In yoga, when we study the philosophy behind the 4,000 year old tradition, we find nuggets of wisdom highly applicable to modern life. Many people think yoga is just about stretching however, there's a rich philosophy that can help you conquer your mind. It can mean the difference between starting your own company or staying in a job you feel dissatisfied in. It can be the difference between having lasting relationships or a string of failed attempts. It can mean the difference between severe misery or sustained happiness. Today we are looking at the concept of 'The Neutral Mind.'
At House of Intuition, we are more into meditation than the physical practice of yoga because we see the gap in society that needs to be filled. While there are many yoga studios teaching poses and helping people with a much need healthy lifestyle, the next step or one that can be done in tandem is conquering the mind. When you conquer your mind, nothing has the power to pull you from a happy state of existence. Not death or losing what you own, nothing can steal your peace of mind when you understand how to direct the mind. Training the mind takes discipline and regular practice. We often meet people who have loud brains and you can immediately deduce they are not regular meditators.
The neutral mind is the mind that will help you see the big picture when you go through the highs and lows of life. It will help you not sit in judgement of others and it will help you make decisions that are good for you. It will not attach to people or experiences but rather deduce the energy of them in an easy to digest format. The negative mind, is something most of us are familiar with. It thinks about what could go wrong and it allows us to focus on what we don't like about the present, ourselves and other people. Truly the only value of the negative mind is to keep us safe but it's used way more than it should be in our culture. The positive mind is the mind that tells you what is good. It can trip us up when we don't see potential drawbacks and we dive headfirst into something without really thinking it through. This could be a new relationship where both people don't really know each other. Most of us swing from the highs and lows of the positive and negative mind kind of at the will of our external environment.
We are seeking to find the neutral mind which is much less attached to outcomes and expectations. The neutral mind sees why things happen, it sees motivations and influences, it even looks at our own reactions and motivations and analyzes them. The neutral mind is not attached to material gains, validations or insults. The neutral mind is truly your BFF. When you are coming from the neutral mind, you are hearing the wisdom of your soul which always looks at the big picture. The soul can help you bring the best possible words through communication, have the most peaceful reactions and come up with the most balanced solutions for life's turning points both big and small. Whether you are upset about coffee spilling on you, stressed because you're late for work or elated that you just got engaged, the neutral mind can basically keep you on track.
We can easily recognize when people are in the negative mind. They complain, they talk poorly of others and even talk badly about themselves. When they are in their positive mind, they are full of enthusiasm for life and so excited that they want everyone to know, they see possibility around every corner and may not be able to budget their time and money to accomplish the tasks they want to accomplish because they are in a fairy tale reality. The neutral mind sees the ups and downs and finds the synchronicities of all of them. The neutral mind can see how the planets affect the tides of our emotions and will detach from the emotions of the self knowing they are temporary. The neutral mind can keep you from fighting with your partner and can help you from being defensive. The neutral mind is not obsessed with being right but rather in keeping a peaceful loving demeanor. The neutral mind is the best place to communicate from as we will more easily be able to see where the other person is coming from and communicate assertively our needs without aggression.
Usually when we have a negative thought, the positive mind will then tell you what is useful from that thought. That's already a quite evolved way of thinking. We don't believe all of our fears or we would still be afraid of the dark and not go outside when it's raining because we could get struck by lighting. However, most of us get caught in a loop where the negative thought brings up a bunch of memories from the subconscious and berates your mind with them. This just piles up and ends up stressing out your body and can be dangerous because we can start reacting and acting based on the past. It makes you feel compounded fear and thus convinces you that it is real.
The negative and positive mind are essentially cause and effect. They cancel each other out and you need the neutral mind to become successful. The negative and positive contrast each other but we will go back and forth endlessly if we don't activate the neutral mind. The neutral mind leads you to your highest destiny. And really just an understanding of these three will help you use them all more intelligently. To be able to recognize which mind you are using, you can sit in meditation and start to notice your reactions and how much you may expand thoughts either positively or negatively. Then you can be more matter of fact about your own attachments and emotions so you can direct your actions from an altruistic and purely loving space.
Hey don't stress out about figuring out which mind you are using, just try to be neutral. Even just having an intention to remain neutral will help you because you inherently know what neutral means. Try to cultivate the feeling of neutrality the next time you feel either sad or happy. This is like taking a birds eye view on your own life. This is how we cultivate wisdom. If you want to learn to meditate and not be caught off guard by the things that happen in your life, make a commitment to be more neutral, don't obsess over it, just set the intention as often as you can. Interestingly, we inherently know how to be neutral it's just something we need to practice.
As you start to dive into meditation, we have classes, meditation tools and even guided meditations for you all inside the house! We want to empower the world to be able to enjoy every day to the fullest by connecting to their highest calling and acting in responding from a place that allows them to truly be at peace at all times. This is our wish for you. Feel free to stop by our store to check out our candles, incense, crystals, journals and meditation cushions! If you're not in LA, we offer our wonderful tools online! You can even use our 100% pure grade essential oils to help you stay calm and open your third eye. For crystals that help you stay calm, we like our best sellers amethyst, selenite and our Himalayan salt lamps!