The Inner Revolution

The Mind is the king of our lives. From his throne in the brain he commands our body and speech for good or for ill. The law of the land is nothing other than what society or ourselves have conditioned our Mind to be like. In real life, a new order or direction is caused by a revolution. People get fed up with the way things are and radically change. In our own internal lives, we too can wage a revolt against the old King and reform his habits so we can lead better lives.

Think about it: every experience you or anyone else has ever had or will ever have was preceded by Mind. Before you could perceive anything in this room, let alone come here at all, Mind needed to be there first, as a first cause. Similarly, a war or a murder starts with a single unchecked angry thought. A great philanthropic acts began with a single cultivated thought of kindness.

So from that, we can conclude that how we use our Mind is a huge determining factor in how we live our life, and so the transformation of the Mind, the inner revolution, is the most monumental thing we can ever attempt. The mastery of our Mind is the mastery of our Life.

With just a little bit of willpower, and some reminders here and there, we can turn our life into a Psychological Gymnasium, where every day and every situation can be a moment to refine our mind, to cultivate good habits and discard bad ones, to work out our mental faculties of intelligence and awareness and exercise our love.

Meditation and Mindfulness is how we do it. If you want to take control of your life and mind, you have to be there for it. If you are driving you have to be paying attention to forks on the road and skillful ways to get to where you want to go, otherwise you are just on auto-pilot, and who knows where that might take you. It is how we realize that there is an empty space between our thoughts we can rest in, that we can control our mind instead of our mind controlling us, and that we can direct our attention to certain objects instead of objects directing our attention.

This is not something new, it is not something foreign that I am trying to introduce into your head. To a certain extent you are already a master of your mind, already a master of meditation, you just didn’t know it. After all, you seem to have no problem being mindful of your worries or your fears. You have no problem meditating on desire, fantasies, and hate. All you have to do is shift a bit: Instead, be mindful of what you have and the good things in your life. Meditate on contentment.

We have to understand that our mind is the most fertile of all soil. Anything that is planted there will start to grow with the sunlight and water of our attention, and produce the fruit of action. We can walk into our house and think, “I want a bigger house, I want more things”, and that produces a life of discontentment and desire. Or, we can walk into our house and think “I’m glad I have a house. I’m glad I have things”, and that produces a life of contentment and peace. And it all starts in the mind, with a single thought, your whole viewpoint is revolutionized. It’s that simple.

Think about all the places people want to go and all the things they want. They think that a change of home,a vacation, a change of job, or getting the latest and coolest thing will give them the peace and contentment they so naturally want. But if we think some kind of change in the exterior world will bring the change of Mind we are actually seeking, then we have fooled ourselves because that is not how it’s done. The kind of change that brings peace and contentment can only come from within, because the obstacles of peace and contentment are also within.

We think we have no control over our Minds or our Life because for so many of us thoughts of discontentment have been so thoroughly ingrained by ourselves or society. They seem automatic. But with just a little conscious effort the thoughts of contentment and joy can become just as automatic. Try it and see.

It’s the difference between a life of “Everything sucks” and “Aaaaah! Life is good”. Money is not the difference, romantic partners are not the difference, fame is not the difference, a 1st place certificate on your wall is not the difference, one little thing happening differently in your past is not the difference, one little thing happening in your future is not the difference. A mind with habits of peace is the difference.

People think that being calm and being active are two contrary things. If you’re active you need to be doing a million things and stressing out about it, if you’re calm you need to be lazing on the couch. It couldn’t be any farther from the truth. We can be actively calm and calmly active. When we are actively calm, we are genuinely at peace instead of just thinking about it, cutting out the weeds of anxiety with gentleness and equanimity. When we are calmly active, we are doing one thing with our fullest attention and therefore doing it efficiently. When we are calm and doing something the effect will always be better than if we were in a state of stress or anxiety while doing it.

We stumble through our lives like robots because we have gotten too used to everything. You’ve heard it before: When you were a kid you were full of wonder because everything was new and magical, but now you have become blind to the sight of the sunset and deaf to the tune of the winds because you think it’s just the same old sun and the same old winds.

Our habituated patterns of reacting to hate with hate and gain with joy cause life to be like a rollercoaster that is constantly vacillating between a pleasant dream and a nightmare. I say “Dream” because a life where being ruled by habits and not really paying attention to what is going on around us is hazy and bewildering, just like a dream.

But when we apply the principle of mindfulness to our lives, we rediscover our footstep and what it feels like to walk - not to be thinking and doing a million things AND walking, but to be literally JUST walking. We rediscover what it is like to breathe, to JUST breath, to JUST see, to JUST hear. It can be done anywhere - in a busy room or in a beautiful nature trail somewhere. When we do it we become surprised, flabbergasted, even at how genuinely peaceful our minds can be. We've been stressing out and worrying so much we think it’s the natural state of mind, but in truth we don’t even know how much more our minds are geared towards tranquility, and how much we will enjoy it.

Discovering the natural tranquility of the Mind is like a parched man wandering in the desert, looking for water to satisfy his thirst. He goes to an oasis and thinks he’s found satisfaction, but it’s actually just a mirage, a self-deception, and he is still just as thirsty as he was before. But when he discovers mindfulness, meditation, and contentment his thirst becomes satiated and he thinks he is having a profound and spiritual experience, but really it is natural for someone to not be thirsty. It is a supremely ordinary experience, and that is what makes it so extraordinary.

It takes practice! I know that from personal experience. It is not like turning on a light, where you flip a switch and suddenly all the darkness is gone. After all, you've conditioned that mind of yours for quite a long time, so it can't be turned around overnight. But you can do it!

Silence [Poem]

Hey.

I've missed you a lot.
Why do you run away from me?
Absorbed in all that noise, plugged into all those people...
Have you forgotten my soothing subtleties?

Soon I will have passed away into legends,
As you ceaselessly invent technologies that snuff me out,
and cities where you can  hide from me altogether.

Why? Why do you do it?
Are you afraid? Are you bewildered?

I promise to you, if you let go of your gadgets
And all of those games, forget your worries and desires,
You'll discover an empty space between your thoughts.
Did you even know it existed? Visit me there sometime.
It's a serene and spacious place.

Come on. Let your breath be the siren song
That lures you to me, the stillness behind all motion,
and from there you can gently slip into my profundity.

When we are together, just think:
I am supremely ordinary.
That is what makes me Extraordinary.

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(For those of you who are confused, the "person" speaking in this poem is the personification of silence).