I came across this quote from Dan Millman, author of A Peaceful Warrior, and it gave me an intense feeling of relief. “If you don’t get what you want, you suffer; if you get what you don’t want, you suffer; even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can’t hold on to it forever. Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free of change. Free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is a law, and no amount of pretending will alter that reality.”
I immediately thought over my last few weeks, and how unsettled I felt, how tense and uneasy, almost anxious I’d been and I realized I had been in my mind way too much. But what do you do when you feel that way? What do you do when your mind is your predicament?
I guess on some level I knew Eckhardt Tolle would have the answer I was looking for because I went to a YouTube video of his and I immediately got it. “You are never more essentially yourself than when you are still. Take many conscious breaths throughout the day. Feeling the aliveness of your body from within. That immediately takes away the repetitive and negative thinking.”
So my challenge to you and to myself is to get back to stillness. Start with the breath. It works.
Those are Socrates words, NOT whoever that guy you quote is.
Hi Lea, Thank you for reading my post and also for bringing me back to it. I did not realize that this was Socrates and I will do the research/reading and correct if need be. I am so grateful for this reminder though you have no idea as I’ve been teaching a new workshop on mind and mindset and realize in this moment that this is a subject I have been hovering around for many years.
No it does not work. Very few people have the ability to discipline the mind to control the thought pattern for any substantial length of time when dealing with want and desire. Stillness and breathing are no match for the power of mind. Thus this is exactly why the Mind is the Predicament.
Hi Lorraine, I wrote this piece because I was coming off of days and days of having lost my center. For some the refuge is in stillness, the breath, remembering that we are not our mind, that we are not our thoughts. However, I agree that it can be a short reprieve, and the mind will grab a hold again before we even realize that we are lost in it, but always the breath is there, and we are free to retreat into stillness anytime. I don’t think it’s about controlling the mind, that doesn’t seem possible, but instead surrendering to the moment, and finding the moment through the breath.