IRONING OUT THE MIND
Image: Madonna Iron, Nancy Fouts
So many of us carve out time and space to wake up early, explore that thin veil between our consciousness and dreamland, find a comfortable seat, and meditate. On the best days, it can feel viscerally potent, even transformative—other days, the resistance to actually sit down and go within can feel so. damn. hard.
But why do we do it? Besides the chance to reset the nervous system or balance the glandular system (or hormones)—both of which work doubly hard in these modern times—there’s something intangible that happens when we rework these neural pathways through meditation, breath, and movement.
We go into our practice to move something around. Through introspection, we can look at our patterns and stories through an objective lens as best we can. Are the stories within our mind serving us? Is what we believe helping us grow? Or our are underlying narratives that play through our mind all day long hold us back?
Meditation is a practice of cleaning out the mind. Just like we brush our teeth or take a shower to clean the physical body, this is how we tend to the mind. It’s not easy to iron out these patterns and stories we tell ourselves. But it’s often not nearly as scary as the buildup of resistance we have to confront what’s behind the curtain.
Part of the “ironing out” comes from sitting with the uncomfortable feelings, letting them come up, whether it's in our meditations or through holding the postures for beyond what feels easy or comfortable. In the holding - whether its moving through a thought without reaching for something to distract us or holding a posture - we build what is called tapas, the psychic heat that helps to burn away the old while cultivating inner power and strength to boldly move into the new. As we hold, it’s like a physical representation of the confrontation that’s happening beneath the surface.
This concept of changing our external world by moving through portals of the mind, led us to a 1900 short book by Ralph Waldo Trine. Another New Thought leader, his work is all about the unconscious habit-forming we do all day, every day. The way we orient ourselves in our inner life, can help us navigate the 3D reality we live in. And the beauty of meditation and “going in” the mind, allows us to unpack issues without having to do ALL the work in the outside world.
Image: Indigenous Australian art
GOING WITHIN:
GETTING THE KINKS OUT OF
OUR MINDS AND OUR LIVES
From Character Building Thought Power by Ralph Waldo Trine, 1900
“All life is from within out. This is something that cannot be reiterated too often. The springs of life are all from within. This being true, it would be well for us to give more time to the inner life than we are accustomed to give to it, especially in this Western world.
There will be nothing that will give us such abundant returns as to take a little time in the quiet, each day of our lives. We need this to get the kinks out of our minds, and hence out of our lives. We need this to form better the higher ideals of life. We need this in order to see clearly in mind the things upon which we would concentrate and focus our thought-forces.
We need this in order to continually create anew, and to keep our conscious connection with the Infinite. We need this in order that the rush and hurry of our everyday life does not keep us away from the conscious realization of the fact that the spirit of Infinite life and power that is the basis of all—working in and though all, that is the life of all—is the life of our life and the source of our power; and that outside of this we have no life and we have no power.”
EXERCISE:
Watch the Thoughts
The potency of this exercise resides in the non-doing. This week, try and “go into” meditations, (even the bite-sized, three minute practices), with an intention to feel different than before. Every time we sit to meditate is an opportunity to iron out something in the mind that is causing a bump in our lives. As we sit and hold beyond what feels comfortable, the blocks and stories we've held so close might (keyword, probably will) show up. Instead of aiming to eliminate them completely or resolve their grip on us, we can go to the end of the thought and see it all the way through and learn what's on the other side. Usually we distract ourselves before we even give ourselves a chance to see what is really coming up for us. In that moment, when we see it to the end, it's an opportunity to understand ourselves better in a way that we may not consciously be able to. And when we understand ourselves, we know how to take care of ourselves even in the challenging moments so we can move through them without letting them completely take over us. Use this practice this week to go within to see what it feels like to iron out the patterns that longer need to hold any power over us.