Looking For The Mind Window: Separating Emotions From Labels.

So, we will try and find this window now, identify the mind. It is very important to cultivate silence as pointed out here. Once we do this regularly, the rest of what I am about to write will become easier to understand.

Our mind, through years of conditioning, has defined what it thinks is needed for us to be happy. We then define who we think we are with these thoughts. The mind works hard at keeping up the images of "I" and the "Me". It is unhappy when this image of "I" or "Me" is threatened.

It is said the mind makes a wonderful servant but a terrible master. Over years, we have progressively given up more and more control to our mind. The mind is a beautiful tool when it is working like it is supposed to.

I am not talking about the mind that helps us do math and remember grocery lists and remember birthdays … I am talking about the mind that when not able to solve the math problem goes into the story: "If I don't solve this problem, I will fail my math test and then I won’t get into any college, then I will not get a job, and I’ll be a failure!"

Conditioning has us believe we cannot function without the mind. However, many of us have experienced driving to work, getting into our car and reaching work and suddenly realizing we drove all the way without once thinking about the drive. We took left and right turns, stopped at stop signs and traffic lights, changed lanes, slowed down, speeded up... and yet we don't consciously remember doing any of this.

The mind would like to think it runs our lives and has us convinced we cannot do anything beyond the boundaries of what it has defined for us … but we did manage to drive to work without the mind giving us a running commentary on what we are doing. We do manage to eat and breath and walk and sleep without the mind saying: "Okay, now take a bite, now chew, now breath in, now breath out now move the muscles to move your right leg, make sure the left arm moves with that ...”. etc.

Separating emotions from mental labels:

The first thing we will do is to separate an emotion from the label the mind attaches to a situation.

We associate many thoughts and words with emotions arising. We generally don't separate the emotion from the mind’s evaluation about the situation. For instance, we say "I feel like a failure". Failure is not a feeling. The mind has defined what it thinks success is and when things don't fit into that definition it applies a label "failure".

The first thing to do in order to become more conscious of all this, is to separate the emotion from the mind’s evaluation. Identify the emotion, first.

So, we can rephrase that statement to "I feel angry /sad/afraid/ashamed/disheartened because I am not making as much money as I think I should."

I feel angry/sad/ashamed = Emotion
Amount of money = Reality
Not enough = Label. (Someone working in Wall Street may feel like a failure ‘cause he earns only a $1 million per year, but he should make $10 million, like the truly successful people do. Many of the rest of us feel we should make a few thousand more than we do and hence like a failure, and so, the label “not enough” is relative.) 

Similarly, "I feel misunderstood". Misunderstood is an evaluation; it is the mind deciding what level of understanding another person has of us, based on what we think constitutes “being understood”. So a better way to say this would be, "I feel sad/annoyed/anxious because I feel people don't understand what I am trying to say.

I feel sad/annoyed = Emotion
What I say = Reality
People don’t understand = Label. (What people understand and don’t is relative. The ways in which you are expecting them to understand you is relative.) 

So as we go about our day, we will consciously try to separate and identify the emotion from the label the mind attaches to the situation.

Right from the moment we wake up our emotions are determined by our mind labeling how we think the day is going to be. Mind identifies the emotion that we have associated with what we think the day is going to be like: sad/happy/eager/excited/bored … and continues identifying the various emotions and labels that we experience during the day.

I feel sad/angry/bored, etc. = Emotion
The events of the day = Reality
How I think the day is going to go = Label

If possible write them down. The mind has a way of distorting things when it thinks we understand its tricks. 

So this is our first step. Separate the emotion from the label.