Question:
“I’ve heard that to “dissolve your ego” that you need to let it be, so it will lose power. I’ve tried this so many times, been doing it for months, but mind will just not shut up. I’ve tried everything I can, but it just keeps repeating over and over…it’s like torture! So then I just try to distract myself, do something to forget about them. But the negative thoughts just keep coming back.”
What are you referring to as ego? It seems to be thought, and this is the #1 error
spiritual seekers make, confusing thought with ego.
Wanting to get rid of “the ego,” people try to get rid of thought.
But thought itself is not the problem. Thought is not the ego.
Ego is a mistake in identity, it is believing what you ARE is thought (or the body-mind).
Therefore you are highly interested in thought, and suffer thought, then feel that you need to stop thought. But the more interested you are in thought and stopping it, the more thought there is.
Sound like what you are experiencing?
The key is to lose interest in thought, completely. Stop even trying to make it shut up, because that just spins the mind. Starve it of your power of attention, not merely by trying to distract yourself by being buys doing something, but by HOW you are in whatever you are doing.
It doesn’t matter what you are doing; you can do this.
Your attention is the fuel for the mind. So direct all of your attention into your physical bodily senses instead. Doing so takes it away from the mind.
You will need to do this again and again until it looses momentum, and you *truly* lose interest in it.
You will discover much, if you persist, about what’s actually going on to cause your suffering, and how it is you are doing that. So stick with it.
This is what is done in silent sitting practice, which I highly recommend daily. It develops your power to stay out of the mind, preparing the path for awakening and ultimately Self-Realization.
There’s of course much more, but this is enough for now… for you to master this.
Mind will eventually become passive. And the content will change over time. But unconscious “mind-attacks” will always happen, until you Realize the truth of who and what you actually are.
It’s a good thing for mind to become passive, because Realization does not happen in a suffering mind.
Mind must become still for the Truth to dawn on you. But again, do not try to force this, don’t engage the mind. Leave it be.
Discover your power of attention and and develop the strength to place it rightly, in the senses, and you may discover so much more about the body-mind’s other powers.
Once you get (via experience) what I mean by keeping attention in the senses, it’s actually easier than suffering, because it feels like relief. Seek it again and again, until you learn to stay there.
What will challenge you is not just the thought beliefs you have in the mind (if you are interested in them), but the belief in the mind itself (as important or real).
If you dabble in the former, the beliefs and their problems will be endless. If you take care of the latter, it will take care of any and all content of mind.
Taking refuge in the senses will become automatic when you feel pain, then you will stay there longer, until it becomes your habitual state. This is a return to your natural state, which is effortless.
The more powerfully you do this, the more interested you are in the senses and uncompromising you are about leaving mind alone, the quicker it will be over.
Peace to you. Cindy