Our ordinary mind thinks about 60,000 thought a day, with 80% of them being based in some form of negativity. But our ordinary mind is not all that we have in our inner awareness. We also have something called our Essential Self, which is considered in many enlightened traditions to be the home of our true identity. As we become more familiar with it, we naturally begin to feel more at home with ourselves.  

 

Transcript

          We all want to improve our lives, and although we may look for it in different ways, we all want to be happy and content. But happiness and contentment are, in reality, inner states of being, so one of the best ways to improve our lives is to improve the environment of our inner world.

          Within that realm, we have a most unique inner intelligence and thinking is a key part of it. Actually, our extraordinary ability to think is the one major factor that separates us from the rest of the entire animal kingdom. Still, we generally don’t pay too much attention to it, with our thought processes often running on automatic. But they can also run out of control and cause us a lot of inner turmoil, which is what is happening now, according to some recent studies.   

          Current research indicates that in our society, the average person thinks about 50,000 thoughts a day, give or take a few thousand. And of these, about 80% of them are negative in nature, with about 60% being repetitive, which means we keep thinking the same negative thoughts, over and over again.

          But many experts tell us that it doesn’t have to be this way, so, let’s take a slightly deeper dive and see what we can see. Negative thoughts generally emerge from three different types of emotional feelings – anger, guilt and fear. Guilt and fear are fairly straightforward. Guilt relates to remembering the past and fear relates to anticipating the future. With guilt, we look back with deep regret on some previous behavior and we can really beat ourselves up for it. With fear, we project forward and picture that something terrible might happen. The projection frightens us, ranging from mild apprehension to complete panic. Guilt and fear can often combine and the powerful mixture of regret over the past and fear of the future can be rather paralyzing to our progress.  

 Anger, on the other hand, is a little more subtle and can take many different forms - resentment, indignation, animosity, and hatred to name just a few. But the bottom line is, with anger, we’re in an agitated state of serious inner frustration, which not only feels bad, it can also cause us serious harm on many significant levels. And when anger gets together with guilt and fear, you’re facing a real triple threat.

          But whatever causes our negative thoughts, we spend a huge part of our lives, groping our way through this shadowy inner landscape with all its pitfalls. And basically, it’s just plain sad. Here we are with the incredible potential of this most remarkable, creative mind, and instead of using it to scale the lofty heights, we’re carrying it around like a heavy burden while its constantly making us unhappy. And that covers 80% of our time which is a really big number. If a vacation company was selling a trip and all the reviews said that 80% of it was pretty awful, they wouldn’t be out in business very long.

          Now, we’ve known about our negative thought patterns for years and there are many ideas about how we can change them to positive ones and fashion a more optimistic outlook on life.  If you search the internet, you’ll probably come up with a hundred positive thinking courses in just a few minutes.   

          But sources from ancient wisdom through to modern neuroscience suggest a different way, which is actually easier and much more effective than the constant struggle of trying to change the negative into positive. It involves a deeper sense of self-knowledge, with a gentle, but steady shift of inner focus.

          When we change our awareness in this way, our thoughts will naturally change as a result. It would be similar to moving from a cold climate to a warm one. If you’ve been living in the freezing artic for several years and you finally move to a nice, warm spot, once you get there, you quickly see that you don’t need your big, furry parka, ice pick and dog sled anymore. In the same way, when you connect to this larger part of yourself, you find yourself naturally letting go of the mental and emotional defenses associated within the negative framework.          

          Now most of us haven’t been exposed to this kind of approach before, and although it’s very profound, it’s also fairly simple. It has to do with some basic self-recognition and a little understanding of our inner make-up. There are actually two parts to our inner awareness and in western culture, we’re basically trained to focus almost exclusively on the first one, with only a rather modest appreciation of the second.

          The first part can be called our “ordinary mind,” and we’re all very well acquainted with it. In fact, we’re so wrapped up in it, we often confuse it with our own selves. Most of the time, I call my ordinary mind, “me,” but in reality, it’s not me. It’s just a tool that I’ve used to help me navigate my way through my world. We all do. We have to. We’ve used it to learn our language, to store our likes and dislikes and to catalogue all of our conclusions and understandings about our existence, from the macro down to the micro. But it can be very deceptive. And even though our mind constantly changes its mind on us, we generally come to believe it to be our own selves.

          Now, this never happens to us with of our other tools. Unless you are suffering from some serious delusion, no matter how much you love your car, you never call it “me.” Same thing with your computer. As valuable of a tool that it is, we always know that it’s just that, a tool. We don’t from suffer mistaken identity with it.

          The ordinary mind also has a few other serious drawbacks as well. For one thing it doesn’t seem to have a brake, which can be unbelievably annoying. Basically, you just can’t shut it up and you never know what its going to come up with.

          Sometimes it can be like a Mexican jumping bean on steroids, or a wacked-out monkey up a tree, restlessly hopping from limb to limb, constantly churning out one thought after another, ranging from past to future, fact to fantasy, presenting countless opinions, as it pontificates on an endless regurgitation of random topics. But how much of its point of view is real?  As Benjamin Franklin said, “Who hath deceived thee as often as thyself?” And in the end, as many of us unfortunately know, the results of following its random dictates can be pretty sobering.

          Also, because by its nature, it’s a finite tool, it’s only capable of being successful when performing finite tasks. It’s an absolute wizard at figuring out how much, how many, when, why, how, where, and for how long. But tell it to picture a box so big that there is no space outside of it. Or ask it to imagine something that had no beginning and will have no end, you bring it face to face with stark infinity, which absolutely frazzles it. After spinning endless loops of finite conjecture, it will probably come up some half-cocked, miniature representation. But as every explorer will tell you, looking at even a great map is certainly no substitute for being in the actual territory.  

          And one last critical thing, which is something many of us don’t realize, a key part of the nature of our ordinary mind is that it is always basically discontented and no matter what it has, it will soon want something better. On one level, this need for constant improvement has served us well, because without it, we’d all still be living up in trees. But it can be a real double-edged sword because if you go looking for happiness within your ordinary mind, you’re in for a pretty rough time. You might find some in the short run, but don’t get used to it because it’s not going to last.

          Now, fortunately, the “ordinary mind” is just one part of our inner world, and it’s actually pretty small compared to our overall consciousness. There is another part, that for the sake of simplicity, can be called the Essential Self and in certain ways, it is almost the exact opposite of the ordinary mind.

          To begin with, a 15th century mystic named Kabir, once put it this way, “There is a drop within the ocean. Everyone knows this. But there is an ocean within the drop, and very few know this.”

          Although it may seem cryptic, the basic understanding here is that there is an infinite power that sustains the universe. Over the years it’s been given many names. “God,” is the most common religious one, and “Primal Energy” is a term used by physicists. But it doesn’t matter what you call it, because it is beyond finite understanding and all human concepts about it are only partial truths, at best.

          And naturally, because this power is everywhere, it also dwells within each one of us, giving us breath and animating our lives. But it is also at the foundation of our awareness, with our Essential Self being the part of our awareness that is deeply connected to it.

          As such, our Essential Self is the home of what Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature” - the higher human characteristics like empathy, compassion, joy and clarity, as well as a myriad of others. It is said to be the foundation of our true identity, running far deeper than any of the constantly changing identifications that we carry within our ordinary mind.

          According to a countless number of masters, saints and sages over the ages,

we will never be able to comprehend this Infinite Power, but still, we can feel it, trust it, and merge ourselves into it. And its essential nature of truth, consciousness and bliss will elevate us into becoming much greater beings. They go on to say that by taking advantage of the opportunity to evolve in this way, we will fulfill the purpose of our incarnation. In other words, they would say that this is what you came here to do.  

          Now, this all is just a bunch of words, but what counts is experiencing the meaning behind them. In that regard here’s a little exercise you can try that may give your inner awareness a quick tune-up. It’s called Doing a six pack.

          The whole thing only takes six breaths. As you comfortably breathe, just feel your breath naturally come in and go out of your body. If thoughts come up, just let them come and let them go. You can think them, but don’t inhabit them. Just let them come and go as you do this very brief exercise.  

          OK, so, sit down and close your eyes. Inhale, exhale, see the number six appear in your mind’s eye and silently say – 6. Then inhale, exhale, and see the number five in your minds eye and silently say – 5. Repeat this counting backwards 4-3-2-1, then finish with the number zero, and that’s it. That’s all there is to it. If you enjoy it, do it as many times a day as you like, especially first thing in the morning and last thing at night.

          This little exercise can help introduce you to another dimension of your inner awareness. It’s very subtle, but putting a little distance between your awareness of your breath and your constant thinking is one of the most deceptively powerful techniques available for starting to connect to your larger self, to the Infinite Within, which is the home of real inner freedom.

          Well, that’s it for now. I hope you enjoyed this podcast, and as always, keep your eyes, mind and heart opened and let’s get together again in the next episode!