Today, we talked about Self Observation (Mind Yoga) in the following two examples:
1. A smoker wants to stop smoking and he tells himself I want to have my last cigarrette. So the smoker thinks whether to listen to himself (ego) or do 'gaman' and don't smoke.
2. A mother is worrying about her child who is sick. She doesn't know if her child is gonna get better or not. She is worried so much that her thoughts (ego) fill her mind so much that she cannot cook the meal for her husband.
In our minds, who is doing the talking? Is it us or is it the ego?
As we learned in our previous lessons, if we do self-observation, we can observe our ego and have better control of ourselves. Basically, when we do self-observation, the chattering/complaining/talking of the ego stops.
A good analogy is the cat-and-mouse chase. When the mice are running all over the table, and suddenly the cat jumps onto the table, the mice instantly take-off to their hiding places. In this case, the cat is the observation and whereas the mice are thoughts in our mind.
When we have good and successful observation, we have a discovery of a certain trait of ourselves. When we discover, we basically see something new and we get the motivation to explore even further. Exploring is almost like a hide-and-seek between the cat and mouse.
Back to the examples:
1) In the case of the smoker, he observes himself and discovers that he amay be insecure and bored. So he explores and plays around with his thoughts by putting an unlit cigarrette in his mouth or plays around with a lighter/matches. He observes and finds out which thoughts are coming from the ego.
2) In the case of the mother, she observes her child who is sick, and she observes her fearful thoughts. She discovers that her child has fever and she discovers that she easily gets panicky. She checks the fever with the thermometer and observes it is less than 38 deg Celcius. Now, she can wait till tomorrow morning before she can take her child to the doctor. She has now explored all options and can now wait to fix the problem tomorrow.
The aim of self-observation is to ultimately change ourselves for the better. So when we observe (cat), we will discover our hidden thoughts (mice), and we can explore (play hide and seek) to find out how our mind works. Once we have learned about our mind, we will have a deep understanding which will enable us to 'know' what to do next. 'Knowing' comes from inner wisdom and the experiential knowledge resulted from self-observation.