I use the word “identification” because that’s the root cause of suffering. If you don’t identify with something, it cannot have power over you. You are pure consciousness, and you are also the human mind (as a physical expression of you). The human mind has the capacity to think negative or positive thoughts. The human mind being a survival machine can have fears; it can get anxious, it can get sad or feel helpless. You realize your freedom when you recognize that you don’t have to identify with the mind. You don’t have to make it personal. This freedom is possible when you recognize your nature as the “pure awareness” that is the witness of the mind. As long as you don’t recognize this nature of you, it’s a given that you will stay rooted identifying with every movement of the human mind.
The human mind will always have its fears
If you are trying to make your mind “fearless” you can give up on it, because it’s not possible to do so. You can pretend, or even fake, fearlessness – but inherently you will notice that the mind does fear, and it fears quite naturally. The human mind (or any living being’s mind) is a survival machine and thus it’s constantly looking to secure itself from possible dangers, and hence it comes up with fears now and again. Stop struggling with your mind, stop trying to make it fearless – you’ve been trying to change the mind for years now and it has not changed, when are you going to see the futility of this approach?
Instead of trying to make your mind fearless, shift your perception and look for the space in you that is always fearless. The pure consciousness that you are is always rooted in peace, its depth is never penetrated by the surface movements of feelings/thoughts. When you gain access to this dimension in you, it’s easy for you to allow the mind’s activity without being harassed by it. You will only get harassed by the fears of the mind when you are totally “in” the mind, with no access to the space of consciousness that you are.
Allow the mind its fear, you stay rooted as consciousness
You can try this right now – just stay as a witness to your mind without identifying with it. Let the mind spout its fears, let it complain, let it cry foul, and you simply stay as the “witness” of the mind the way you would witness a movie on a theatre screen. You will see how “impersonal” the mind’s activity becomes when you stay as a witness of it, when you don’t fully identify with it. It’s only when you identify with the mind and think that it’s “you”, that you start suffering the mind.
The mind is a “creation” of consciousness, just like your body is. I use the word “mind” to point to the brain/programming part of your physical-ness that is spouting conditioned thoughts, which takes in new conditioning from its surroundings, which analyses practicalities of life, which imagines future scenarios and so forth. We all know what the “mind” is, but what we don’t know is that who you are is not the “mind”, it’s just a machine which is programmed for survival.
You can enjoy the mind fully, and allow its tremendous capacity for creation, only when you stop identifying with it – and this possible only when you know your true self to be the pure awareness which before the mind. You can realize your potential as a deliberate creator of your reality, when you become free of identification with the mind, when you can feel that you are no loner being pulled in/controlled by the mind’s movement – this is when you feel liberated.
