I've Been Watching My Mind Instead of Believing It — Here's What Changed

For me, turning the mind within does not mean withdrawing from life. It means examining the machinery by which I experience life, while continuing to participate in it. I do not stop living. I stop being completely hypnotized by what I'm living. That distinction is everything, because the ordinary human being does not merely live life. He or she manufactures a psychological version of life, and then suffers inside their own manufacturer. Something happens. Then the mind interprets it. Then the interpretation produces an emotion. Then the emotion produces a reaction. Then the reaction produces a consequence. Then the mind looks at those consequences and says, "See, life was always terrible." And I find that almost funny. We create half of our suffering, and then prosecute reality for the crime. How does that work? Suppose somebody insults me. The sound enters through the ear. That one is fact. But immediately we start doing something funny. We start saying: I have been disrespected. He should have not spoken to me like that. What will others think of me, and things like that. Now, a 5-second event has become a 3-day psychological documentary. The original insult was perhaps 10 seconds long. But our mind has produced the extended edition. So, what does it mean to turn the mind within? It means I become interested in that second moment: not merely in what happened, but in what I did with what happened. This is where the inward turn becomes practical, because I cannot control the entire world. That should be obvious by now, right? Humanity has been attempting it for thousands of years, and has not even managed to control its own weather forecast. I cannot command other people to behave according to my preferences. I cannot guarantee that those I love will remain. I cannot negotiate with death successfully. I cannot even guarantee that the person who says, "Hey man, I will call you in 5 minutes," possesses a functioning relationship with the concept of time.

So, if I want psychological stability, I must investigate the place where instability is actually being produced, and that place is mind. But here comes the paradox. If I turn inward too much, do I become impractical? Do I stop working? Do I stop caring? Do I sit in a room contemplating reality, while my electricity connection is being disconnected? This is where many people misunderstand inwardness. They imagine that looking within means refusing to engage with the external world. For me, that is not wisdom. That is excuses. Only narrow-minded people give excuses when it comes to spirituality or wisdom. That is merely another form of avoidance. A person can run away from life while sitting perfectly still. He can call it detachment. He can call it peace. He can even give it a very impressive name. But, if he is secretly terrified of ordinary life, then he has not transcended anything; or she has not transcended anything. She has simply changed the furniture in her prison. Turning the mind within is not escaping the world. It is seeing clearly what is happening in me, while I remain in the world. Are you seeing what I'm seeing? I still work. I still eat. I still make decisions. I still make mistakes. I still experience disappointment. But here's the thing: I begin to notice. And noticing is more radical than it sounds. Suppose I'm jealous. Ordinarily, we say: he has something I do not have, or she has something I do not have. But if I turn within, I ask: what exactly is happening here? Right? We start noticing comparison. We start noticing insecurity. We notice the image we have created about ourselves. We notice the assumption that another person's success diminishes us; and then, suddenly, jealousy is no longer a mysterious force possessing us. It becomes an observable mechanism. This is tremendously important, because what is observed can be examined. What is examined can lose some of its authority; and what loses its authority no longer has to dictate every moment. The mind becomes less of a tyrant, and more of an object of investigation. For me, this is the practical value of philosophy. Not collecting beautiful sentences, not memorizing scriptures and Bhagavad Gita, not becoming the sort of a person who says everything is illusion, while arguing furiously about parking, or arguing with the tea guy for putting too much sugar in it. The point is to discover what is actually happening. And the deeper we look, we become more of a kind of person who has wisdom, because what we find is something entirely different. Once you turn your mind within, and see for yourself that you are the absolute unblemished, self-aware reality, all your unwanted dramas will vanish. Not because someone came and lifted it from you. Simply because it's all your own creation. Turn your mind within, and see that you are the awareness on which all these dramas are happening, including your spiritual journey, including your worldly duties, and all the blah blah blah stuff. Anything that you know happens on you, and happens through you, and not by you. Keep this in mind: you are not finding or searching for yourself. That is absolute narrow-mindedness. You are seeing things and searching things from yourself. This is the truth. And liberation is not for the person whom you think. Liberation is from the person whom you think. So, don't be narrow-minded. Don't be fooled by following techniques and methods. Turn your mind within, enough of the drama. See for yourself that you have always been the awareness, and nothing else apart from it.