Let’s talk about losing your mind.
Or at least: the dominance of your mind.
The slow loss of firm ideas, solid beliefs, and all the other mental snippets that seem to be part of who you are.
We have endless amounts of those notions buried deep inside our worldview, scaffolding our personality, and holding our sense of morality in place.
We consist of stories that pretend to be life.
It looks and feels like we’re living a linear existence with a past and a future.
And it seems that without those rich and deeply ingrained ideas and experiences, without this specific storyline, we’d go mad.
But I can tell you it’s actually the opposite.
Because I’ve been losing tons and tons of ideas and beliefs in the last couple of years, and the general result is a sense of massive, delicious peace.
At least most of the time.
When this started there was a lot of anxiety and turbulence.
While beginning to wake up and feel more connected to the inner Self, or true nature, the mind naturally became less important.
Because it doesn’t like that, it will try extra hard to stay relevant.
I guess it took me a couple of years to get comfortable around this dropping away of many things that seemed so bloody important to me.
There were a lot of conversations where I had nothing to say or defend, where my social mind went blank, and I had to readjust my being in the world and the way I connected with others.
I’ve seen many, many things I deeply believed in fully drop away, things that kept my self-image firmly up and my worldview stable.
It has been confusing, but mostly liberating.
Now I want you to know that this is an experience, an authentic process, not a choice.
I’m just describing it, not selling it.
And I’m telling you because this profound expansion of awareness and the gradual loss of personal tightness and fear, are going on all the time.
There’s no end to losing intimate ideas and concepts because our personal world (including the self we believe to be) is completely made out of them.
There are many things that people take very seriously, all the time, that stopped meaning anything to me.
It seems that more and more I’m only invested in what’s right in front of me, what’s here, now.
Many stories are still arising, but they’ve lost their pertinence, their importance, their density.
In my experience, the only thing that’s real and not made of mental concepts and language and images, the only thing that has never changed and will never change, is the direct feeling and notion of aliveness.
Consciousness, awareness, whatever you want to call it.
And that’s what permeates my present experience of life, more and more and more.
By the way (and for the record): none of this is either right or wrong, it’s not an achievement, and there’s no need to hold on to beliefs or try to get rid of them, or regard it as a personal challenge you have to take on and win.
I’m just sharing this because maybe you’re somewhere in that overwhelming process, and maybe you’re confused as fuck.
Maybe you’re losing interest in what has always been so relevant and personal.
Maybe defending your ideas has become less important.
Maybe it feels like you’re losing your mind, your security, your human story.
And in a way that’s true.
But remember: all the objections and all the worries and the fears, are created by the mind that’s losing its lifelong dominance and leading position.
It’s nothing but smoke and mirrors, created by the mind to try and secure its importance.
It’s like a reshuffle of reality.
You’re gonna love it.
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(Photo by @hansonluu, for Unsplash)