Power Training,
the very beginning of lecture number one,
is that you are not your mind.
And to realize that you're not your mind,
that your mind is a part of you
and a very important part of you,
a very valuable part of you,
often a very distracting part of you,
but it's only a part of you.
You are much beyond simply your mind.
And your mind talks to you all the time,
so you get to talk to your mind as well.
Sometimes at night
and this is quite often when I do it,
I'm lying in bed and I'm thinking thoughts
and I'll just stop and I'll ask my mind, I'll say,
what do you want to think about right now?
And the mind kind of goes,
oh... it feels seen, it feels noticed,
it feels actually a little bit vulnerable,
it's like, what do you mean... what do I wanna think about?
Well, what would you like to think about?
And the mind might say,
I wanna think about how upset I am about something
and it names some person, an incident,
that happened maybe a few days ago or a week ago,
I wanna think about how terrible this person is.
And you go, okay, you have that option,
but can I give another suggestion to you?
Why don't you have compassion for this person?
Why don't we... you and your mind,
why don't we have compassion?
Would you be willing to have compassion for this person?
The mind says, no, I don't wanna have compassion,
I wanna feel really angry.
And you can say to the mind,
okay, then you can be angry,
but you know what?
How's that going to make us feel?
Why don't you be angry for a little,
let's be angry for a couple of minutes.
And your mind gets really angry for a couple minutes
and then you go, now how does that make us feel?
The mind says, I'm angry, I'm upset.
Well, do we like this feeling?
No, we don't like this feeling.
Let's try compassion for this person,
let's realize that maybe this person is wounded internally,
maybe they're going through a lot of problems
and difficulties.
and let's try compassion.
Let's do that for the next two minutes.
And the mind says, okay,
let's have compassion for that person.
And you have compassion for that person for two minutes.
And then you say to the mind, how does that feel?
And the mind goes, that feels much better.
All right, then here's what we're going to do,
is I will let you think what you want to think sometimes,
and you let me think what we want to think.
And I have different things...
for example...
it's been a long day today,
I think that I would like to feel gratitude right now.
Can we feel gratitude together?
Do we have anything to be thankful for in our life?
The mind will say, well, let me think.
And it will come up for reasons on why to be thankful
and you move into gratitude.
And so that's exactly how you work with the mind
at different times
it could be
maybe, when you're doing your meditation
or throughout the day
to take out,
I mean, we take coffee breaks,
why not take a mind break?
Why not take a break through your day,
several times through your day,
where the mind will think
what you want it to think.
And you can work with love,
you can work with inner peace,
you can work with gratitude,
you can work with success,
you can work with faith.
I mean, there's so many ways
that you can work with the mind
and get it to meditate and contemplate,
or you can work with worry,
you can work with fear,
you can work with anger,
you can work with resentment,
all of these are possibilities.
And the mind has a whole range of things
that it can think about.
So, the first thing is to be aware
that your mind is thinking all the time.
And secondly, your mind is not you,
you're separate from your mind,
your mind is only a part of you,
you have the ability and actually the responsibility
to dialogue with the mind,
and to guide the mind,
and to train the mind,
and instruct the mind,
and what I found with the mind
is the mind loves to be trained.
The mind doesn't like to be out of control,
the mind doesn't like to be with fear and worry,
it just falls into that trap.
And it falls into that trap
because it doesn't have you guiding it.
But when you can enter into dialogue
and guide your mind,
your mind will become your best friend,
your absolute best friend,
your biggest supporter,
and you'll be quite a team together.