Thursday, May 9, 2013

Stop the madness!


More than those who hate you, more than all your enemies, an undisciplined mind does greater harm”.

Buddha



From our practices at Light Tree, one thing appears abundantly clear. The ego-mind with all its incessant chatter is completely insane. If we do not practice sitting back and joining with the peace of our True Nature on a regular basis we run the risk of letting ego run the show.

Sometimes it seems that the ego has no purpose but the maintenance of the status quo. It likes things just as they are. Then, suddenly, self doubt takes a new twist and what seems like a good plan becomes riddled with fear and negative thoughts. We are damned if we do, and damned if we don’t. This is the madness of our monkey-mind, or ego.

Buddha knew this, Jesus knew this, and all the great teachers have come to this basic conclusion themselves. We cannot fully appreciate the hold ego-mind has on our thoughts and behaviour until we slow down enough to hear it. If we can sit and just witness, without believing its insane commentary, we can learn to recognize it starting it spiel.

It’s in this precious moment that we begin to join the consciousness of our True Nature. Really? we begin to ask ourselves. This much nonsense cannot possibly be true. When we sit in a witness place, not judging and just watching our essence it’s obvious that only Love exists. The fear that arises is the false self (little me) trying to justify its teeny tiny worldview. Why don’t we just try holding it with love and watch it dissolve? Its just a thought anyway.

It seems we have all had our share of fear thoughts lately. What can we do when we feel hopelessly lost in our thoughts and emotions?

For us, the first step is to realize what is happening and draw on our desire for peace and happiness. We can choose to love ourselves immediately, before guilt and self doubt come to see what’s going on. We can use an affirmation that we have practiced in meditation and choose to forgive ourselves for buying into an illusion that was created by the false self.

For example we might say, “I forgive myself for using this (situation) to attack myself and separate from love”. 

We can also bring to mind the love that we have experienced in our lives and embrace ourselves and the situation in the memory of that experience of pure peace. There is no reason to keep the attack going. We may as well stop, notice, forgive, and then laugh at the ego’s insane attempt to draw us into another of its crazy stories. Why prolong the agony? Let’s stop the madness now.