How to Turn the Mind into a Sword of Awakening

Hey everyone, it's Stephan here! Ever wondered how to use your mind as a tool for awakening? Dive deep with me as I share insights, personal experiences, and some practical tips to train your mind on this incredible journey. From discussing the paths of devotion and meditation, to emphasizing the importance of dissolving beliefs, this video tackles the discomforts and blissful moments of the path to enlightenment. Get ready to cut through false beliefs and embrace a greater understanding. No beliefs are ultimately true, but some can be more useful than others on this journey. Join me and let's start cutting!

Transcript

Stephan: 0:01

Hey everyone. I wanted to try something new. It's Steven here. I wanted to dive into the real nitty gritty. Just real quick, real nitty gritty about how to use the mind to walk the path of awakening. There's lots of paths out there. There's the path of devotion, there's the path of meditation, there's the path of self, of service, of selfless service, and then there's the path of using the mind. Now, I'll be really clear. Using the mind does not mean becoming an intellectual, in fact. I've heard it said, and I agree that it's actually really difficult for intellectuals to use the path of the mind. If you're someone who is prone to overthinking but really feels deeply, you are not necessarily a pure intellectual. In terms of you don't rely on logic for everything and just behave logically because logic makes sense. Um, but you rather operate from feeling just as much or maybe way more into feeling. Working through the pa, through the mind on the path, um, of awakening could be really good for you. Because it's a muscle that you are not habitually used to using, and I'll speak for myself. There was a time, a large point time of my life, a large time of my life. I was very much not an intellectual. I remember having a conversation with Adam. Before I decided to go back to finish my undergraduate degree, I didn't go to school. I failed out of school the first time, uh, college, and then I decided to go back eventually. But I remember this moment in a conversation with Adam and I was learning about how the immune system worked and how the intelligence of our body's immune systems, and I just remember this moment where my brain lit up, my mind lit up, and. It was like, oh my God, this is a tool to just go. So I was not innately intellectual. I was always smart, but not innately intellectual, um, whatsoever. Just always said a good, you know, kind of wisdom about myself, I suppose. I turned my mind into a cutting tool. That's the way I like to describe it, and I wanted to give some tips on what that means and maybe relate to this and how you can do the same thing. So I've got a couple points here and I want to just go through them really quick and I hope that they're useful. So the first thing, this is the groundwork behind everything and I'm kind of working backwards here, so bear with me. No belief is true. Not a single belief you have right now. Or will have ever is true. That's just the way it is. There are some beliefs that are more useful than others for doing certain things. Some beliefs that are more useful than others as tools will get to those. A couple of those, but fundamentally, none of them are ultimately true. That's just a little sneak peek behind the curtain. You don't really have to do that much with it yet. I just wanted to, you know. Cause some controversy right away. Um, beliefs like I believe I'm Steven. I believe that I'm on the path to enlightenment. And I believe that I feel a certain way at any given time. Those are just beliefs. They're not true. I'm not Steven. I'm not on the path to enlightenment and I'm not actually feeling any certain way today. I just believe I am hard to reconcile those with what appears to be going on, but them's the breaks. Uh, the next thing I wanted to do is talk about the process of awakening itself using the mind. Specifically using the mind, and this is different for meditation, this is different for, um, selfless acts, the Karma yoga. And this is, um, yeah, this is just, this is particularly about the mind. The mind is using the ego to devour itself. The ego for all the shit it gets is actually the thing that de destroys itself ultimately, or destroys the illusion of reality that it has. So there's no reason to be upset at the ego. You wanna become your best friends with your ego. Um. But that means that because you're getting best friends with your ego, it's very, this process is very uncomfortable sometimes. And that goes for everything but every type of path. But let's just, I just wanna be honest. It's very, very uncomfortable sometimes, a lot of times for certain people. Um, definitely all the time for everyone or, uh, some of the time for everyone. And it's also very, very blissful sometimes. Along with that profound discomfort and the vulnerability that comes with honestly looking at ourselves and the the feeling that come with dissolving one's beliefs and one's concept one's, the ego dissolving itself. We can just use it in that terms along with the bad comes the good and you can, you will have moments. You've already had them. No doubt if you've ever seen this video in your life, those horrible moments in life, and you also have amazingly profound and blissful moments, one of the hardest things, one of the hardest things and biggest traps that people run into myself. I am a poster child for this. Blissful experiences, profound realizations are not it. They're not the point. They are, they're not traps. I mean, they can become traps. If you hold onto them, they're, they tell you what's really going on behind the scenes in a flash, if you hold onto them, they become an anchor around your neck. So, myself included, for the vast majority of my time actively practicing this path. I thought that I was just chasing blissful experiences. I thought that waking up meant having the most profound, constant, blissful experiences. I'm here to report, unfortunately, for everyone like me, that is not the case. That was its own journey. Pretty difficult one, but, uh. Just, sorry, spoilers. Sorry. So let's talk about training the mind. What does, what does training the mind mean? Training the mind means turning your mind into a cutting tool. And what do I mean by cutting? It means what? When something appears, when a belief appears, you know how to cut it and you can cut it. This occurs in stages, this occurs and, you know, you start with the base, the easy ones, and you get to the hard ones. But how do you, how, how do you actually go about turning the mind into a cutting tool? There are a couple ways that I've used and they range from the religious to the secular. Um. I thought I'd just share them. So the first one on the more religious side is any type of formal mind training like Lojong or Koans. Both of those things are mind training tools. Koan is kind of an opposite mind training tool, but so we'll stick with Lojong. So I have a couple of Lojong slogans here. We're just gonna go through a couple of them. And I'll talk about what, what, what you do with them. Be grateful to everyone. Treat everything you perceive as a dream. When everything goes wrong, treat it as the path. Don't expect applause. Meditate on the great kindness of everyone. So what do you do with those? Now they're, I'm not a true formal Buddhist teacher, so you can take these with a grain of salt. If you have a super serious teacher trust their advice more than mine. Um, but maybe this rings true for you. You take a, take a phrase like meditate on the great kindness of everyone and. You just, you. It's all you. Do you, whenever you can remember to, you meditate on the great kindness of everyone, and that does not mean that you lie to yourself about and cover up how you really feel. If you don't feel like someone is being kind, not in that moment, it's when you have you, you just can't understand. How someone that you don't like or someone that you judge could be kind. Um, you need to find out how these are slow. Johns or Loong slogans are all about training your mind to see and to cut correctly. So you just sit with that. What does it mean? The great kindness of everyone. You get to explore that. I don't want to put ideas in your head, but you get to explore that. There are books written on these, um, slogans. You can find out for more qualified people than me, but that's one way. The other way I wanna talk about is a more secular way that doesn't require any sort of religious trappings whatsoever. And it's a tool that I have personally used and um. I really love when, whenever I'm doing, um, investigations into, into things, if there, if there are things that you believe are really true, whether they be ethics, whether they be more, um, yeah, ethics, um, politics, anything that keeps you glued to the world, glued to the identity as a person in the world. The, I have found for myself one of the single handed best ways to start dissolving those is no matter how strongly you feel, no matter how right you think you are, find to the best of your ability. This is quite easy with things like Chachi bt. Now just a little hint. Find the best arguments against what you believe to be true. So if you believe that a certain type of action is the most ethical and correct f find out. I don't, we don't necessarily need to believe them. It's not about changing your beliefs, it's about challenging them. Find out why other people might believe something different. Um, there's a great phrase. Reasonable people are allowed to disagree about this some topic. So you have some topic, um, reasonable people, smart people are allowed to disagree about it. So start doing that. Um, it can be uncomfortable, but it's also really fun. Uh, just on a, just purely like if you love learning, if you love thinking about things from all different angles, which you probably do if you are already listening to this. Uh, if you're on this path, it's probably a quality that you have, but so I recommend just almost as a practice whenever you can, whenever it feels right to look for the best arguments against what you believe very strongly. If you don't really have an opinion on something, there's no need to go get one. Uh, so don't work on those. Work on the things you're really holding on to. So the last thing I wanna say is that as you drain your mind to cut and to focus on whatever tool you're using to sharpen the mind. Just cut. Cut. Cut, keep cutting. Um, the process of awakening through the mind is loosening the grip on false beliefs. It's not about having the right beliefs, it's about loosening the grip on all beliefs. And this happens in stages. There are. Predict relatively predictable stages that everyone goes through in this. It's not about being in the right stage, it's not about being faster or slower than other people. Um, nothing like that. So awakening, self-realization happens. The, the quote unquote self-realization happens when you actually see. That beliefs are not true. And by CI don't mean in a flash. I mean, that becomes your waking reality. That is called ization. That's now a lot of people. If you have not, if you've not, um, gone through that, a lot of people think that that is the goal. Because again, everything beforehand is just pure experience, this pure identity. Um, the veil of the ego is so believable that there is no awareness of anything outside of it. So a lot of people, when they that happens, it's like, oh my God, I've made it more bad news. That's the beginning of the path. I'm so sorry to be the one to tell you, but it's like, um, he's a famous investor, uh, Charlie Munger, who's, um, Warren Buffett's investing partner, and he said, do whatever you can. I'm going to paraphrase it in modern, modern lingo, eat ramen every day until you get your first a hundred thousand dollars. Now, maybe that's a million today because of inflation. He was probably saying that a long time ago. But do whatever it takes to get there. Do whatever you can reasonably do to get there. That is the start of everything, that moment of self-realization. Before that, everything is theory. The good news is that even though it's just the start once. You hit that point, it's a point of no overturn. You can never actually veil it back up again. So, uh, that being said, and that's a lot more to say about that. Um, it's a fascinating, it's a fascinating topic. Um, uh, in the beginning I said that no beliefs are true and that can leave a lot of people just kind of like, uh, okay, but. What about what's the point then? What's the, what's the, literally what's the point if no beliefs are true? Is it just nihilism? It's just nothing's true and there's no, uh, everything just, I guess just kill yourself because there's nothing, nothing means anything. My beliefs are true. That's not what I'm saying. That is a, that is an intellectual answer to the question, and what we're talking about is the ego, the mind going beyond itself, which is the reason it's paradoxical is because you can't. Share that experience with others. You can't, I can't like reach through the camera and poke you and cause it, um, it is fundamental to everyone. And the reason why beliefs, like I believe I'm on the path to enlightenment isn't true is because you're already enlightened. You were never not enlightened. You just believed that you weren't. So it's paradoxical, hard to explain. You could say a million words on it. I guess I'll just leave it there. So in the meantime, in the meantime before that is your waking reality. Some beliefs are more useful than others as a tool beliefs. Everyone is out to get me. The world is shit. And there's no point in taking anything positive because just the whole thing's coming crumbling down. And why even try everything's corrupt? Not helpful. That belief's not helpful. Um, don't hang on to that one. But certain beliefs like God is all there is. Um, the universe is one, I am Brahman. We are all Buddha. These are all beautiful beliefs that are uplifting, that are motivating, that are useful as tools. And this is something that is intuitive. I don't, there's no easy way to say it. Eventually you will not need those beliefs anymore either, but you will know when they're not useful anymore because they will drop away without any effort on your part. You do not need to convince, you don't not need to do any effort to be done with those. It will just, they will just be done. And you will have no question in your mind that you're done with them. So in the meantime, go ahead and use those nice beliefs. Use them as tools, but know that they're tools. Um, yeah. And that's how you turn your mind into a cutting machine of awakening. You just train it and you keep cutting and you keep cutting, and you keep cutting as safely as you can. Um. Doing it too fast, just because you want to somehow destroy yourself. Guilty of that does not have good results. So do it as best you can, as safely as you can. I wanted to be real clear with you guys. I wanted to be real honest with you guys, um, very direct that do it as safely as you can and get to that first, do whatever you can to get to that first a hundred thousand dollars. All right. I'll be back with more. But thanks so much for watching.