Become The Master of Your Mind

In this episode, I explore our relationship with thought, and what it means to become the master of our minds rather than being led by them.

There is often a belief that meditation is about stopping thought altogether, but it is more importantto recognise that we are not our thoughts.

The mind has incredible creative potential. It allows us to imagine, create, plan, and solve problems, but when left unobserved, it can also become repetitive, reactive, and overwhelming, looping through past experiences and worrying about imagined futures.

Through meditation and awareness, we begin to access a deeper space within ourselves - a place of presence where we can witness thought as it arises, without becoming identified with it.

This episode explores:

The difference between thinking and awareness - why thought is not the enemy - how the mind can become a “runaway train” without awareness - the impact of thought on our experience and environment - the role of conditioning and learned patterns -the importance of being mindful of what we consume mentally - how meditation creates space, clarity, and inner ease

When we begin to observe our thoughts rather than follow them, something shifts.

The mind becomes quieter, life becomes clearer and we rediscover a sense of peace that was always there.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome to Bodhisattva Conversations. My name is Julia Carmel, and this podcast explores the practice of being so that we can live with greater presence, awareness, and truth, and experience the truth of who we are. In today's podcast, I'm going to talk about the mind, but I'm essentially going to talk about us becoming the master of our minds, you being the master of your mind, because there's so much talked about thought in meditation, and essentially there's um wonderful teachings that teach that you can observe your thought rather than becoming lost in it. And essentially the idea isn't to stop thinking, although we can we can, if we practice, get to the space of being able to silence the mind, but actually, it isn't about some trying to do something where we're trying to stop thinking because that in itself becomes harder and harder, and then you're kind of thinking about stopping thinking, and the whole thing gets in a loop. But it's more about stopping believing that you are our you are your thoughts. We must stop believing we are our thoughts because um we're not, we are the awareness, we are the awareness, the witnesser, and the thought can spring from that, and it's incredible because thought isn't an enemy, the mind has incredible, incredible potential, and it's an a wonderful, a wonderful gift that we're here that we are experiencing body-mind, we're experiencing the play out on the stage of life with this body-mind, and it can be incredibly exciting to be able to create with the mind, to be able to live as we do. But of course, it doesn't feel good if you get trapped in it or you're identified with it, you think you are your thoughts. That's the that's the difficulty, is when you believe that you are your thoughts, and that's the thing that meditation can help with is to experience the awareness and the stillness and experience something else, experience the the awareness that is witnessing the thoughts, and then you start to allow the thoughts to be a creative force rather than loops that can keep you feeling trapped and unhappy and in stories that don't serve you. But the mind has incredible potential, it has wonderful ideas, wonderful imagination, wonderful creativity that comes from those ideas and that imagination can problem solve. If we look around the world, just look at the incredible things that have been created out of the mind, the incredible beauty of all the architecture, the incredible experiences, everything, everything that we look around has come through mind. And so, therefore, it isn't to you know reject thought, but it is to become the master, become the master of our minds rather than being led by your thoughts and believing them. And they can that can be very distressing, very, very distressing to get caught in mind loops that don't serve you. Um I think often the the mind just runs continuously sometimes for for people. For you may experience that, that it's kind of like a runaway horse that you can't stop, and you might go looping, looping round in conversations either that you had and you kind of get caught in the distress of them, or you uh creating conversations ahead of having them, which can be incredibly beguiling, and um yeah, replaying past events, and again, there's nothing wrong with accessing memory for fun or accessing something and and replaying it consciously because that's you know, we enjoy storying, we enjoy memories, we enjoy sharing together. So it's not about a rejection of that, but if you can't stop it, if it just keeps going round and round, then it's very debilitating, and also imagining the future is fun in the present. That's how we create. We can be in the stillness of now, and then we can envisage a future, but it's when we get caught in it and want it, and why isn't it here? Then that's the mind trickery kind of pulling us to saying that would be better, something else is better, rather than being present where we are. And um, of course, creativity is fun, but if we're going into the future in a painful way and the mind's caught with uh debilitating thoughts of saying, you know, you're not good enough where you are, and that would be better, that can be very debilitating. Um, it also makes up stories, and those stories again can be creative ones and positive ones, but they can also get caught in um ideas that you're projecting onto other people or other situations. So it's it's a fine line because it isn't it isn't about rejecting thought, but it is about being conscious and it's coming to the space of awareness so that you have the facility to be still, to witness, to watch, to decide the thoughts you think to decide when you want to problem solve or you want to be creative, or you want to um explore something, but knowing that's coming from that place of stillness, the place of awareness, rather than all of those things playing out and playing over and over and over and over and looping, and you're in an exhausted state where the mind's whirring away, like you know, like a yeah, like I said, a runaway, a runaway horse that you can't stop. And often you find you're not choosing your thoughts. So the key is to know that you can choose what you think, that you can decide, you can create from them, you can decide what you say to people, what you say to yourself, you to really get aware of your internal narrative, consciously choosing your thoughts. This does take practice, it does take practice because so often you'll find you're not choosing your thoughts and you're going round and round and round. Whereas this is where the practice of meditation, and I think really meditation practice is to be able to be in that space all the time. And essentially, the practice of meditation is that space of presence, but really it's a practice for life, it's it's a practice of being how to be day by day by day, not right. I'm going to do my meditation and do 20 minutes meditation, tick, and it's done. Meditation is actually a way of being, and the practice is finding that space, that space of presence. So it can be really helpful, of course, to sit in that space, to sit and just sit quietly, witness the thoughts, get connected to the breath, watch, and come into a greater sense of ease and presence and the essence of who you are. And that will allow you to notice because you can sit in that space and you can see that thoughts come and go, you can see that they will be, you know, going across the it's often described as a clear blue sky, and then you'll watch the clouds of thought that go by, but they go and they disappear. So sitting in an easeful state and just witnessing and watching, if you just practice regularly, it's often good, really, to be honest. If you I mean, some people I'm going to come on to don't really suit city meditation, and it never works because they just find themselves following thoughts and dreams all the time. But if you can sit for a few minutes in the morning and a few minutes before bed and just witness and watch and get into that state of ease and know yourself and find that when you drop into presence, there isn't the worry, there isn't the loops of thought going round and round and round, and you can start seeing these thoughts, as I said, just come and go and come and go, but that actually the something remains within us: the unchanging, the stillness, the silence, and you know, really, really recognize that you are the master, you are the one who can decide. But this does take practice, but it's also worth really recognising that thought isn't neutral. It's quite a good thing to start to recognize that it is again a practice to decide what we think, because science shows that thoughts carry energy, they are a vibration like everything else, and and they affect us, of course. This is a vibration that will affect us. Our internal dialogue is vital because what we're saying over and over and over in our head is going to be affecting our vibration, affecting our energy. And if we're having negative self-talk about ourselves or about other people, or about the state of our situation, the world, anything that's going on inside you is going to be affecting us, um, our vibration, how we're feeling, our mood, but it also affects absolutely everything around us. I've I've often said to people, imagine that your every thought can be heard. And if you live like that, because in effect, to some extent it can, because every thought we think is affecting everything around us, and what we think really does matter. Now, again, I don't want to um get you into a kind of loop of thinking, oh no, no, I'm thinking that, because it can be that can be kind of distress on distress where you're thinking distressing thoughts and then distressed your thinking distressing thoughts. So just gently, gently keep bringing yourself back. And if you become aware that you're thinking thoughts that aren't very healthy or they're negative to you or another, just bring yourself back to presence, bring yourself back to the breath. And over time, over time, as anything, practice will allow you to get more and more at ease, more and more still, but it does take practice. And I've said this before, but there's a Greek philosopher called Periandros who says, practice, practice, practice. Everything can be achieved with practice, and of course, that's true. And generally, the practice has been to just think any thought and follow thought streams and allow thought to just be a negative loop. So that's why it's the practice has to be kind of in stages, really, because it's first important to become aware of the noise, the noise in your head. Um, how constant is it? Is it is it going on and up for you know, do you find there aren't gaps in your head in the thought? How repetitive is it? Are the loops that you keep going round and round and round? And then the next step is to begin to watch it and not follow every thought and not believe everything you're thinking. That's the key, or one of the main keys, is lots of essentially coming back to presence and awareness, and just practice pausing, just practice pausing your thought. And you know, a practice I I suggested to someone only this week was that they just put a, and I have suggested this before, any of you who are listening will recognise this, just to put a buzz on your phone of reminder every hour just to come back to you know, just press a pause on thought, take a breath, come back to presence, find the space. Because if you can find the space every hour, then it stretches, it expands because it is actually always there. And use that breath, use the breath, come back into the space in the breath. So you take a deep breath in, then breathe out, and then there's that space here between the in the out breath and the in-breath. There's a space on top and bottom, but the space at the bottom, I don't then you breathe again. But there's a there's a lovely huge space, and that space in the breath can pause on thought, and it also can help you find the space in thought because you know, thoughts essentially do have some space, hopefully. But it is important to just find those spaces, and also recognize how many thoughts just aren't new at all, they're just old scripts, and they're coming from childhood, they're coming from things you heard in childhood, things you said, they're coming from beliefs you picked up then, beliefs that uh are cultural, social, family, school, and they can just go round and round. And again, people get very identified with anything that how they their childhood was, what the beliefs were, all that conditioning that starts getting put in. And the the state of um the mind from age one to seven is actually a meditation state, it's a state of theta, which is the state of meditation. So there's a great receptivity in children to get conditioned, whereas ultimately it is finding that space again and unconditioning ourselves to find the space of that you know theta state of ease. And if we do that in meditation, we can clear away any conditioning that doesn't suit us, anything from you know the past experiences that we're still carrying, and really work with clearing away these ingrained patterns and experiencing presence because our thoughts and all of these ideas and conditionings and patterns of thought, they're not who you are, they're not who you are. The truth of who you are is the stillness, and then we can create with our thought, it's absolutely fabulous. And if it's coming through the essence of who you are, it's a very different thing. Because of course, it's also good to be very discerning about what you listen to because we're very receptive, so really be conscious of the how influenced we can be by the collective environment, by um, all the conversations around us, what we read, what we listen to, what podcasts we listen to, and choose social media, the news, and it's worth remembering that there's a saying that environment is stronger than will. Well, I'm not doesn't have to be that way, but of course, it is much harder if you're in an environment all the time where people are speaking in a certain way, or there's a whole culture you're in that's speaking in a certain way, then it's it makes it harder to come into that space of awareness and then allow a pathway to open for you that might not be the same as everybody else. So, really do be discerning. We need to be really discerning what we listen to, what we read, what we expose our minds to, because you know they're very absorbing or very absorbing, very absorbent. Um, and so ultimately, many people live with the mind doing its own thing. Um, this constant thinking, and often at night it's particularly noticeable. People often who can you know can't sleep and get caught in a great big loop, replaying and replaying and replaying and projecting and and can't stop. Well, when anybody says they can't stop their mind, it's worth recognising if we do say that or you say that, that it's important to go back to those steps that I said. And first of all, it's the noticing, and then um noticing how much you can't stop how much is going on, and then starting to kind of watch it before you then can take some pauses in it, and also think of it as a a long-term, a long-term process that it's just got to be kind of commit for it as a lifetime thing, and then there's not a kind of trying to get there because you know, both both both, sorry, both past and future are where people get very, very stuck. Um, they get very stuck in um you know regretting the past or reminiscing about the past or kind of worrying about the future. Now, as I said, none of those things are either wrong, uh are wrong either, because obviously it is fun to remember the past and chat with people about the past, and it is fun to create the future and create some plans and all of those things, but in the present and in the presence and in stillness, not in a kind of place where you can't stop it, or you're thinking one's better than the other, or one's you know, regretful or fearful, any of those things, because again, we so often um believe that we are our thoughts, and and you can see that in relationships where um one person has one opinion, one has another, and they're so wedded to the opinion, and that can be just ideas, it can be political, it can be spiritual, it can be all sorts of views that we have, and how to do something, or what's the right way, what's right, what's wrong. And of course, that's where arguments happen. Whereas if we know we're not our opinions, but we might hold an opinion, but if we hold it lightly, then we can converse with another and listen to theirs, and and you know, something shifts, something shifts when we when we're more connected to who we are rather than what we think, because well there'll be less conflict. Because if we can listen to one another and not think that something's threatened in us because somebody thinks differently to us, then there's there's less conflict, there's more openness, and of course, there's a deeper connection because um connection comes through validating difference, not through being the same. So often people go, Oh, you're just the same as me. Phew, now I can feel safe and I can feel connected. But actually, the real connection comes when we validate the difference in another, where we go, okay, I get why you're thinking like that. You know, it might not be how I think, and they go and they can do the same. Yeah, I get it, I get it, I understand. I can get into your world, I can cross the bridge into your world, and I understand it. It's not necessarily what I think, but it doesn't threaten me. We can listen, therefore, without defending. And as I said at the beginning, meditation is a doorway to this, and so meditation really is to not necessarily remove thought entirely, but it creates space and it's to access that stillness within you and to experience peace. So, again, if you if you even a few minutes morning and night, um, where you really are experiencing the essence of yourself, you can you can watch the thought if it comes up, but you can experience space, and there's nothing to worry about in that space, there's nothing to do, there's nowhere to go. And the more you practice that, I would encourage you then to throughout the day just come back to the breath so that you start to practice always being the witnesser, always watching, because also from that place the mind does become very clear and very sharp and very supportive and very creative. And the more you are able to just come back, witness the breath, come back to the space. It's the most simple practice to just be the witnesser, but to be able to do it on the move, to notice if you're rushing, tense, stressed, um, and come back and know that just in a breath, you can take a conscious breath, come back into your tummy, breathe out, find space, and then there you are. There's a space, there's a stillness, and that is meditation. And really and truly, it just essentially will lead you to a life of meditation where you're able to watch everything, able to watch you aren't having your thoughts leading you, you're not kind of caught in your thoughts, you know you're not your thoughts because you aren't your thoughts, you are the awareness that can observe them. And when you do begin to relate to your mind in this way, life does become quieter, becomes clearer, it becomes much more peaceful. So you can let your mind be the servant, not your master. You are the master of your mind. Thank you for listening to Baby Sat the Conversations. I hope you enjoyed this episode, and I look forward to being with you again next time.