I am sitting in front of the computer again. I have just decided to make a new entry to this new journaling idea I got yesterday. I am going to write whatever is going on in my mind as clearly as possible. This would enable me to get a distance between the content of my mind and Me and observe it.
I have this nagging feeling of guilt (I am not sure what can I call it exactly) just thinking about the fact that I have taken some bhaang. What is this need for me to take an intoxicant. This is what is on my mind right now. Now, all my thoughts have started swirling around. As if they are dissolving. I think this might the bhaang kicking in. I am able to feel myself trying to direct my senses towards the AC on the opposite building and the trees around me.
Trying to enforce a presence somehow?
The ego is so funny. It’s crazy how subtle it can get. It can masquerade as a spiritual security guard. The spiritual journey’s goal is the end of the mind and the ego. They know that. I am just going to use one word for both. Mind/Ego are one and the same thing. Earlier I would be confused by it, but now it is really clear.
Now my mind got shifted to thinking about the slide deck. I am copy pasting all my articles in one place. I am getting an inkling of publishing a book. I don’t know why that area is a block for me. I am sensing an inferiority complex. I have been sensing it for quite some time. Every time I post anything on Instagram, I feel as if I am annoying people. Am I lying to them? Is it possible that I am an imposter? Such questions are posed to me by my mind.
So right. Back to the ego and the mind trying to help me get rid of them. LOL.
I think this is one the last few ways the ego is trying to persist. I do hope at least. Haha. This spiritual business is sure something. You never know when it hits you. You can never know if it will hit you. All I have understood until now is to just enjoy my life. All I have to do is “nothing”. Just stand back and enjoy whatever is happening through me. I have stopped trying to force myself to meditate. I sleep whenever I want to. I read whenever I want to. I eat whatever and whenever I want. I take any intoxicant whenever I want. I even vape whenever I want. I have dropped all restrictions I was placing on me. Honestly, it is quite difficult. I am able to see how my conditioned mind kicks in. So subtle. So quietly. If you are not alert, you can completely miss it.
Now, a new thought popped up. I am glad I am doing this. Am I doing this writing just because I am stoned? See how the mind is thought-baiting me? Haha. It never gives up. It is craving to get it’s control back. I wonder why the mind does this? What does it get?
My only explanation is that my mind doesn’t think it is doing me any damage. I cannot imagine it to be something evil that is trying to destroy my life. My mind is just trying it’s level best to help me. To protect me. Wow. This is something big. What an insight. The mind is just doing it’s job. The fuel for this is the memory, the knowledge that it has accumulated. Its scope doesn’t go beyond it. Obviously it is trying to automatize my life. What else is it there for? It is there to make my life easier.
The mind works on thoughts. That’s the only way it can keep itself alive and working.
See what bhaang does man? It clears up the complete pathway somehow. I am pretty sure that my current physical sickness has nothing to do with bhaang. See how I got thought baited into that? It is so fricking crazy cool once you start noticing your mind in action. Wow. What a mechanism. Just amazing. It has access to all the memories, everything that it has recorded via the five senses from all my life, and it can bring anything up at anytime to bait me. Haha.
Your mind is trying to protect you, but it doesn’t help you.
Our mind is a collection of all thoughts you have ever had until now. Everything that you have ever experienced through your five senses has been recorded by your mind in the form of thoughts. It has immediate access to all of it as and when it desires.
When you were born, your repository was completely empty. You had no experience, no memory, no knowledge. Your innate intelligence was guiding you. The intelligence that beats your heart, helps you breath, digests your food and heals your cuts. The same intelligence teaches you how to chew, how to speak, how to walk, how to balance, etc. It is also the same intelligence that powers your mind. That allows it to record all of the experiences teaches it to access it. This is done to ensure that you do not have to re-learn everything from scratch. For example, imagine if you had to re-learn brushing your teeth every morning? Living life would become extremely difficult. So the mind as a mechanism is trained and used.
Now, as this so called repository starts growing, you have more experiences, you start learning and your knowledge increases, it reaches a tipping point. This is the point where the mind starts taking control over from the innate intelligence. Because the knowledge is constantly accumulated, it becomes bigger and bigger. It starts feeling as something real. These collection of thoughts start making you feel as if this is who you are. This becomes your identity.
A simple example of this is your name. When you are born, you were nameless. As people start looking at you and start making a particular sound, the mind keeps recording it. As the number of experiences increases, the accumulated thoughts become bigger and bigger and you start associating this sound with you. Anytime anyone makes that sound, you start recognizing that they are calling you. This now becomes “your” name. There is a sense of identity with the name now. If someone insults this name, you feel as if they have insulted you. If there is a bank account in the name with a lot of money, you feel that this is money is yours.
Once this tipping point happens and the mind has now taken control, it become less and less difficult for the innate intelligence to operate. The mind starts blocking it because it is afraid of the new. It wants to keep depending on the existing repository for two reasons. Because it has all the past negative and positive experiences and it wants to avoid negative experiences and recreate positive experiences in the future. It now starts jumping between the past and the future. The innate intelligence is timeless. It can only exist in the present. But if your mind has taken over and is constantly jumping between past and future, the innate intelligence is now allowed to flow in.
These collection of thoughts that you have identified yourself with? That’s what we call the ego. Now, everything that your five senses take in, is now viewed through this collection of thoughts. It acts like a prism which splits white light into multiple colors. The mind now starts distorting everything you see according to the existing repository. What this does is it starts accumulating everything that fits with the existing information, and starts rejecting or avoiding everything that doesn’t sit well with the existing thoughts. This strengthens your ego and makes the mind even more powerful and in control. The investment is constantly increasing.
You start experiencing your own personal reality. Completely different from what is. The stronger the ego, the more separate you start feeling from everyone else. Imagine taking a picture through a camera, but you have a prism instead of a lens. And no two prisms are going to be exactly the same because no two people can have the exact same experiences. No two repositories can ever be exactly the same. That is to say, no two mind can ever be exactly the same.
Now in order to protect you, this mind has to protect itself. Every time it notices that you are trying to get silent, you are trying to get rid of the mind, like any noble servant, it starts resisting you. It starts creating all sorts of trouble for you by thought baiting you. It throws all sorts of thoughts to disturb you so that you quit this stupid idea of reaching the no-mind. And it almost always wins. The weight of the repository is so big that now it is almost impossible for you to drop it. So much of your time and energy seems to be invested in it. You just can’t drop all of that can you? And so the mind continues it’s noble mischief. It is constantly trying to help us without even realizing the harm its causing us.