Practise the pause

Here's a story (for the first time on my blog :D)
Once it happened that I was watching random vedios on YouTube. I hit upon a 'painting' vedio. The painting looked quiet simple and easy to make yet very beautiful. The process of making it was very calming and therapeutic to watch. Painting always interested me as a kid, and I did paint too, then. It quiet faded away with years, later, though. This vedio evoked that long forgotten love I had for painting. As this painting was simple, I decided that it wouldn't be very difficult to make for a beginner that I was. So without thinking more, I went onto give it a try. I bought water paint, 3 brushes and a pallette! All the tools surely made me feel like a pro and I did fancy being one! I began to paint. The first stroke of paint on the paper, and what I saw is that it had turned out to be different from what the lady on the vedio had produced. Now that wasn't very promising. I was now going to give up my project. But before I could let that happen, I decided to pause. To become aware of the stream of thoughts flooding In. I figured out that I was I was afraid. I now inquired into 'fear'. I found out that I feared failure. So if I had to go ahead with the painting, only to end up with a not so satisfying result, it would be very hard to take it. So my mind, on it's autopilot mode, jumped into taking a safer decision.
We are on an autopilot mode always. Science approves that our brains are wired to react in a certain way when faced with a certain situation. Such reaction happens spontaneously, or should I say, monotonously and more unconsciously. These patterns of reaction need to be broken. That's why it is always good to pause before we react habitually, become aware, so that we become capable of responding consciously. In awareness we know why we are going where we are going. When everything is happening in our notice, everything is more in control. When we are in control of what is happening, we choose what should happen. It doesn't happen as a consequence of our unconscious patterns. This process forms part of what the yoga sutras call, chitta vritti nirodah.

I'm attaching a picture of my complete painting. It surely looks like one from an amature. But what is beautiful about it is that it is complete :D So practise the pause, your life shall feel more complete and fulfilling :)

Why is Self-knowledge necessary?

"Man know thyself; then thou shalt know the universe and God" ~ Pythagorus, a mystic, mathematician, scientist

How many times have you found yourself saying, 'I don't know why I'm feeling how I'm feeling'? How often do you get disappointed all of a sudden for no specific reason that you can identify? Has it ever happened that you switched from being the happiest to being the most frustrated ever, in less than a split second, but you had no clue why?
In all of the above mentioned cases, there is one thing in common - that we do not know what is happening, how and why it is happening.
Reason? We are lost in the chatter of our cluttered minds. We are so caught up in the stories, our minds are cooking up. (Though we know that something is constantly running in our minds, we are not consciously aware of them most of the times. Thoughts come and go. They also leave their trail behind - we feel pleasant or unhappy etc. But we don't know why they came, where they came from, and how they silently left, without our notice)
Then what do we do? We just need to stop for a while, and look into our own minds and consciously see what is Happening.
How would it help to see what's happening? We would become aware of what our monkey minds are upto.
Then? When once we know what is happening in our minds, it becomes easy to navigate thoughts, to our advantage. And to see things just as they are, with greater clarity, without giving them our individual definitions. And this is what it means to be mindful!

Here's it's spiritual side: The deeper we know the mind, the more we begin to know who we truly are, because we are now looking at ourselves through clearer eyes. Our vision is no longer blurred by the cooked up stories of the mind. We simply begin to see things just as they are, less and less filtered by the mind's messed up perspectives.

Here's a little exercise: Watch your mind consciously everyday, while you are cooking, brushing, driving, and until my next post! ;)

Be mindful. Be peaceful. Be the true you.