Our State of Mind

by Friends of Godwin

Another useful thing our friend can show us is our state of mind. We all know what happens to our friend when we are affected by a strong emotion like anger, fear, excitement, stress and insecurity. What happens to our breath? It moves very, very fast. So it can be a very useful signal, a very reliable signal to show us what is happening in our mind. If we have problems with an emotions like anger, our friend will immediately show to us from the way the breathing moves that we are getting angry. So it can be a very useful signal, as I said, and then if you can listen to the signal, heed the signal, you’ll be able to recover from that anger or whatever emotion immediately.

In the same way when our mind is calm, when our mind is relaxed, when our mind is still, what happens to our friend? The breath also becomes calm. Sometimes it becomes so subtle that you don’t even realise that you are breathing. So if we can learn to make a connection with our friend, the friend will always tell us what is happening in our mind. Some of the friends we have can sometimes be wrong – or maybe most of the time they can be wrong – but you’ll realise this friend is always right, this friend is always reliable.