Mental Exercise 5 : Awareness

Mental chatter is real, and that is the basis which we form our mental modes, and then our reality. Not the reality, but always our reality as we perceive it. Like it or not, we have built a reality using what we are conditioned to think.

However, the answer to all this isn't simply stopping your mental chatter.

Although it seems to be the root of the problem, you will find that mental chatter cannot be simply suppressed or quelled all at once. You cannot dam the river in flood. You cannot stop your mental chatter. That's the bad news. The good news is you can do that bit by bit as you become more and more conscious of it.

Imagine your have a fertile plot of land. Say something happens and you have to be away for a couple of years. When you return, you'll find a mess of weeds in your field, almost totally impenetrable. If you take your mind as this field, can you imagine how much weeds there are already after years of neglect?

Your mind is like this fertile plot. It will nurture growth. But whether it will be vegetation or weeds is up to you. If you take care in planting the crops in rows and do weeding frequently, keep out stray animals and tend to the plants every day, you will find yourself with a plentiful harvest, so much that you can freely give away to relatives and friends as well.

It all starts with disciplining the mind.

You haven't been tending to your farm for years, so it shouldn't be a surprise to you that your mind has produced a dense overgrowth of useless weeds. Acknowledge this problem, and be grateful for whatever useful plants there are. Then you can start to clear the cluster of weeds slowly.

How do we clear this field? These weeds are deeply rooted indeed. They cannot be pulled out just like that. But their growth can be checked by exposure to sunlight. With enough sunlight, these weeds will wither and die off.

This sunlight is awareness. Just simply by being aware of your disruptive mental chatter, checks the growth of the unwanted weeds.