Your mind wants a Detox.

Amrutha Viswanath
Sep 5, 2018 · 5 min read

The pressure to conform is enormous…From being encouraged to imagine a prolific future, to stumbling in a fog of musings, predictions and anticipation; there is a constant battle going on in our heads.

The mind against social and cultural conditioning, is a battle. But these battles are necessary and must never end as everything called ‘life’, is dynamic.

These days it seems like I’m living in a ‘perpetual dream state’.We’re all sharing this dream together. Everyone, it seems, is career driven. Wealth is seeming to become synonymous with success and happiness. We are finding ourselves in a state where - if the future isn’t a bright promise, we can’t seem to enjoy the present.

“woman sitting on cliff overlooking mountains during daytime” by Milan Popovic on Unsplash

Conditioning — an integral part of life.

A ‘phenomenon of a particular way of thinking’ — has seeped into our conscious and subconscious , over the years. So the story in our head goes like, a bountiful future “is” the key to a happy life.And guess what, we’re surrounded by people who ‘subscribe’ to this fantasy.

“man in silver suit holding alarm clock” by Mohammad Metri on Unsplash

The society, culture, parents and teachers, with whom we have grown up,have programmed and embedded those fixed patterns into us. We identify who we are and what our job is , based upon those patterns. At least, I find myself with such thoughts, automatically surfacing every now and then. Thoughts like — Money doesn’t grow on trees, don’t waste it all over a dinner, save enough else you won’t have money for your next laptop etc., after which in my head I immediately catch myself, playing it in the voice of my mom.

We lead conditioned lives. But there is more to the finding that it is ‘apparent’.

‘De-conditioning’ — only way to intellectual development.

Thinking and counter-thinking, both are well within the capacity of the mind. Some of us try to change. More material doesn’t fill our hearts nor lead us to expressions of unconditional love.We simply have to admit that observing our minds might be valuable.

Man’s mind is an inconceivably large model of the computer. If a small mind can delete an item without failure, it is inconceivable that a bigger model cannot do the same.

So recognizing ‘Thoughts’ to be just mere appearances in consciousness, and ‘Emotions’ to be just transient helps the mind, keeps returning to the breath — a state of meditation. Sounds like the ideal comfortable flow of life, right?At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work. But the translation of the same into reality seems like a battle.

Are we relying on the mind, rather than our true inner selves to make decisions? Are we forgetting that ‘life’ is a process?

“person with hand above water” by Mishal Ibrahim on Unsplash

We are probably using the mind as a torture chamber, instead of a tool. We don’t want anything to do with that chaos when we’re viewing the world from the other perspective. Here are a few those “other perspectives”

Melt the Rigid Mindset, by Listening to people you’ve been shutting out.

Whatever your reason is, many a times we think someone is ranting, but they are actually speaking with conviction. We have just forgotten the sound of real passion. We are so afraid of absolutes, a strong gut digging heels — that we dismiss, the powerful voice of ‘quiet strength’ and ‘humble confidence’.

When you shut anyone out, you are censoring reality. Great decision-makers appear from the outside to be very decisive and single-minded. But this disguises how they actually arrive at a decision, which involves a period of searching. While searching, they open their minds to all kinds of information, spreading the net as wide as possible.

Awareness determines the outcome.

Every day is about having experiences. As an experiencer, use awareness to confront life’s challenges — No matter what is happening. As a defensive move, we contract our minds due to fear and threat. We draw back when we feel insecure and vulnerable. We fear the unknown and the potential risks that await us there. When you feel these things, take a deep breath.

Choose the way of least friction, and hence least action.

“pathway in forest wallpaper” by Marco Meyer on Unsplash

All of these things are worth exploring, I think. The combination of stress, struggle, a result of a mindset that sees no other way to live..But there has always been another way, as pointed out by the world’s wisdom traditions — the way that feels like home, so much more like the way you are really supposed to be and that ‘other perspective of you ’ is the real you, that you have been looking for a long time…These perspectives guide me personally, and makes me think that mindsets which can feel like prisons, can be transformed into the gate to freedom.

There was always a simpler and much easier way of existing available, and we’ve missed it. Or have we?

Amrutha Viswanath

Written by

Content/Copywriter. I write a lot in my head 💭 Pieces of content which make it out of my head, crawl into medium 🐌

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