The Mind’s Role is NOT to Control External Reality

The mind makes all sorts of silly commentary. Let’s say you’re walking outside and it’s cold. The mind goes, “It’s cold out here!” Now what good does that do you? You already know it’s cold!

From there, the mind can go, “Well, I’ll be back home where it’s nice and warm in just a few minutes.”

What it’s doing is finding a way to give you some semblance of control. It can’t control external factors such as the weather, so it’ll attempt to control your inner world and say that things will be better in the future so that it feels okay. It’s a defense mechanism, really.

You can’t control what’s outside of you including other people, lottery numbers, whether you get the promotion or not, etc.

This creates a sort of insecurity because of the uncertainty. Fear arises from insecurity and not being in control. This inner mental narration gives you an illusion of control, much like a backseat driver. You take something which really doesn’t have anything to do with you, a tree perhaps, and start labeling and judging it to fit your model of the world and thus you create a relationship with it based on your values and beliefs. You’ve taken something out of your control and brought it into a reality which is more in your control. You’re no longer dealing with the object itself, but your perspective of the object.

So we could say that the mind is our tool to attempt to control reality. (We’re not able to control reality itself, but merely our perspective of it. Note how the tool fits in with the Law of Attraction…)

However, we actually give our minds an impossible task. It’s like this:

“I want everything to go my way. I want everyone to like me and approve of me. I want all my jokes to be well received. I don’t want anyone to speak badly of me. I don’t want anything I don’t like to happen to me. I don’t want anything to hurt me. I want everything I like to happen.”

Then you tell the mind to make all this happen, even if it has to work on it continuously. Just make it happen!

The mind, being an obedient little servant, goes, “You got it, boss! I’m on the job.”

Can you imagine any person actually trying to accomplish this? It’s impossible! It’s the equivalent of trying to jump from the earth to the moon. It’s just not a practical task.

Most minds are neurotic because they’re trying to do the impossible. If a human body kept trying to jump to the moon, we’d call the person crazy. Now the mind, too, is trying to do something crazy, but since everyone’s trying to do the mental equivalent of jumping to the moon, we call that normal.

That’s not natural. That’s insane!

Now, as we mentioned earlier, the mind can’t actually control external reality, but it’ll try.

It’s as if we have these fears inside. As a metaphor, let’s say we have a big thorn stuck in us. Now, hitting this thorn is a very painful experience. So what do we do? We do whatever we can to prevent this thorn from being hit. We will do all sorts of things to make sure we don’t roll over onto the thorn in the middle of the night, to ensure people close to us don’t accidentally hit the thorn, and make sure than anything that comes near the thorn get stopped by some sort of shield.

You think that because you aren’t feeling the thorn being touched anymore, that it’s no longer an issue. “The thorn doesn’t control my life anymore!”

Not so! Your life REVOLVES around the thorn! It determines where you can sleep, who you touch, what games you play, how you walk down the street, etc. It totally takes over your life.

(What you resist persists.)

Basically this avoidance system is a way to attempt to control external reality so that it doesn’t press against our own internal thorns.

In real life, we’ll see this as people yelling and getting angry when you say something that offends them and then they want you to apologize and take it back. You’ll see this as parents telling their children, “We don’t talk about that subject in this house.” You see it as couples breaking up instead of acknowledging their own fears. You see it as people attacking others back when being attacked in order to take the focus off their own thorns.

This game of control is a game you simply can not win. You can’t control external reality AND have a peaceful relationship with it.

Now, you can have a different relationship with your mind. How? Whatever the little voice in your head says, just don’t listen to it.

If you’re wanting to quit smoking, all you have to do is stop picking up cigarettes and putting them in your mouth. It doesn’t matter what the reason is the mind makes up to smoke another cigarette, no matter how logical the reason sounds. Just don’t listen.

When the mind starts telling you what you have to do externally to make everything okay internally, just don’t listen. The truth is everything will be okay as soon as you’re okay with everything. That’s the only time everything will be okay.

Stop expecting the mind to fix what’s wrong with you, internally. This is the root of it all.

The mind is simply a tool like a computer. It can think about many things, solve math problems, and help serve others. However, most people use it to come up with external solutions to internal problems. They use their analytical mind to defend against the unfolding of life.

The trick is to recognize that the role of the mind is NOT to make everything okay. Whenever you notice it trying to rationalize why something is okay, explain why you’re good enough, or calculate what to do to come out looking good in a particular situation, just quietly disengage.

Relieve the mind of its assigned duty.

You are the awareness that is watching the mind. You are not the thoughts in the mind.

The key is to be quiet. You don’t have to make the mind quiet, thank goodness. You, the awareness, simply need to be present and quiet. You, the one who’s watching the neurotic mind, can just relax.

Keep practicing this and the whole world becomes simply a parade of ever-changing form, but you are no longer attached to it. You’re no longer trying to become okay with what’s happening.

Ironically, by being this present, you’ll “just know” the best things to say and the most effective things to do when the time comes. You’ll naturally become fluid and life will become easy and gentle.

It’s the pathway of nonresistance that allows you to go with the flow.

You will see the fears, not really take them seriously, and just walk right on through. You will continually expand beyond your previous comfort zone and rapidly evolve as a person.

What’s cool is that all the things you were trying to protect against that made you defensive, when you notice those same feelings arise, they can be like a trigger to remind you to simply let go and allow.

What used to be a constant source of problems for you actually becomes the very thing which helps you become aware of and subsequently transcend each individual blockage.

Instead of closing yourself off from life, you choose to open yourself up to it in every moment.

What it means to live spiritually is that you don’t get involved with the struggle in life. You definitely still live life, in fact, you live it FULLY! Now you no longer defend the mental constructions of how life should be.

Your mental image of life is like a sandcastle along the beach. Inevitably, it’s going to be challenged and ultimately washed away by the ocean or some random 4 year old.

When you notice that life isn’t fitting your model of how things should be, it will feel like a disturbance within.

Rather than trying to rationalize your model, justify it, and control your external reality to fit with your internal model, you instead allow your internal model to be washed away.

You’ll come to like this. Instead of trying to tell life how it should be all the time, you’ll now start to live in alignment with the way it actually is, flowing with it and dancing with it.

When you stop devoting all this energy to defending your model of the world, you’ll reach a state of clarity. The appropriate solutions will easily make themselves known to you. Charm and sense of humor become your natural state of being. Unconditional Love and inner peace become your dominant states.

All this… just from realizing that the mind you have is not a tool to make everything okay. It’s not its job to FIX things.

The mind simply helps you create something new in the moment, something else equally acceptable. It’s not trying to make things better or somehow improve upon life, for life is already completely perfect and 100% acceptable, and you experience no more internal struggle.

Simply be the awareness. You can even take it up a notch and be aware that you’re aware. I am that I am. Problems don’t exist in this state. Natural solutions do.

Fear doesn’t exist in this state. Only Love does.

Love or fear… take your pick.

(Thank you to Michael Singer for his excellent book The Untethered Soul, one of the recommended books here, for providing the source of much of these satori-inducing insights. I highly recommend checking out the book for even further discussion into these topics as well as explorations into deeper issues I didn’t discuss in this post.)