Inside Your Mind

by Friends of Godwin

Let us try to be aware in relation to what is happening, what is arising internally in us. It can be unpleasant emotions, it can be unpleasant sensations, it can be what you consider as negative thoughts. We learn just to allow them, we learn just to let them be by using awareness. Now in everyday life we might have two sorts of problems. One is, of course, what is happening internally, but the problem is mostly in relation to what is happening externally. So if you can learn how these problems arise, what happens inside yourself, then you learn to watch and to work with what is happening inside your minds in everyday life.

This is a very important tool, a very important skill to develop because then whatever is happening externally, we learn to look inside ourselves and to work with what is happening inside us in relation to what is happening outside. What we normally try to do in everyday life is to modify, to change, to try to control what is happening externally to suit us, but as we all know we are unable to do this because we have little control over external events. So the practice, interestingly enough, is not to try to do that. Of course, if you can do it in certain situations it is good, but what is more important is learning to bring about a change within us, inside us. So ideally, whatever happens externally, when a transformation has taken place inside you, then you are able to relate to it, not to be surprised by what is happening but learning not to react to it.