Last weekend I had the good fortune of attending the first weekend of the Soul-Centered Series led by Rohini and Angus Ross and Aaron Turner.
As I listened to what was being shared about how our experience is created, something so ordinary and unexpected happened.
I realized that the feeling behind much of my habitual thinking is the feeling of concern.
It went from being something I was blind to to something I could see so clearly.
I could all of a sudden see that the feeling of concern is not actually helpful or even related to any of the myriad of things I might want to feel concerned about.
It’s a habit my mind picked up at some point and the feeling of concern was so compelling to me, I innocently assumed there was a point to it that I should care about and even be vigilant for.
I hadn’t seen that I get concerned frequently about a number of things. I saw that I feel anxious at times, but I wouldn’t have told you that I’m often feeling concerned.
In fact, it was so blind to me, that I didn’t even realize I’ll often mask concern if I don’t want someone to see me in that state.
It’s like the moment I saw it, I saw how subtle it had played into my experience and that it had simply been a state of mind the whole time.
Seeing that it wasn’t actually related to anything that’s happening on the outside felt jarring at first and then it felt like utter freedom.
I can have thoughts of concern and not take them so seriously! Just like I don’t take my thoughts about throwing down with someone who cuts me off in traffic so seriously.
Thought itself is neutral and I saw that my tendency to use concern to feel safe was neutral too.
Something else clarified itself for me when I saw this...
A healthy mind is always available to us. That is our essential nature. That is what we experience when we are in an open, relaxed, present state of mind.
And sometimes the natural health of our bigger mind gets covered up by the innocent contamination of our personal mind.
We can feel if our thoughts are pure and we can feel if they are contaminated with distortion or disturbance. And it’s normal and natural for our state of mind to fluctuate. It’s nothing to be scared of.
Getting a feel for this more deeply is so helpful in experiencing our natural, healthy state of mind more frequently.
Aaron shared a story about a client who owned his own company and had a host of issues that had been challenging him for years.
Each of these issues resolved themselves when the client saw that he had access to his own healthy mind.
It helped me see with more precision that our natural healthy mind creates more health in our experiences.
It makes sense that challenges that occurred from a challenging state of mind resolve themselves the more we access the health of our true nature.
It can easily look like we are separated from one another and life and that the individual stories of our personal minds are real, but when we get a feel for the essence and health of our true nature, when we go beyond our personal ideas, that’s when we’ve found the true nature of the intelligence behind life.