Mind Health Matters
Mind or consciousness is a stream of mental processes that involves every moment of our lives, and our ability to experience everything around us is because of this process. Without mind, there is no experience. Even in sleep, our mind is working relentlessly, occurring either as a dream or deep state. In our daily lives, the way we react or respond to happenings is actually the works of our minds, not exactly "us", as a being, or a person per se. When we talk of "meditation", we try to achieve deep mind states that, by the norm, are not usually attainable in daily living. Depression too is a kind of mind-state that we unknowingly got ourselves into, which always has a cause.
The mind can be wisely or wrongly used. When well-developed, which involves a specific kind of meditation, a whole new dimension of wholesome mind can arise to meet our experiences. Generous, kind, compassionate, loving, patient and even wisdom are some examples of wholesome mind. The opposite of those, which have elements of gross, harsh or even vulgar, are under the unwholesome category. By and large, many of us are not aware that all these mental states are not a curse or an entitlement bestowed upon us by unseen higher force before coming to birth. Nor is it because of our upbringing. Rather, due to our heedlessness of what and how the mind works, we have somehow unknowingly misuse it. We may think the mind is free to be used in any way we like. We think frivolously, we daydream, we get angry easily, we procrastinate, we laze around, or we even secretly judge another at the privacy of our inner mind, thinking that it is fine to do so since no one knows about it. And we think upon doing that all it will be all gone and done over. Nay, the mind stores every reaction or response and it becomes our future conditioning. How we respond or react at any given moment becomes a condition of our future minds. It also means that what our mind is at this moment is also due to how we conditioned it in our past.
In this regard, that is why awareness meditation is crucial. Meditation, a word to mean mental training, is a good tool to have to develop awareness of our reaction at any given moment. If we are aware that we have an unwholesome state, we can learn to take notice as it arises and knowing that it is not beneficial to our future, not to mention the present moment, we have a choice to wisely redirect it to its opposite. If we have no awareness of it, that unwholesome mind will be reinforced. For instance, when we are impatient and if we are aware of its unwholesomeness, we have a higher chance of changing its course. Otherwise, we may be conditioning and reinforcing our mind towards the direction of impatience. Some of us may be aware of how rushy and irritating our mind can be. Though we know yet we cannot stop it and it can be extremely exhausting, not to mention painful. Meditation helps to resolve this.
We come from the past, so to speak, and our present will make us our future. I am speaking of the mind, the nature of what makes all experiences possible. Do you care? If you do, join us in the next season of Mindfulness A Starting Point (click here for registration or if you have an existing WISE account click here to register) - we will show you a new way of living and train your mind towards a wiser you
In grace,
Tuck Loon
21 July 2021