The book I’m reading this weekend is “Mind Calm” by Sandy Newbigging. It’s a book about meditation written for the modern Joe or Jane. Most of us know about the benefits of meditation – inner peace, calm, true happiness – but we believe that it is inaccessible or difficult or too time consuming. Sandy dispels the idea that you have to be a monk living in a monastery to learn meditation. Anyone can do it. One of the biggest obstacles to meditation is the belief that you have to clear your mind of all thoughts, which I myself have found to be frustrating and self defeating. If you have ever tried to clear your mind of all thoughts, I’m sure you’ve found that the more you tried, the more thoughts popped into your head – even thoughts about having no thoughts!
What Sandy proposes is to relax, simply observe and be aware of your thoughts without resisting them. Rather than seeking “peace of mind” by trying to fight or escape your thoughts, simply allow your thoughts to drift by like clouds in the sky without judgment or attachment. Your thoughts will still be there, but they will lose their power over you, and you can be at “peace with mind”. This means that you can meditate irregardless of your thoughts or even if you are actively busy at work. Which is so important because ultimately meditation is not just a technique that you do once a day, but a state of being that brings peace and joy to all of your life.
One of the most profound insights that Sandy shares with us is that without judgment of “good or bad”, all events are essentially neutral, and it is not the event or person that makes us happy or unhappy. It is only our reaction that matters. If we judge something as unwanted, it is our resistance that makes us feel unhappy. If we judge something as desirable, it is our allowing that makes us feel happy. It has nothing to do with the external circumstances. We know that this must be true because there is no absolute “good or bad” in this world – it is all relative to our personal beliefs and judgments. For example, running a 5k might be like nirvana for one person but hell for another. The same applies to eating a salad, or being on a sailboat, or having a job, or anything else in this physical world. Even physical pain is pleasurable in some people’s experience.
The importance of fully appreciating this insight is that we realize fundamentally nothing external to me ever made me happy in my entire lifetime – it was always because I was in a state of allowing that caused me to be happy. And similarly nothing external to me ever made me unhappy in my entire lifetime, and I was only ever unhappy because I was in a state of resisting. So if the external physical world is just as it is, and I can let go of my personal judgments about it, which are relative and unreal anyways, then I can choose to be happy all the time.
This powerful understanding also gives new meaning to the importance of true forgiveness. True forgiveness is knowing that no person or event or anything external could have made you unhappy no matter how they “wronged” you, and that all the unhappiness you suffered was because you internally resisted what happened. So forgiveness has nothing to do with the other person – it is about freeing yourself from the unhappiness of resisting, and choosing to be happy by allowing.
I highly recommend Sandy Newbigging’s book “Mind Calm” and his website www.mindcalm.com to learn more about being at “peace with mind”.
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