The Way to a Lasting Peace

In the entire universe there's only one thing that can truly hurt you.

And that is your own mind.

All the anxiety, despair and depression, fears and anger; whatever your poison is, those are mental objects. And even if we talk about physical pain, what it actually is, is a mental pain.

It's the kind of pain that is felt. Experienced.

And if you consider the people you love, and all you fear for them, it's also the states of mind that they might have to undergo. Grief. Despair. And so on.

So if there is a hell, it's not a physical place.

It's a mental place.

And we've all been there. To some level.

And then if we consider the opposite side, heaven too is a mental state.

You've been there too. You have known joy, and peace, and happiness. Even if it's a distant memory, or just a few short moments that you can recollect, you do know what those words mean, truly.

And so life is this tug of war between your desires and your fears.

Whatever your mind cooks up next, does it attract you or repel you.

And amidst all this is the idea that you are in control. Or maybe even the belief that you are this brain that is underlying the mind.

But if that is true why can't you just turn it all off?

Turn off all the anxiety. Turn off all the pain.

You can't do it, can you?

So the relationship between you and your mind is not so straightforward.

You're not completely in control. Or in control at all.

Try stopping thinking for a few minutes. You'll find it's impossible.

And you can spend decades meditating, trying techniques to quieten your mind, but they will only work in short moments during meditation, during certain states, but not in everyday life.

No.

The way to conquer the mind is not to go to war with it.

Because who would go to war? It would be the mind grappling with itself.

It would be like fighting shadows.

So, you have to take a step back and look at what is really going on here.

If the mind is a shadow, is it your shadow? It's more like the shadow of what's going on in the brain.

And there's no central authority here that can rewire the brain as it likes. There is psychological treatment and behavior therapy that can help, of course. But even what may be called a normal human mind is not a very peaceful place.

But it so happens that all human minds are built around this central idea.

This idea of "me".

And if that "me" is seen a certain way, it's like pulling the plug at the bottom of a bathtub when it's full. Or pulling just the right string in a knot, so that it completely unravels.

It may sound far-fetched, but really everything hinges on the mind's idea of what you are.

So to untangle this mess of a mind, all we really need to do is focus on one question. Focus the mind itself on that question.

What am I?

What am I in relation to the mind?

What is this core "me" around which all these thoughts are being built?

And as interest goes into this question you'll start noticing how the mind's "I" is just a pointer. It's a fuzzy shifting idea. A mental object.

Not you.

At some point you'll see this "I" is pointing to one of your roles in life. A son or a daughter. A father or mother.

At another point, the "I" might be very fixated around your career. Your role in terms of work life.

And in a social situation, the mind may be very busy updating this model of "I" based on what it thinks the third person feels it's like. How this "I" is being perceived from the outside.

But you can't be this shifting, changing mental object, because you're always there witnessing all these variations; these thoughts and so on.

So, there's a critical distinction here.

There's the minds model of you, which is constantly shifting. That's what we can call "me".

It changes over time, moment to moment.

And then there's You. Let's call that I.

There's a difference between "me" and I.

"Me" is mental. I is real. You are real.

And when the mind can cut through its own confusion, when all the neurons under there can finally compute what it is they are addressing, what is it that is aware of all this mental activity, that is the conquest of the mind.

Because in that one realization, the very root of the problem is cut through. The knot is untangled.

And the anxiety and the worry and the depressive thoughts cannot be sustained. They are wiped out.

Because the truth of what You are is magnificent. It's brilliant. It is nothing of the sort the mind has ever thought of.

You are beyond words.

Beyond the mind itself.

You are the Sentience to which the mind appears.

And in Yourself, whether there is a mind or not, You are perfect.

You are peace itself.

Which is self-evident as soon as the mind shuts up! And acknowledges what You really are.