Step #9, Mind – Day 2 How attached are we to ourselves and to our sense of self? How does our sense of self affect our sense of others? How do we see beyond the self? And when we do this, who is doing the looking if it’s not the self? These are all valuable ponderings. Not because you may come up with paradigm shifting answers (though you may), but because any exercise of deep and expansive mental exploration is good for the brain and thus for the mind.
Author and spiritual leader, Eckhart Tolle, often tells the story of his awakening. He was going through an extremely troubling time and was considering ending his life. In doing so, he thought, “I don’t want to live with myself any longer.” This struck a chord deep within his soul… he thought, “if I don’t want to live with me, who is the I and who is the me?” In a sense, he realized that if the “I” can make choices about the “me,” life may not be so wretched after all. This moment landed him squarely on the spiritual path and it was the result of the mind’s natural affinity for observing.
In observing the mind, we are observing ourselves and developing a very strong relationship with our place in the cosmos. We are in it and of it in every regard.
Let’s meditate on that!
Its a very odd thing to be observing yourself in meditation. You put yourself into the 3rd person status. You are now the writer and the book!