Conquest of Mind Part 5. Life becomes your training ground.

This week, we have been looking at the ideas presented in the book Conquest of Mind, by Eknath Easwaran.

Here is the final idea – 

Life becomes your training ground.  Every challenge, delay, and irritation becomes an opportunity to grow in patience, love, and clarity.

Ideas are great – but they have to be put into practice when you come in contact with daily life to make any difference.

When things don’t go your way, that is the moment to stop and not think about it in your habitual way – to seize control of your mental response and control your mind to eliminate the suffering, great or small, you might normally experience from your reaction to what happens.  A key person is late for your important meeting?  Someone cuts you off in traffic?  The kids are sick when you had planned a big day?  It rains on the day of your big picnic?  You get laid off?  Anything…..take control of your mind and use it for good.  It is a tool, it is not your identity.

Parting thought – 

Freedom isn’t found in controlling your life – it’s found by mastering your mind.

Conquest of Mind – Part 4. Emotions can be transformed.

Emotions can be transformed.  Anger, fear, and craving lose their grip when you face them with awareness and steady practice.

Instead of saying “I am angry,” you say “I feel anger”.  That’s different.  Then you can look at it as separate from you and gain power over it.

You could ask “Why do I feel anger?”  “What is it trying to tell me?”  “What are my choices and what results would each lead to?”

“What can be good about this?”  “What is the lesson?”  “How can this make me better?”  “If this is out of my control, I can choose to let it go.”

People that let emotions rule their behavior are out of control and undisciplined.  We all have emotions.  Transforming them into something productive or at least not allowing negative ones to hurt you is important if you are to take control and live your best life.

Conquest of Mind – Part 3. Meditation is mental training.

Meditation is mental training.  Just like the body needs exercise, the mind needs daily discipline to become calm, strong and clear.  

The mind needs to learn and study each day.  It needs some silence each day to process open files and to get centered.  It needs clear instructions from you about what you want.  It can deliver good or bad without preference – it just needs clear repeated instructions each day.

Are you using your mind like this?

Conquest of Mind – part 2. Change begins with attention

Change begins with attention.  Where your attention goes, energy flows.

We have a choice on what to pay attention to.  We can focus on the negative, or the positive. 

If we think of productive steps toward our big goal, we find ourselves taking action toward it.  If we think of how difficult it is, we suffer under the idea.

We can think of how terrible some people are and suffer from the thought (it is probably not true anyway), or we can think about quality people that we want to be around – and we will pay attention to them, hang around with them and have quality time we enjoy.

What we pay attention to is a choice – and our energy will go there.  All action is preceeded by thought.  And all results come from action.

Tomorrow part 3!

Conquest of Mind

This week we will look at the five key ideas in this great book called “Conquest of Mind” by Eknath Easwaran; a powerful guide to spiritual and psychological freedom through disciplined training of the mind.

We start with a really big important idea.

You are not your thoughts.  Your mind is a tool – not your identity.  You can observe and direct it with practice.

(The italicized words are from the book.  The rest is my commentary.)

Imagine someone letting their dark thoughts take them over.  They think their mind is them.  They go insane.  I think we are all a little insane.  We have thoughts of jealousy, envy, negativity, unfairness, difficulty and suffering.  These thoughts make our life hard.  

If we understand that our thoughts are not us, but seperate from us, and that we can control our mind and eliminate suffering and use it as a tool, we can break free of it’s negative influence on us.

Idea #2 tomorrow!

The greatest risk this year.

The greatest risk this year is that you get a year older and closer to the end of your time, and you did not –

Love someone deeply.

Stay true to you.

Make great memories with people you love.

Make peace with the past.

Forgive.

Use more of your potential.

Next year the greatest risk will be the same.

You can eliminate all the risk.

Be Brave

“She never felt ready,

but she was brave.

And the universe responds to the brave.”

Fear is not the enemy. This is –

Fear is not the enemy.  

Waiting to stop being afraid is.  

When you keep thinking about your fear, the wolf gets bigger.  

You can use the energy in fear to marshall your resources – and go!

All growth is outside your comfort zone.

Real growth feels scary at first – and that is what can make it feel so rewarding when you act anyway.

Who is influencing you right now?

Who (what) are you paying attention to lately?

Who are you hanging around with lately?

Has this made you better?

“Stricken by expired years”

Hopefully, you’ll get old.  When you do, hopefully you have taken care of yourself and aren’t afflicted with too many ailments – but they are sure to come.

If you have lived well, you have learned many things, and your wisdom is useful and gladly shared.

Hopefully, you had a long-term time horizon as you “grew up” and made good decisions that will make tomorrow better.

Getting old is an extension of being younger – a flowering of who you are today.  

It can be a great time of life.