For most of us, there are times when our mind becomes overly active and we lose our peace of mind. There are specific ways to calm our mind and they revolve around the atmosphere we create internally within our mind and the external circumstances we immerse ourselves in.
- Patient Acceptance: is welcoming whole-heartedly whatever is arising. Acceptance is letting go of our ‘pushing away’ or ‘rejection and judgment’ of what we see as causing our unhappiness.
- Allowing: is understanding that our attachment to outcomes creates an environment that requires our mind to anxiously grasp for something other than ‘what is’. Allowing is letting go of grasping for what we believe will bring happiness. Acceptance and allowing end resistance to ‘what is’.
- Welcoming Uncertainty: is realizing we cannot know the future or control the outside world. We can only control the state of mind we live in.
- Witnessing our thoughts: is realizing we are the awareness, the consciousness from where our thoughts arise. We are not the thoughts. This awareness can watch the thoughts arising and subsiding, distancing who we actually are from what the mind is producing. We are not the thoughts, feelings, judgments or mistakes. We are the unbounded sky that often fills with clouds of thoughts that are passing by.
- Create actions that are beneficial as opposed to actions that are only pleasurable or actually harmful.
- Act in a state of surrender. This means once we start acting, we no longer focus on the outcome, thus giving all of our attention and power to the act itself. This vastly increases the success rate of our actions.
- Do what brings peace of mind: Over-stimulation and selfishness bring anxiety. When we act with compassion, kindness and assisting others in their happiness, we foster our peace of mind. Live a simple life, be at ease and help others.
- Feed our minds purity: We live within the internal atmosphere created by everything we externally feed our minds – the peace or violence of movies and TV shows, the people we associate with, the alcohol or drugs we ingest, the food we eat, the spiritual practices we engage in and the distractions we engage in. Our thoughts and feelings reflect what we have fed our mind and the actions we have performed.
Blessings,
