Identifying And Breaking Mind Shafts.

There were two monks walking, an old one and a young one. They came to a shallow river, and there was a lady there who demanded that one of them should carry her across the river. So the old monk carried her across and the two monks continued walking.

At the end of the day they decided to rest for the night. While they sat by a fire, the young monk told the old one.. "I cannot believe you carried that lady across the river, she was perfectly capable of walking across, and she was so rude … she did not even thank you! I really don't get why you did it!”

The old monk smiled at the young monk and said: "You are still carrying her? I set her down hours ago.”

This is how our mind works: we carry a story with us for years, and suffer from that story years after the experience has passed. The mind connects something that happened a few years back, with something that happened a few months back with something that happened a few days back and makes a shaft of pleasure or pain (shaft of "depression" or "poverty" or "unhappiness" or "happiness"). The mind connects every moment, and says “the pain I feel today, and the pain I felt yesterday and the pain I felt a week back are all connected.”

The day we can see that each moment is unique, unconnected to any other moments, we can free up a lot of mental energy … the energy that we used to mentally connect separate events and to keep those mind shafts in place.

We connect things that happen in our life to make either a shaft of pain and/or pleasure. We try to break a pain shaft and try to elongate a pleasure shaft, using external means. Neither of them will help. We need to stop connecting the moments that make the shaft.

So how do we break these mind shafts?

It can be practiced as we go about our day.

At the end of the day, when mind labels the day as a "bad day" or "stressful day" or "depressing day", go through the day in your mind and make mental notes of the things that happened, that cause mind to label the day one way or the other.

Now, if it was a "bad day" or a "feeling down day" … make an effort to pick out the moments in the day when you were happy, if you enjoyed your morning tea, if you smiled at someone or someone smiled at you, if you laughed at a joke, if you saw something that made you smile … watch how those moments actually broke up the lows in the day. Identify the moments that don't fit into the label of "low day", and break the day up into moments of happiness and moments of lows.

We use up a lot of mental energy (hence the mental tiredness, or depression) in connecting the lows to make a shaft of one big low. When we stop connecting memories of low moments in our mind, we free up a lot of mental energy. We need to break the mind shafts we have formed by simply seeing through them. We also need to break the mental pattern of thinking that we have created that makes these mind shafts stronger. Freeing ourselves from this habit won’t happen in a day, but starting out with small things, and developing the new habit of reviewing our day and watching for mind-shafts can free up a surprising amount of mental energy. Observing that the day is actually made up of moment by moment by moment … and that each moment is free of the previous one (memory) and next one (imagination), helps us break these mind-shafts, and enjoy some freedom and mental rest.

At first the shaft may be years long... for instance, a person thinks:

"The past 10 years of my life has been nothing but sadness."

Well the sadness you felt 10 years ago and the one you felt 5 years ago, and the one you experienced a year back and the one 6 months ago and the one you experienced a week ago are not the same. We connect these and make it one long shaft of a sad life.

My best friend betraying me 10 years back and my dad passing away 5 years back and my boyfriend leaving me a year back and my dog dying 6 months back and me losing my job a week back are all connected to make a long shaft of sadness. When you see each of those incidents were individual incidents and are only connected by the mind to make a shaft of a 10 years of sorrow... you can let go some of the heavy energy that is being used to keep the shaft of sorrow in place.

To dissolve the shaft, we can go back and identify the moments when we were not sad/depressed. We can remember how we enjoyed a party or a movie or a vacation or a night out or a book or a trip or a job.... and see how these broke the depression of 10 years. So the one shaft of 10 year long depression is now broken into smaller shafts of sadness. It no longer is a huge monster, but little monsters that came up during those 10 years … and we did enjoy many more moments of happiness than our mind-shaft of sadness wants to let us acknowledge.

Then, we break up shorter periods, such as a single day. Maybe break it to half a day at first. Then as you keep identifying the breaks in the day; breaks when you were not feeling low. Your moments will refine to hours, minutes, seconds... and you will be able to actually watch how each second is independent of the previous and next.

Please look at Breaking The Mind Shaft for another technique that is geared more for people with some background in meditation.