The Mind Is Not As Important As It Pretends To Be

00:30

21:32

The Mind Is Not As Important As It Pretends To Be

by Corin Bryant

Rated

5

Type

talks

Activity

Meditation

Suitable for

Everyone

Plays

50

In this talk, I explain a powerful shift in understanding that made my meditation practice far more enjoyable and led to profound serenity. I speak from my own experiences of meditation in the past and being caught in endless overthinking that was highly frustrating, but with this small alteration in my perspective, I found I could be at total inner peace even when the mind was still busy. In time, my mind became far more peaceful simply because I began to give it far less attention.

Witness Consciousness Thought Watching Spacious Awareness Meditation Inner Peace Mindfulness Overthinking Mind Alignment Compassion Non Judgmental Observation

Meet your Teacher

Devon, England, United Kingdom

Meet your Teacher

Devon, England, United Kingdom

Transcript

Hi team. I just want to share this small shift. In perception. That has been so useful and powerful for me in my own meditation on this journey to inner peace. And I just I love small shifts like this because occasionally. All it takes is a minor adjustment. In the way that we're perceiving something. Just a small change. In our understanding of something that can lead to the biggest. Transformations and can lead to far deeper and far more peaceful and far more enjoyable meditations and spiritual practice. So this shift for me was very liberating and very freeing. And it's essentially. . . Rather than trying to fight the mind. Trying to force the mind to be quiet. Trying to force the mind to fall silent instead. Simply begin to treat the mind like it's irrelevant. So it's a sense of lessening the importance of the mind. This is a shift in. Your belief in how important thinking is. So when you're sat in meditation and you're trying to quieten the mind, It can be very frustrating to find that actually the mind just keeps chattering away. It's very noisy, It's very chaotic And this can lead us to become quite frustrated. I wish it would go silent I wish my mind wasn't so busy. How can I make it go quiet? This meditation is no good because it's just this is this is too much. The mind is just too loud. But if you notice that frustration, And those thoughts like, I wish my mind would be quiet, Is actually just further thinking. It's more thinking. And more thinking isn't going to help. When we're trying to Think less. It's like pouring petrol on a bonfire We can't outthink our problem of overthinking. It just makes things worse and worse. And then we become aware even of that. And so it becomes even more frustrating. And that can lead us to becoming quite disheartened, Quite demoralized in our meditation practice. Here's what I would suggest. Instead of becoming frustrated, It's a sense of just treat the mind with all of its chatter, However noisy it is, However busy, Chaotic it is, Whatever it's saying. Just begin to lessen. The amount of importance that you're giving to the mind. It's as though. . . The mind is just another. . . Element of experience that you can just begin to tune out. In the same way that maybe you live somewhere and there's like traffic noise outside. After a while. You just don't notice it You've automatically tuned it out. Because. . . Your mind is. . . Isn't really considering traffic noise to be all that important. So after a while, You simply stop noticing. It's still there. That's the really interesting thing. The noise is still there. But because you don't notice it, It might as well not be there. And it's because you don't really give it much importance. Now this is really fascinating. This is really interesting. If I was to say now, Are you aware of the sensation of the socks on your feet? Like suddenly once somebody calls your attention to it. You become aware of it. The sensation was always there. It was there when you started watching this video, But you weren't aware of it. You'd tuned it out. Because it's not really important. It's not prominent in your conscious awareness. Because you're not really paying attention to it. It's not significant. It's not prominent in your consciousness because it's irrelevant. Now, It might seem impossible, This might sound like too good to be true, But we can have that exact same. . . Perception of the mind. With all of its chatter. By withdrawing attention from it. By just beginning to treat the chatter of the mind as completely irrelevant. Just not important in the slightest. It starts to fall into the background of your awareness. You start to realize that We never needed. . . You didn't need the mind to be silent. You didn't need the mind to be quiet in order to find inner peace. It's more to do with being at peace regardless of whatever is happening in your experience. Just become fully disinterested in what the mind has to say. It's not important not relevant. So that's a really powerful, Just minor shift in understanding when you come to sit in meditation. It's not a wrestling match. You're not getting into a fight with the mind. Because that only strengthens the mind. Especially this little frustration loop that happens. You become. . . Frustrated and angry at just how powerful the mind seems to be. But that actually. . . Feeds the mind because by paying attention to it so much, We're increasing. The amount of attention and awareness that we're devoting. To the mind and therefore it becomes more prominent. And more significance. In your experience One of the reasons we find it hard to disengage from the mind is because of our beliefs. About thinking and thought in the first place this is one of the reasons why many of us have a tendency to overthink to worry to ruminate to have very anxious minds and very busy minds is because we've been conditioned to believe that thinking is very important. That thinking is very important. Thinking is a very morally just activity. That thinking is a way of being responsible and a way of being diligent. And so throughout all of our conditioning, We've been taught. You must be thinking at all times. It's very important to keep thinking. And so just assess that belief. Is that really true? I mean, We know just how fallible the mind is. So one way that we can begin to overturn. Our belief in the importance of thinking is to recognize that thoughts are rarely accurate. If ever. They're not accurate. And we know this because. . . Our perceptions. Are so biased. We have all of these cognitive biases. We have negativity bias in which we believe negative things are more likely to be true. We have confirmation bias in which when we have a belief, We look for things that will affirm that belief rather than. Rather than looking for things that disprove that belief, There's so many. Unconscious biases biases biases biases that sounds that sounds smarter so I'll go with that We have so many. Unconscious biases. That we're just not aware of. But once we become aware of this, We start to realize that actually, Your own mind can lie to you. It's not It's not as accurate as it pretends to be. See, The mind itself is always reifying its own self-importance. The mind is egocentric in itself. It's very arrogant, The mind, And it wants to keep. . . Trying to reaffirm just how important it is. Very important to keep thinking. And it's subtle, But it might even be reaffirming this by. . . We feel like the mind is very dangerous. So this happens all the time. When we're studying meditation or you're looking into Spiritual practices, Spiritual disciplines, Trying to spiritually awaken. Trying to find inner peace. End up making an enemy of the mind. It becomes like an adversary. And we start to have all these kind of beliefs about the mind like it's some sort of dark, Malevolent force. It's an enemy that we need to fight in order to vanquish this enemy. But you see, That's a very subtle trick of the mind. That's the mind aggrandizing itself, Saying, I am very dangerous. I am. I am very fierce. I'm very important. Save yourself all this trouble. This will save you a lot of energy and a lot of time. To simply let go of the mind entirely. It's a sense of just withdraw your attention from the chatter of the mind. And you're perfectly safe to do this. The mind itself wants you to believe that thinking is necessary in order to keep you safe. It's not true. It's not true, Quite the opposite in fact. So it's safe to let go of the mind. One powerful analogy I like is to Treat the mind like it's actually an external. Noise. Meditation in the early stages of meditation you might have learned about being able to perceive sound. Without attaching to it, Without forming too many opinions about it. Without naming it. Without labeling it, Without judging it. Without analyzing it. It's just sound. You might hear the birds tweeting, Traffic noise, The wind. Just the general noise around you, But just seeing if you can be the open, Empty space of awareness. Perfectly at peace, Perfectly serene, And you're just the space of consciousness in which sound can flow through. You don't hold on to it. You don't try and hurry it along. You just simply observe what already is. Sound rises in the field of awareness. Stays a while. And then falls away. Now what if you could treat the same. . . Chatter of the mind. In exactly the same way. With this very non-attached, Non-judgmental. Non-analytical perception. It's just pure observation. So you're aware. That there is mind activity. But you don't have to get involved. Just don't get involved. Just leave it alone. Can treat it like it's got nothing to do with you really. Just as the traffic noise outside has got nothing to do with you. Just leave it alone and it becomes less and less significant. Becomes less prominent in your consciousness. Do the same with the mind. All those thoughts, Memories, Predictions about the future. All of those narratives and stories. Does it bother me really? No, I don't think so. And it's this relaxed, Peaceful. Detachment. You're still perfectly free and able to enjoy all of the experience. But you're now doing so from a space that is far less. Busy, Far less chaotic. There's no turmoil there anymore because you're not involved in the experience. You're simply observing the experience. But we're only going to be able to do that. Once we have truly seen we've truly integrated the understanding that the mind It's weaving illusions all the time. And one of the primary illusions that it weaves is its own self-importance. So turn down the importance. We can still concede that the mind has its uses and it has its functions Because the mind is something that manifests in the universe, And the universe doesn't make mistakes. So the mind must be there for a reason, Sure. But it's as though we've promoted the mind way above its station. When did the mind become the CEO? It really is like the janitor has been promoted to CEO like. When did this happen? The mind is a problem solver. It can maybe organize things. It can help us to. Interpret things yeah so it does have its function it's just At a certain point we became so mind identified. That we've come to think that the mind is the dominating force of our experience and it's not. You are not your mind. You are the consciousness that is aware of the mind. So imagine how things would change if you learned to be able to discern. Is that important what the mind has offered up to me today? That's all the mind can ever do, Really. It comes to you with a proposal. When it has a memory or a thought or an idea or a worry or a concern. If you see it like an employee coming to you and saying, You know, This is happening. But you have the power to either engage or dismiss. You have the power to do that. What if you could practice that? That level of discernment. So that's the shift in understanding. That I found so powerful, So helpful. You see, Ultimately, And here's the paradox, That results in the mind being quiet far more often. The mind falling silent in meditation far more often. But you can't try to make that happen because the more you try to make that happen, The louder the mind will be. Instead, By leaving the mind alone, It will leave you alone. It becomes insignificant, Irrelevant and unimportant in the same way the sensations of the socks on your feet. Always falls into the background of your experience. You never notice it until somebody points it out. For some reason, You suddenly become aware of it. Now it was always there, It's just that you tuned it out. The same with so many things in our experience. Our consciousness filters out so much stuff. But the mind is one of those things that has it's had your attention for so long. Your earnest, Sincere attention, Believing it to be so important, So significant, So powerful. That it's just gotten louder and louder and louder over the years. Now it's time to just practice this ability to just disengage. It's not important. It's not important. No matter how convincing the mind is, No matter how tempting or threatening it is. It's always your power whether to engage or not. And I would say just choose to not engage 99% of the time. And it takes a little courage to do this. But what starts to happen is as you practice this disengagement, This neutral. Compassionate. Disinterest in the mind. Because you're protecting your peace. This is compassionate because you're protecting your well-being. You're trying to come to a place of security and safety and stillness. Peace, So it's compassionate. Be disinterested in the mind. The more you practice that, The. . . The quieter the mind becomes, It doesn't come to you with such severity any more. So it takes a little. . . Courage to do this because we're so used to Believing that it's the relentless anxiety of the mind that's keeping us safe. But now we've come to realize, No, That's not actually true. So we have to start. Living in life and engaging with activities and doing and taking care of our responsibilities and everything with far less of the mind activity involved. And that takes a bit of courage and a bit of discipline. But by doing this, You repeatedly reaffirm to yourself. The mind is not nearly as accurate as it pretends to be. Full of bias particularly anxiety like negativity bias and there is a kind of anxiety bias it believes that If I just worry about things enough, That's what will keep us safe. It's not accurate. That's not true. But the most powerful way to overturn false beliefs is actually to experience that those beliefs are false. I was trying to keep this one simple today too, But I've gone off on quite a deep tangent there. So I'll leave that one there, I think. Beautiful. Thank you so much for following. Thanks so much for listening. Hope some of that's useful for you. Let me know. Take care. Be well and stay present.