Who is in charge of your mind?

Most of us mistake ourselves for our thoughts.

Instead of creating some distance between our sense of self and our thoughts, we fully identify ourselves with the thoughts in our mind.

We think that we’re one and the same.

Have you noticed how our mind brings up thoughts endlessly with little to no prompt? The slightest shift in our experience, perhaps seeing a cat cross the road or the smell of certain foods can give rise to a chain of memories that had nothing to do with what we were doing or thinking before. In identifying ourselves with our thoughts, we lose all differentiation between ourselves and our thoughts. We find ourselves at the mercy of the thoughts. We flow with the thoughts thinking that we are them. And then we judge ourselves for thinking those very thoughts.

At the same time, we have the capacity to observe our thoughts. If you’ve ever had the reaction, “OMG I can’t believe I just had that thought”. Then you know exactly what I’m talking about. Our mind can have wild reactions and thoughts that seem way out there. We don’t want to identify with those thoughts and can’t believe we had them so we try to create some distance. And glad that we do! Because most of our thoughts are born out of past experiences. Our mind regurgitates whatever it can based on our tendencies and pulls from the heap of expressions we have accumulated to date - be it our experiences growing up, school, politics, movies, music,TV etc.

SO.

There’s your mind with all the random thoughts that it brings up without any prompt on your part.

And then there’s YOU, observing all these rampant thoughts running around in your mind.

So which one are you? Are you the thoughts themselves or the one observing the thoughts?

You are conscious. You are the observer of thoughts & activities occurring in your field of awareness.

By strengthening our consciousness, we can develop the capacity to identify our thoughts and even shape them. This is referred to as cultivating self-command and becomes vividly clear through an established self-reflection practice.

• We have the power to shift our tendencies.

• We have the power to shift our thoughts.

• We have the power to notice what we’re feeling and even shift how we’re feeling.

• We have the power to make different choices that will create better outcomes.

Slow down, take a deep breath and let these sync in, one by one.

If you let these simmer within you, you will realize that you have control over way more aspects of yourself than you’ve led yourself to believe.

You will notice an opening of freedom. And over time an increasing ability to shape your thoughts, feelings and actions to your desire

-Nitin