Getting Rid of Recurring Thoughts and Mental Patterns
Questioner: Hello sir, my question is that I’m fully aware of the thoughts that I’m having, most of the times. So, I feel like, ever since so for a year and a half, I have been going through something, it’s a low phase. I acknowledge the suffering and I know how to come out of it but then I feel like I keep getting stuck in the same thought cycle again and again. I find an answer and then I’m back at it, something small happens and then I am back at the same cycle, the intensity reduces over time. So, I feel like, if I look back a year and a half ago, maybe it was this big (expressing with the help of hand to show the size) and now it’s just small and I am almost out. But then, the thing is that, it still keeps coming back. It’s the same thought process, it’s the same conclusion and then it repeats. So how do you break it? I mean there is solution in my mind that this is the solution, but after doing that the problem is repeating again, that means the solution is wrong.
Acharya Prashant: No, you don’t need a solution for the existing mental pattern. If you will think in terms of what to do with what’s going on in the mind, then you’re only providing it with more energy, more respect, and more consideration, that just continues the cycle. Thought is important, thought is necessary, one needs a higher plane of thought, and one needs a higher object to think about.
Involve yourself with something so humongous, so implacable and so tremendously important that you cannot ignore it even for a second and then all the petty kinds of little thoughts and nonsense, that invade the mind and clutter it, you’ll find that they don’t have space, they are crowded out.
If you’ll keep your mind available to anything that the world wants to keep in it, then the mind will become a storehouse of random thoughts, experiences, memories, and desires. And the mind does want something, you cannot say I’ll keep my mind clean and there will be nothing in it, that’s humanly impossible, even if that’s possible That's the last stage of wisdom, when the mind is absolutely free of all content.
Where you are, you need content and you need pure, proper, solid, content in the mind. So, help yourself fill with that, give yourself something worth living for, more importantly, something worth dying for.
Questioner: So, the follow-up question comes even from the previous things that you mentioned. I often find myself asking, “Who am I?” Then I have the answer, because I have been exposed to spiritual knowledge since birth, my family is spiritual. We follow a school of thought that is known as…
So, I feel like I have the knowledge, but I keep forgetting. I don’t know how to frame the question, it’s just that okay, I need to find something like you said, worth dying for, so that I don’t have anything that is not worth thinking about, I’m not giving it much importance. But then, how does it come, how do I find that answer?
Acharya Prashant: You don't have to find an answer, you have to let that answer be admitted because the answer is right there in front of you. You don’t have to ask “Who am I,” you have to see “who you are.” When you say, “Oh! I ask who am I but sometimes I forget who I am,” then isn’t it obvious who you are, you are the forgetful one.
You are the quality of your present action. You are not some theoretical answer of identity. Some book says, “Oh! you are the fragmented consciousness,” and you start saying, “Oh! I am fragmented consciousness.” Some say, “I am the absolute self” and you become the absolute self. No. You are right now attention itself if you're indeed listening to me. So, who are you? Attention.
Unfortunately, this identity won't last, soon you'll be distracted and dissipated, and you'll become somebody else. The discipline lies in holding on to the highest identity possible and the highest identity is not an abstraction. Highest identity simply means, that which you know to be the highest, given your limited capacity.
In your limited capacity, limited age, limited experience, limited knowledge, whatever, you still know something to be the highest, and I am talking of knowing not borrowing. From your own inner honesty, you know something to be important, right? Now stick to that, that's what who you should be, that's what should be the proper answer to “Who am I?”
Who am I, is not a question you ask yourself in solitude. So having done through the usual chores of the day, you sit in a corner and ask yourself in a ritualistic way, “Who am I?” And you already know the answer in advance because the spiritual path has provided you with a ready-made answer.
So, it's a nice game going on with the self, “I’ll ask myself the question, the question is readymade, and then I'll give myself an answer, and the answer too is readymade. So, who am I? I am the Aatman. Happy, walkaway.” What is this, is this inquiry, do you call this kind of a thing as inquiry, where the answer is preordained, readymade, well known in advance? No, this is not an inquiry. ‘Who am I’ is…..
Questioner: Who am I in existence is always changing.
Acharya Prashant: Ma’am you totally changed who I am. Who am I is a burning-torch, it is supposed to totally destroy your illusions. So, you are just feasting on something and two minutes before that, you had told yourself that you are “the shuddha Aatman” and now you are swallowing the samosa. So, who you really are please tell me? I am the gluttonous one, that’s all.
Questioner: Can I be both?
Acharya Prashant: No! Though it's more tempting to say, “Oh! I am the Aatman currently lost in samosa.” Kindly don't yield to that temptation. If the samosa is what is dominating your mind, then the samosa is your identity, accept that even if it humiliates you.
Questioner: But it keeps changing then.
Acharya Prashant: That's the tragedy, it keeps changing.
Questioner: What should be the state of mind while having the samosa?
Acharya Prashant: You have already decided that samosa is a must. But even if the samosa is a must, at least be honest enough to say, “I am the samosa lover,” don't say, “I am Aatma.” I am the samosa lover.
Questioner: This change is good or bad?
Acharya Prashant: Obviously, please tell me from your own experience, what does this change mean? This change means that you are at the mercy of the conditions. Obviously, this change is not something, sitting here engaging in this discussion, you are at a certain level and that's your identity. And we will walk out and then other things will take over and all the attentiveness will be lost. Do you think that is good? So, this change is obviously not good.
