Episode Transcript
My name is Ken Hanuman and I've been practicing Raja Yoga meditation for over 40 years. In these episodes, I will share the experiences and insights I've gained from meditation and how I've integrated them into my everyday life and all my relationships. Welcome to the Spiritual Relationship Podcast. Does it feel like sometimes your mind have a mind of its own? Is it possible to take back control? Is it possible to make the mind your friend rather than it being the master? Hello everyone. Welcome to the Spiritual Relationship Podcast. My name is Ken Hanuman, your host in the previous episode. We spoke about the soul. The topic was, who am I? And I said, that's the first step in meditation, knowing who you are, the spiritual being that is using the body. So when we speak of the soul, you can't see the soul, but you can understand it, you can experience it. And you can actually say it's something like an intimate sense of self-awareness, sort of like an internal sentience. You know, you know that you are alive. I am that, I am. The topic today is the mind, and that is to differentiate it from the soul. Some people kind of mix it up. They say the mind is the soul or the soul, you know? But, for meditation, it's important to know the soul is you. That is observing the mind. Mind functions within consciousness. In the next episode, we'll talk about intellect and that also is another function of the soul. The way I want you to start thinking of the mind is that the mind is like a screen and you are watching a 3D movie and have events, emotions, feelings, thoughts, imagination, visualization, dreaming. These are all functions of the mind, and if you were to just step back and just watch what your thoughts are, you'll begin to understand how you are creating memories, how you're creating personality traits, how you're creating habits, because they didn't come from nowhere. They came from your past experiences. Our state of being at any given time is actually dictated by our thoughts. It's a seat, as you can say. The mind is a seat of your thoughts and your experiences. The reason why people would like to do meditation, 'cause actually meditation comes from a word moder means to heal. And people practice meditation because they want to stop some of that negative thinking pattern. 'cause it creates an unhappiness within you and it's sort of drain you of your energy and drive when it is very negative. And if you look at mental illness, they're all, the underlying factor is fear. So people don't want to live like that. They would like to change that. They wanna be happy. So your state of being, let's say you wanna be happy, you have to actually start with this understanding of who really you are as being separate from the mind, the thinking mind, and that you are looking at it and you have an intellect, which will be the next, next topic, but the intellect is what allows us to, sort of restructure things or reeducate yourself so that you can make better choices. So let's look at a negative example. And this might sound a little dramatic, but actually it's really quite common. The mind when left unchecked. You can say that it is un reliable. Sometimes you misinterpret things and many times even when good things happen to people, they sometime still can't fully enjoy it. They seem to feel like something is wrong, so it's like the mind can sometimes not really work in your favor. Is causing you sorrow. You can't even appreciate that which is going on good, that is going on in your life. And why is that? Why is the mind working against you? And that is because the mind is shaped by years childhood to now of messaging and comparison. Disappointment, unmet emotional needs. And over the time it develops a certain pattern of thinking. You know, it becomes very familiar. You believe it and it you think that's who you are. Like say you're very angry. You're very easy to get into a rage. You use it over a long time. You think that's who I am. But the thing is that it can also create feelings of low self-worth, like a loss of that sense of belonging and your ability to trust yourself. Okay. All of us, right? We'll have negative thoughts sometimes, and like I said, these things are common, but the spiritual problem with that. Is not so much the negative thoughts, but it's the identification with it, meaning that I believe them. So an example will be if I think I'm no good or I'll never measure up, or nobody loves me, and I truly believe that, then it starts to affect the way you behave or you interact with people. So in meditation, hopefully you'll be able to see the negative thought, but also understand where it came from and what is the underlying belief system. So with the knowledge, the spiritual knowledge, slowly, you'll be able to stop putting the negative thought into action. You start to question the belief, in that assumption, that value. And by doing that, you will regain some control and you will choose a better behavior or, a better reaction. Once we start changing something, once we start questioning a belief, we can replace it with something positive, elevated. Like spiritual values, we can, we, can we train things or restructure, our memory in a way that the thoughts and the feelings are now more positive and creating happiness, peace within you. Like I said, the mind is a source, for, suffering and also the source for your enlightenment. And on the positive side, the mind is, the faculty through which you experience happiness, peace, love, empathy, benevolence, mercy, all these feeling, you know, positive feeling. You also feel that through your mind. So the mind is a very good resource to have. It's a resource that you have. You can't run away from your mind. It is there. So why not practice meditation, educate yourself spiritually, so that you can, recreate yourself. That you can actually experience peace in spite of what is going on around you. You identify with peace rather than the negative stuff. You identify with love, you identify with benevolence, you identify with being caring, try to understand the laws of karma and all of these things we will discuss in the classes coming up. So how do we get back control? We have to develop the intellect. We have to sort of realize that we have this ability to analyze, to discriminate, to make choices, to weigh right and wrong, good and bad. What is beneficial, what is not. So that ability to question a thought, to question, an emotion or a reaction that is the intellect. And that is, that is one power that you have under your control. And, it's up to you to use your time and to, be in the right company and to make time for yourself, take care of yourself, don't let your mind take over and run, make you cause you to, to experience sorrow. So I will finish the podcast here and I hope you develop a more, a greater understanding of what the mind is. In your meditation practice observing the mind. There are a lot of, meditation commentaries that are available online on YouTube that is free. And in the description, you'll see the link to that. So use it. So I will, close now. Thank you for listening. And remember that your nature is peace, protect it. Thank you. Goodbye. When you walk into a room, life gets little, you. You.
