Declining The Invitations Of Mind

Suryacitta suggests you banish two words from your vocabulary. These two words when consistently used keep us feeling small, limited, and unhappy. What are these two words? They are very small words but with a great impact on your life. Come along and find out what they are.

There is a talk and a short meditation.

Transcript

So,

Hello.

I want to suggest that you banish two words from your vocabulary.

Very small words.

In fact,

One is the shortest word in the English language.

The other one is also a short word of four letters.

Those words are I can't.

If you get into I can't,

If you overplay the I can't,

At some point your experience will catch up with that belief.

Also,

Your body,

If it's to do with a physical ailment,

Your body will catch up with it.

I'm not saying we don't already have an ailment.

We might do.

But just from my own experience.

A few weeks ago Gaynor and I were planning a trip to the North East of England.

It's a seaside town about two and a half hours from here.

Nearly three hours.

And the mind said,

I can't do that with this back.

It would be too hard.

I can't do it.

And because of the training I've had I could watch this.

Interesting.

Interesting.

But I did it.

I just took another couple of stops on the way up.

Gave it some stretching,

A little bit of walking.

Had a coffee.

It was fine.

Then when we were up there,

I was getting up at six o'clock in the morning,

6am.

Take our dog for a walk.

It was still dark.

Going out with a torch.

And I remember getting about three to four hundred yards away from the house.

Towards the beach.

Ah.

Forgotten the extension lead.

The long lead.

Ah.

Because I like to put him on a long lead when he's on the beach so he can have a little bit of a roam because he's blind.

Can't let him off too much.

So,

Ah.

Okay.

I can't go back.

It was the morning.

My back was stiff.

I can't go back.

What did I do?

Went back.

Don't obey the mind.

Don't listen to the mind.

Listen to the body if it's a physical ailment.

Don't listen to the mind.

Because if you play that record enough,

Your experience will follow it.

And what happens is your life becomes smaller and smaller and smaller.

Because what mind wants,

And I'm only talking about egoic mind here.

Not the practical thinking and the functional mind.

It wants to keep you small and limited.

Because that way you will receive its invitations.

You will believe what it's sending you.

It's sending you thoughts which will keep,

Which if believed,

Will keep you feeling small and limited.

That's what will happen.

So,

We might go through a difficult time.

I can't go out.

I can't go and meet people.

I can't answer the phone.

I can't.

I can't.

I can't.

At some point that will become your reality.

So,

Don't listen to it.

Put it to one side.

I can't comes up.

What can you do?

Either just release.

Let it go.

Or I'm having a thought.

I can't.

It's different from I can't.

Knowing that you are having a thought I can't is different from I can't.

It's sort of subtle,

But it's also not so subtle.

It's so obvious.

It's so obvious.

Don't fall for it.

Listen to the body.

You are more capable than what the mind says you are capable of.

What do I mean?

Let me put it another way.

The mind sends you fearful thoughts so that it won't do things.

So,

You will withdraw.

Because then it has you in a sense.

It's not like this little person in the head,

But it has a certain sort of intelligence.

But the intelligence of the egoic mind is based on fear not wisdom or love.

It's based on fear and separation and limitation.

That's its intelligence.

That's why we feel fearful,

Limited and separate.

Hello?

Do you get that?

So,

What mind is telling you or rather what you believe eventually becomes your experience.

Don't listen to it.

Turn away.

No thank you.

It's those invitations.

Remember the invitations?

I've talked about them before.

It's those invitations.

Because the egoic mind knows you intimately.

It's like sitting there rubbing its hands.

We know how to get her attention.

We know what will hook him.

This will hook him in.

Send him that anxious thought about his health.

That always gets him.

Or whatever it is.

It's whatever is your thing.

It might be a certain vulnerability you have.

It might be a certain you're shamed about something.

So then mind sends you an invitation.

You accept the invitation.

Or you believe that thought.

And then that's food for the mind.

It keeps it alive and functioning and strong.

And what we do when we decline those invitations.

What we do when we don't open them.

No thank you.

Mind says I can't.

Well,

Good.

I don't care what you say.

I don't care.

Because there's a greater intelligence just beneath or behind the feeble intelligence of mind.

And this intelligence is based on wisdom and love.

Why don't we seem to have access to this?

Well,

We do.

But basically it's because we keep fixating.

We keep fixating on mind.

Egoic mind.

You might have come across this before.

But there's this image of a man carrying a spoon of olive oil through the forest in the marketplace.

He goes back to his master.

And he had to spill a drop of oil by the way.

Do not spill a drop.

And I will help you with your problem.

Problems.

So he gets back to the master.

I haven't spilled a drop.

Now can you help me?

Did you see the flowers?

Did you see the children?

Did you see the people drinking and having coffee and enjoying themselves?

No.

It's because you were focused on the not spilling a drop of the oil.

Meaning for us,

Because we're so focused on our thoughts,

Our mental world.

Now we monitor our experience moment by moment by moment,

Particularly if there's an ailment or a problem in our life.

We keep going there mentally.

You know if you have an ailment and you get a little symptom.

What's that?

So we miss it.

We've got our focus on the teaspoon.

Not spilling a drop.

Don't spill a drop.

What happens if I spill a drop?

Drop it.

See what happens.

Take your focus away from the fixation with mind,

With egoic mind,

With the I can't and all the other stories and tales it's telling you.

It's not true.

I can't.

Is it true?

Is it absolutely true?

Maybe you have to modify how you do something.

If you're going for a walk take a stick.

Whatever.

Whatever it is,

You have to work that out for yourself.

And it's not difficult.

You just have to get beyond this I can't.

It's the end of you.

That's what happens when we listen to this droning It's self-centred,

Ego-centred.

The attention is always going inward in the wrong way towards mind and towards what's wrong and what I can't do and what I used to be able to do and what I won't be able to do.

You suffer from too much future.

Such a lot of that thinking or so much of that thinking is future-oriented.

Some of it's past.

And then we have this mental image that we have of ourselves in the head,

Projected into the future and something bad will happen to it and it will be like this and be like that.

Now I'm not even saying there might not be a grain of truth in it.

But if we stay there,

We'll just have a life of misery.

That's what happens.

So what do we do?

Come back to real life.

Come back to what's really happening here.

We're going to have a short meditation actually in a few minutes.

So banish those two words from your vocabulary.

I can't.

Even I won't is better.

At least there's some empowerment there.

But I can't.

It's such a victim language.

Throw it away.

You don't need it.

We know there's certain things we can't do.

We can't jump over a skyscraper.

Fine.

But we don't even contemplate it.

It's the personal I can't.

And you'll watch how your life grows.

Because if you keep listening to that your life becomes smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller.

If you stop listening to it if you start to listen to and feel into the natural wisdom,

The intuitive wisdom which is imbued with love,

Then your life starts to broaden out to become more adventurous in whichever way that can be.

Most of us have some physical limitations.

But some of us have greater limitations.

But your life can still grow.

The richness can still be there.

Stop listening to it.

One of my teachers said,

You're better off listening to the sound of the traffic.

What's the point of that?

It's really happening for one thing.

The sound of the traffic is real.

The sound of the traffic isn't saying you're bad,

You're no good,

You're small and limited.

You can't do that.

You'll never achieve that.

The sound of the traffic is just happening.

And what happens when we take our attention to what's really happening,

Like the breath or the sound of the birds or the traffic,

Bodily sensations?

What happens then is that this egoic thinking begins to weaken because you're not giving it your attention.

Let's have a few moments on that now,

A few minutes.

So you can have your eyes open or closed.

Taking a couple of deep breaths.

That's it.

Dropping down.

Drop down out of the head.

Now rest in the body.

Now you can feel the bodily sensations.

Maybe of the breath.

Sensations of bottom on seat or whatever.

Maybe sounds are happening.

And notice at some point you begin fixating on thoughts.

That's it.

The moment you notice,

Get out of there.

There's nothing there for you.

Release and relax back into the body,

Into the breath,

Into real life.

Feel into that.

That's it.

There's nothing else you need to do.

Just feel into your present moment experience.

Rest there.

Give yourself a break for a moment.

Don't keep watching the teaspoon.

Don't keep monitoring your experience.

Okay,

So you can bring it to an end.

Just wanted a few minutes.

Again,

Just this very simple coming out of mind.

Because one of my teachers,

He's 95,

Is still sharing this.

Mind,

Just don't go there.

Don't go there.

If you go there,

Just get out of there.

When you realize that you're in there,

Just get out.

And if you're in his group and he sees you in there,

Get out of there.

It can be used to ask a question.

He teaches in such a way that keeps you or enables you to stay in presence.

Be in that.

Because that's your nature.

That's home.

That's the beloved.

That's the same Sufism.

Stay there.

Why leave home?

Why leave home?

Why leave the beloved for that?

All that nonsense.

All that misery.

Sometimes it's just a little upset.

Sometimes it's fantasy.

A lot of the time it's misery.

It's just the mind is a storyteller.

Thank you.

Bye bye.

Reviews

Thank you so much for this talk. It was just what I needed to hear.

The teaching is just what I needed, as I deal with a recently diagnosed chronic condition. Listen to Presence who speaks out of love, not the egoic mind that feeds on fear and limitations. Thank you so much❣️🙏🏼💗

i love this. my two words that limit me are, what if. what if i get it wrong. what if i make a mistake. what if something happens (yadda yadda). but it’s the same egoic limiting mind.

i’m going to carry something small on my person and it will represent your teacher. and every time my mind goes to that story telling place that takes me out of presence, i’m going to look at it and hear your teachers words, get out of there lol lol. thanks 🙏 💙💛🩷🙏💙💛🩷🙏💙💛🩷🙏

Wise words from Suryacitta. Another excellent talk and practice.

Wonderful 🙏🙏🙏 I read all this as a fascinating "act of rebellion" towards our freedom. We just have to remember to step back and leave from there. Thank you.