The Bureaucracy of the Mind—Test Yourself

The mind and the ego are like a petty government official, puffed up and controlling, they have got lots of silly rules and you can’t tell the mind very much because it’s always talking to itself. To escape the Matrix you have stop the mind. It takes discipline.

I did it by walking in a forest on my own in silence at 4 a.m. every morning for three years. When I got back home I’d meditate for 24 minutes, have breakfast, and then go to work.

See if you can get your mind to stop commenting on everything. Sit on a bench on a busy street and notice your mind making comments about the people passing by: cute, ugly, tall, fat, ghastly dress, nice shoes, sweet dog, etc, etc. Practice stopping the mind. Force it into silence.

Start by saying “no comment” as people pass, which of course is a comment, but it an easy place to start. Then observe people without those words. If you can do three people without comment then try for seven more making ten. If you falter go back to the start, attempt to get to 20 consecutive people without comment. It’s fun.

This way you will understand the Taoist concept of detachment. You gradually drop out of the Matrix when you can observe it all without comment or emotion. In Taoism there is no right or wrong, there is only high energy and low energy. Stuart Wilde

© 2012 — Stuart Wilde.
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