Personally, I have often practiced meditation intensively for a certain period, a period after which I would feel so proud of myself that I would allow myself to take a break from practice, and every time I went back to practice I was amazed to find out how the same Barbarian and rattling conceptual mind came back and took control of consciousness. The best analogy I can think of is the analogy with what happens in the garden when we stop for a certain period to weed and weed weeds. Thus, it is not important for several years that we will be moving and weeding weeds, as soon as we take time off from the operation of hoeing and weeding we are guaranteed that the weeds will again grow at the peak of their glory.
In order to prevent our conceptual mind from re-taking over our consciousness, we must first understand what the mechanism is that allows it to do so. A short story can help us stand up for the nature of this mechanism.
When I was a child my grandmother used to tell me stress stories which for some reason were particularly fond of me. One of my favorite stories is a writer about a family of Jews who lived in Poland during the Second World War and who hid from the fear of the Germans underground in a hiding place that provided her with a kind Polish peasant. In exchange for the protection they received while staying under the ground, the members of the family used to do various works for the farmer who, besides protecting them, would also provide them with little food and drink. What would have kept the family alive was the news from the front that the farmer would have provided them every time he came to visit them. At one time he would describe how the Russians managed to break through an opening at a certain point, and once he would describe how the Germans repulsed them and managed in response to infiltrating the Russian territory. Once he would describe the rumors of the intention of the Americans to invade the European continent and liberate it, and once he would describe the rumors of the intention of the Americans to sign a separate peace treaty with Hitler. Thus, as the plot progresses, we learn to appreciate and even love the beloved Polish peasant who risks his life in order to save the Jewish family. Indeed, just at the very end of the story, just before we go to Yad Vashem to recommend them to the righteous, we find that instead of going on during World War II, the whole story takes place almost a decade after the end of the war in the days when Poland was already quiet and peaceful. It turns out that the poor family of Jews simply does not know that the war has long ended and continues to work hard for the Polish peasant who exploits them by constantly continuing to tell them about the beams of war that supposedly occurs outside.
The mechanism, therefore, which is used by our conceptual mind in order to gain control of our consciousness is the mechanism of intimidation. After all, just like the same family of Jews, we are completely dependent on our brain in order to describe the world outside, and just like the same cunning Polish farmer, our brain also has an interest in telling us that outside there is a terrible war. Fear, as we probably know, is the best friend of the tyrant, and our conceptual mind, what to do, behaves many times as a tyrant of the worst kind.
By telling us that outside there is a terrible war, our conceptual brain is able, therefore, to gain control over us, but why would our brain even want to control us? After all, is our conceptual mind not part of us and therefore should work together with us in harmony in order to achieve common goals? So that's it, don't. As in a large business organization where all the different divisions are supposed to work for the success of the organization, but in practice, they think first of all about their own interests, so are our different systems of bodies supposed to work for our own benefit, but in practice, they concentrate first of all on caring for their needs. The interest of our conceptual mind as stated is that we will think as much as possible, as it soon becomes clear to everyone who is trying to meditate, as much as the interest of our stomach is that we will eat as much as possible, as it soon becomes clear to everyone who is trying to make a diet. The fact that excessive thinking often makes us feel unhappy, and the fact that overeating often makes us sick, does not really interest our various body systems.
Now we can perhaps understand why every time we open the morning newspaper we discover that it contains only bad news. Bad news sells newspapers because bad news helps our brain build a threatening and frightening picture of the world that leaves us enslaved to it. I remember how a few years ago I got stuck for a few hours at an airport in Europe and since I had time to kill (by the way, by the very use of the expression "time to kill" we can learn about the aggressiveness of our conceptual mind while facing a situation of lack of employment) I went into a small bookstore that was located in the center of the passenger hall. Now, one important thing to know about bookstores located at airports is that they only have bestselling books in stock because their storage space is extremely small. Indeed, when I browsed among the various books in the store I discovered that nine out of ten books on the shelves were books of suspense and/or horror which only reading their plot synopsis could convey in you a shiver. What intrigued me at that time was why people were willing to pay to buy a book that would scare them to tears? After all, fear is a negative feeling, so I thought to myself, so why do we seem to be chasing her? Today I believe that the feeling of fear makes us suffer, but for our brain, it is a heavenly welcome. This is by the way probably the reason why as a child I loved my grandmother's thriller stories so much.
The Matrix movie (caution, spoiler for the two people who have not seen the film yet) tells us about a world where machines enslave people to extract energy from their bodies, but in everyday life these are not machines that suck energy from us in order to survive but our brains. It can even be argued that from the point of view of our brain the rest of our body is nothing but one big battery whose whole function is to provide him with energy for thinking. It is not surprising then to discover that many of the sci-fi films have been described as people whose bodies have long died however they continue to live as truncated heads connected to a feed machine. This description may sound extreme to most people, but for those of us who have long experienced meditation practice, and already know the true despotic nature of our minds, this is not a radical description at all. We already know that our brain will do everything, but everything, in order to convince us to continue to think, and even in the few moments when we will still manage not to think, will immediately hurry the same mind to persuade us to start thinking how successful we were that we managed not to think.
The question arises, what can be done in order to change the situation? So that's just it, as long as we ask ourselves what can be done to change the situation, we continue to act from the dualistic worldview that our conceptual mind is trying to impose on us, a worldview within which we always have nowhere to strive, we always have nowhere to reach, and therefore we always have a need to invest energy The secret is that in order to stop thinking and to free ourselves from the tyranny of our conceptual mind, we must learn precisely how to relax, how to liberate, and how not to do, and only when we learn this we learn to find out that outside there is no war at all and that all the sounds of the detonator and Indeed, if at the beginning of the article I noted that "if there is one thing in this world that surprises me every time anew" and then I referred to the ability of our conceptual mind to regain control of the spaces of consciousness, then now I want to correct myself and note that I find myself equally amazed when I discover, every Take only one small step out and immediately you will discover a magical world of peaceful eternal silence that only awaits entering its gates.
