Awareness – the benign virus!
What is the solution to this distorted software of the mind?
Deep awareness is the solution. Deep awareness is like a benign virus, if such a thing exists! Once awareness enters your system, the more you work with the mind, the more the awareness gets into the worry software and destroys it!
Awareness is nothing but bringing our focus to exactly what is happening in and around us. It is witnessing. Anything that we watch with awareness will dissolve. That is the power of awareness, whether it is physical pain, mental pain, worry, or something else. When we watch with awareness, we stop the conflict somewhere within us. We start moving with the natural flow of things.
When we watch worry with awareness, we focus light on exactly how worry is created, how it exists. Once this happens, the worry starts to dissolve and clarity starts happening.
There is a small story about Buddha* and his disciples:
One day Buddha arrived for his usual morning discourse with his disciples. He had a knotted handkerchief in his hand. He showed the handkerchief to the disciples and asked if any of them could come up and untie the knot.
One disciple went up and tried to untie it. He pulled and pulled and the knot tightened. Another disciple went up, he looked at the knot for a few seconds and easily untied it. All he did was look at the knot and immediately he knew how the knot was made in the first place. So, he just reversed the whole thing and untied it! The knot itself taught him how to untie it.
In life worries are the knots in the handkerchief. If we look at them with awareness, we will know
how to dissolve them. We will see exactly how the worry was created and then know how to ‘untie’ it. The worry itself will teach us how to release it.
First of all, there is no need to worry. Life itself holds all the solutions. It is a beautiful self-sustaining mechanism. We just need to allow it to function in its natural way. Then we will awaken to its higher intelligence and drop all our worries.
Not only that, when we witness, our mind slows down. Worry itself causes the mind to rush around in what you call anxiety. When awareness is brought in, the rushing slows down and things happen as they should.
There was a student who wanted to learn martial arts. He approached a teacher and asked, ‘I wish to study martial arts. How long will it take me to master the art?’
The teacher replied, ‘Ten years.’
The student became very sad and said, ‘But I want to master it faster and I will work very hard. Even if you want me to practice more than ten hours a day, I am ready to do it. If I do so, how long will it take?’
The teacher said, ‘Maybe twenty years.’
The teacher clearly means that hurrying is not going to help! When you are in a hurry, there is only anxiety. To really do something, you need only awareness, nothing else. When there is awareness, there is right action. When there is hurry, everything is blurred.
With awareness, anything becomes a blessing, including illness. Have you ever been joyful when you were sick? You can be if you become aware. There is no need to worry about sickness. Even sickness is a part of the flow of Existence. You can feel this if you become more aware of the bigger picture and what is happening at the cosmic level. Awareness simply relaxes you into deeper understanding.
Glossary:
* Buddha – Enlightened master and founder of the religion of Buddhism.
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