I’ve now been a spiritual teacher (officially anyway) for a year. And I have written A LOT. If there’s one thing that has surprised me the most, it’s how prolific I’ve been this year. I’ve written something like 190 blog posts, and I’ve written my ebook, “Everyday Spirituality: Cultivating an Awakening.” I’ve also talked to over a 100 people in some shape or form, beit Skype, in-person, email, Facebook, or some other form about spirituality. It’s been amazing and intense.
For this week in particular, I’m taking a look back and am posting blogs with links to older posts that you may not have read. Very few of you will have read all some hundred odd posts, and the unfortunate thing about the blog mechanism is that old stuff gets buried easily. So here’s the first of a couple posts, and this one is a collection of posts about quieting your mind.
Bringing Inner Silence from the Back of Your Mind to the Front
People’s heads are full of noise. I’ve blogged about this before, and it’s been one of my popular topics (that and sex–don’t worry, I’ll have a collection on sex and spirituality soon). In so many ways, the mind’s constant noise is one of the big problems people have on the spiritual path. Below are several blogs that can help you.
Connecting to Your Mind and Recognizing a Problem
Blog #1: Stopping the Mental Chatter
This was one of the first blog posts that I wrote that got really popular. It’s a great doorway into the overall discussion around the mind noise that so many of us have. I highly recommend it if you’re early in your path, and even if you’re not, it’s a good doorway into how I discuss the topic (which can be helpful if you’re new to this blog and my teaching).
Doing the Work to Heal Your Mind’s Paranoia and Chatter
Blog #2: Over-Thinking and Over-Analyzing: Healing the Frenetic Mind
This post is another one of my favorites because it starts to break down this assumption we create believing that we are our minds and our egos. That can be a revelation for a lot of people who have never considered that their brain is just a set of patterned functions much like a computer. Until we choose to change the programs, it’s just going to keep doing the same things. It doesn’t necessarily even have to be an over-thinking mental program–any mental program just runs what it runs. It knows what it knows until we add in different patterns and change the old ones.
Awakening to the Quiet in Your Head
Blog #3: Awakening the Mind: The Intellect Knows Its Place
This is a really beautiful blog. It’s more of a sense of where this path goes in quieting the mind. It’s a little less focused on cultivating tools to achieve it. Ultimately, you don’t achieve much on the spiritual path. Starting is important, but over time, the real truth of the matter is there is nothing to achieve. How can you achieve stillness when you already have it? Subsequently, in this blog post, it’s sharing the revelation that the quiet mind is still very active and aware and curious, but it no longer runs constantly. When it is out of balance, you’ve also developed a new ego self that can see this and more calmly address those old patterns that may show up from time to time.
Many Ways to Inner Quiet
These, of course, are just a few ways to move towards inner quiet. The are many ways to do so. You are welcome to ask questions in the comments or message me directly if you like. Be well. Be at peace.
