A Quiet Mind is…

“You don’t need any methods to get rid of the wrong ideas you have about yourself. All you have to do is stop believing them.” 
-Annamalai Swami

Believing obscures well being. Agree without believing, and you will live without suffering.

Simple facts are often difficult to comprehend. You were born free, without words and their corresponding beliefs.

You appeared on the scene: Aware! That’s it. Words, and belief in the words came later or “after”—from parents, teachers and so on. Belief: the identification of a word with an object—is when the trouble began.

The world runs on agreement. Add belief: the name is the thing—and suffering is inevitable. Can a name be the object it represents?

Communication, and daily living, would be impossible without agreement. A friend could bring a glass of water if I asked for one. Agreement: the word “glass” represents an object we call a glass, and likewise with water—got the job done. To do things, belief is unnecessary.

Annamalai Swami

Belief is the glue that binds meaning to the word. Remove the imaginary mental connection between the word and the thing, and belief loses its grip.

At the beginning of every problem is a conclusion, a belief.

Remember when you thought about something so much that you believed you knew how it was going to happen. Then it happened. And what happened was nothing like you had imagined. You felt a sense of relief when you realized that all the pre-thinking drained your energy, made you mentally upset and physically tired. 

Less belief creates happiness. See for yourself: You are naturally happy when you are not predicting an imaginary future. 

Belief in your imagination, or, your idea of what will happen, is the chief tyrant. And the best way to deal with any tyrant: ignore them. 

Rather than draining your enery … believing you know what will happen, invest your energy in attention itself. Be aware of being aware. 

Pay attention to what you are doing; and don’t think about what isn’t happening. A quiet mind is its own gift.

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I’ll post a new topic each Friday afternoon, in one of two categories. One will be on shooting, and the other will be on living. Or: how I learned to live from what I learned by competing.

Thanks for coming in.