THE MIND.
In India, the human mind is often compared to a monkey that needs to be trained, so it does not make a mess all around us. Curious, restless and sometimes not very reflective, our mind allows itself to be dragged by the senses, taking our attention from one place to another and leaving us exhausted, dazed and stressed. However, like monkeys, the mind is not intrinsically good or bad; It is simply true to its own nature, and if we do not want to live at the mercy of its impulses and clumsy reactions, we will have to know our mind, train it and make it our ally.

KNOW YOURSELF.
The first thing we have to understand is that we are not our mind.

Just as our body has its limbs, organs, bones, etc., and is at the same time the set of all these components; In the same way we have a body, a mind and a consciousness, and we are all these elements. But then who are we ultimately? We are our consciousness. It is the only part of us that is eternal and immutable in its essence, and that encompasses everything else that constitutes our total being.

When we are babies, impulses through our senses rule. It is enough to see how a baby moves when something catches his attention to realize that it is the stimuli that dominate all his activity.

But as the child grows the mind takes control. We no longer react so impulsively but instead evaluate and reflect before acting.

The unfortunate thing is that in general most people stay at this level of consciousness and, since their minds are the ones that govern their lives, they believe that their being is limited to a physical body with a mind that manages it.

It is true that many also have the conviction of being more than this, of having a soul or spirit. But how many of them know it with the same absolute certainty that only the fact of having experienced that immaterial aspect of their own being can provide them?

It is precisely for this: to experience the totality of our being, that meditation is so powerful. This practice allows us to rise a little, to detach our higher self from our mind and to observe its behavioral habits.

By observing ourselves from a perspective that places us beyond our mind we can disidentify from it. And guess who is that observer? It is our spiritual consciousness or soul, whatever you prefer to call it.

Let’s go back to the image of a baby who has just begun to crawl and goes from one place to another chasing everything that stimulates his avid senses. Let us now add to the scene his mother who watches him so absorbed and enchanted that she forgets everything else, including herself. She is as if hypnotized and feels one with her baby. But at some point something will remind her that she is the mother, in charge of that baby!

Our soul or spirit would be the «mom» of our physical, mental and mortal being; our «baby» or ego in this life…

Leaving the metaphor aside, it is usually an illness or some extreme situation that brings people out of the hypnotic trance and awakens their consciousness to the fact that there is much more to them than they previously assumed.

It can also happen fortuitously in the context of aesthetic ecstasy, contemplating a beautiful landscape or feeling that we merge with the essence of everything that surrounds us. But very few have that kind of experience, and even fewer give it due importance so that it becomes something more than just a pleasant memory.

That is why Meditation is an excellent option to voluntarily access that higher state of consciousness, and it is a much less complicated practice than most assume.

To begin, just learn to disidentify from your own mind and observe it for a few minutes a day.

A SIMPLE PRACTICE.

NOTICE:
The mind and monkeys love freedom, so it is better to persuade them than to subdue them. It is not a good idea to start by trying to force our mind to do something that it is not used to doing because, since it is still the one in control, it will soon convince us that this meditating is not for us…

Take a couple of minutes three times a day to observe your mind as if you were observing a monkey walking around. Don’t intervene or judge, just observe it to discover its habits and preferences.

Ideally, you would do this exercise in the morning (while you shower or brush your teeth, for example), at some point during the day (at work or on the bus when you return home), and before going to sleep at night.

When you do this exercise it is essential that you do not identify with your mind and its thoughts. Observe as if it didn’t belong to you, so you can be objective and really get to know it.

PERSUADE:
If you discover trends and habits that don’t benefit you, persuade your mind to change them. Don’t force the change, or your mind will rebel against you! If, for example, in the morning you discover that it starts complaining, seeking conflict because you took it out of your dreams and dragged it to a job you don’t like, tell yourself not to worry, because whatever happens during the day, the night will soon come and you will go back to them. And promise your mind that you will start evaluating job alternatives. Don’t condemn your monkey to live in a cage or a circus!

TRAIN WITH GENTLENESS:
The first step to meditation is mental concentration. Find a time and place to be alone with your mind for fifteen minutes a day and ask it to focus on something you like. It can be a lit candle, an attractive object, a pleasant sound, a mental image or your breathing.

At first your mind will escape after a few seconds. Do not be upset. Observe where it goes, what distracted you, and then bring your mind back into focus with the same gentleness with which you would bring back a curious and restless child who runs away from you all the time. Show it some aspect of that object that arouses its curiosity and you will see that little by little your mind will concentrate on it for longer periods of time.

If you keep to these first two practices for three weeks, you will see that by then it will be your own mind that will ask you to maintain this new habit, because just like monkeys and children, the mind likes to learn and develop new skills.

But if you can’t sustain the practice for three weeks, don’t give up simply because you feel like you failed. Remember that to learn to walk you first had to fall several times until you mastered that skill. However, once you got it, you immediately forgot all the failures and started practicing how to jump, run, dance, climb, ride a bike and who knows how many other things.

Practicing concentration is equivalent to teaching your mint to crawl.

I will explain other more complex practices in future articles, so that one day your mind transmutes into a phoenix capable of taking you to unimaginable worlds. Your mind has the potential to do this and much more. Do not waste it!

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