It was a little over two years ago that my mind stopped working. It was like someone pressed “eject” and then there was nothing.
As an energy reader, I rely on my mind as much as spirit. It’s how I translate what I’m seeing and feeling as I ride the energy waves.
But there, in the place where I would go to travel and translate, there was nothing. I panicked. I thought, this is it, I’ve lost my mind. There was so no connectivity between thoughts, there were no energy rails for me to ride. Just, nothingness.
I didn’t know what to do, so I just existed. I went to bed. I slept. The next night, again there was nowhere to travel. It was as though my metaphysical vehicle had over heated and was sitting on the side of the road, retired and exhausted.
Days went on and I forgot about this, I went back to “normal” without noticing.
Then, a year after, it happened again. The silence. The motor shut-off. This time I wasn’t as scared, because I had started practicing shutting off the motor myself. I noticed that my mind was spinning thoughts at full speed, trying to find solutions to problems that were outside of its scope.
It took so much for me to stop the compulsive spinning of thoughts. They come forward with a promise of “fixing the problem”. If they can spin long enough and fast enough, “we’ll figure it out”.
But as I listened in on my thoughts, I realized it was the same attempt to process and solve a scenario by replaying it over and over. Compulsively re-living some difficulty and all of its details. I knew I had to shut off these compulsive trains of thought. I also knew they were coming from a good place, they were trying to help find a solution.
The problem is, the mind is limited in this way. It can only pull from what it has learned or seen before. So mostly, it spins collected data. It is an incredible creation in that way, the ability to store and process seemingly infinite data.
But it can only exist within the confines of itself, of what its lived.
When people begin to feel trapped in their life, in a rut, stuck, or life-less…it’s because they have become the mind. They’ve become the mouse running in circles around its cage. Temporarily forgetting that there is a whole world outside of that circling.
I took a few deep breaths. I found somewhere that was outside of the spinning. I felt the grip of the spinning, of the running thought. I felt the pull to stay in those thoughts. And I “talked” my way through it, I used my heart space to connect to life outside of thought. To focus into myself, where I existed outside of memory and past reflections.
I felt some panic within me, as I removed the grasp of those thoughts. Perhaps letting go of a part of me that was afraid to venture beyond thought, beyond the same outlines of a self-assigned cage.
Outside of those thoughts, I felt relief and grief. I had to face the fact that I didn’t know the answer. I didn’t know where to go or what to do, and no amount of thought spinning was going to change that.
I had done the hardest thing already, I had saved myself from the limitations of mind. Or rather, the limitations of a person who had become too identified with mind and the past.
I felt exactly like a mother trying to pry her baby’s hand off of a dirty toy that needed washing. I felt the resistance, anger and grief of the baby wanting to hold on. And I felt the knowing of the mother, that it was time to let go.
So when the time came again, where I lost my mind and there was nowhere to travel, I panicked a little less. Here, there was no reflection. No reasoning. Only being, quiet, silence, and being-ness. And with it came the terrifying realization of my over-dependency on mind. Without the thoughts, was I nothing? I was scared to let go.
Who was I without reflection, without the compilation of experiences and ideas?
It felt as though in this world, in this society, without the compilation of a self, you are indeed nothing. No one, with nothing to offer.
“Isn’t that what we’re striving for?” [I asked into the ether.] “To compile a “self”. To become somebody? To add up all of our experiences and thoughts into something valuable?”
And yet there I was, a nothing. A tumbleweed blowing through the emptiness of my mind. Silence. Presence.
My mind told me who I was. It told me who I was, what I doing, where I was, and what to expect later. I needed that spacial reference point. I needed to be a something, that was somewhere.
But I was a nothing, that was nowhere. So I breathed. And fell asleep.
Was I dying? Was this it? My release from the world? The beginning of the end? Days go by, and I’m back to “normal” without realizing it.
Another year passes and I’m walking around my neighborhood, here again, the nothingness descends. Not a depressive kind of dissociation, but a kind of “resting” from the world of thought. I wanted for nothing, but to just exist. I thought of the projects I was working on, the people I had relationships with, my worries, my excitement, and none of it stirred me.
It said “shhh.”
I stood there, and I existed. I felt my wanting-for-nothing. I looked with a different kind of vision. I was observing from a neutral stand point. Neutrality, Observance. It was as though my whole body was breathing, and the scenery around me was its breath.
I felt energy swirl through my body, all around my body, and then out into my environment. And it felt like a unified heartbeat was pulsating through it all.
Yes, it was a unification. I was one with myself and with my life, my environment. In the lack of separation, I didn’t want for anything. Because nothing was counter to me – nothing was outside or far away. It was one voice, speaking the same word.
I relaxed into this, even as part of me asked, “Am I dying? Is this okay? Why do I feel so calm? Shouldn’t I frantically want things? Shouldn’t I be worrying and planning and fluttering around in my mind?”
But there was no answer, only rest and repose. Only observance and presence. I felt complete calm and complete relaxation. I kept walking, and somehow the idea of Time disappeared.
I had an errand to run and I thought, what should I do? And I answered, I guess just be calm. Just be like this. Just exist and do things in this state of relaxation.
It felt strange, “would people know?”
Could I operate in the world completely relaxed, outside of rushing and planning and worrying? I went about my day and my errands, things happened and I interacted with them. I felt a strange happiness inside, a strange calm.
It was as though within me was a deep ocean of stillness, and on the surface I was having conversations, feeling ups and downs of emotion, doing tasks. But the stillness was there, quiet and deep. Like I was a deep ocean, and external life was the happenings on the surface of that ocean.
I found that if you’re lucky [and you are] you’ll come to the limitations of your mind. There will be a place where it ends. And you’ll scurry around in circles for a little while, until you remember. You are part of an endless, infinite mind. You are the opener of doors. You call in light through the dense forest of experience, and you stand to welcome the light that arrives.
The part of you that is the personality, that is the beautiful mind of You, that part is here to participate in a much grander reality. This reality is set-up for you by the very breath that breathes you. And your personality then gets to actively participate in that reality. After some time, the personality thinks it has created that reality. As though it is responsible for its life and its maintenance.
It will think that through its effort and its thoughts, it draws forth well-being and abundance. After some time, the reality will begin to diminish, even with maximal effort from Personality.
This is because your personality is a participant in creation, not the breath behind the creation. As the personality over-fixates on its role as creator, it tightens. It removes itself more and more from the breath of life. This results in feeling more angry, more tense, more anxious. Underneath, trying to control the uncontrollable.
Imagine working at a company for years and years. “I am this company’s life’s blood. Without me, they’ll drown.” And after all these years, a separation comes between you and the company. And still, the company thrives after your exit. “How could this be? I was the driving force behind its success!”
It is the breath of life that is the driving force behind all well-being and all success. Sometimes we’re going in the same direction as that flow of well-being. And it may seem like we’re causing the well-being. But really, you are willingly flowing in the same direction as well-being. You are amplifying the well-being by participating in it. Really you are allowing yourself to be the in-living-color evidence of that flow of life.
That is all of life. A part that says “I am willing.” And that part Becomes. It becomes enlivened as a being, as a here and now embodied energy. It says, look this way, I am evidence of breath that is Being.
You are not a run-away stream of thought, that has forgotten the breath is was representing. You remember why you said, so long ago, in a forgotten tongue: “I am willing.”
It wasn’t for the benefit of a company. It wasn’t for success. It wasn’t for pride or reverence.
It was for the rush of being embodied. For the indescribable pleasure of Being, for no reason. To see, to look, to want, to flow. To come to the surface of the water and breathe in the sights.
I hope that you rejoice as you come up against the limitations of your mind. I hope that when there is “no way” that you remember this and that you celebrate. There is indeed “no way” from the limited mind. But You, are not a limited mind. You just spend time there sometimes. Imagine it as being laid off from a job that you hated. Now you’re free to explore, free to go beyond your previous limitations.
Your meditation for today:
I am not the limited mind. I am not mind at all. I am the space between thoughts, I am the water beneath the ocean. I am wisdom that is not seen and strength that is not known. I am the inside-of-silence and lying right-above-noise. I am true stability, which needs no world on which to balance.
❤
With Love,
Heba
Love: 