Carl Gustav Jung, one of the fathers of modern psychology, famously wrote that the mind is like an ocean.
Once you set out on an ocean voyage, you are at the mercy of the weather. You have no idea what the ocean will bring: storms, wind, rain, sun, or calm. You can’t calm the sea. But you can learn to sail it.
The mind is like an ocean
Meditation is the seamanship training for the mind. You can’t create calmness on demand, but you can learn to navigate, to pilot your boat to safety, to read the water, to set the sails, to find shelter when needed and to make headway against the storms.
If the mind is an ocean, then the waves are the thoughts on the ocean. You must take them as they come. And in time, you become an expert at sailing over even the most mountainous waves. This skill comes about through experience and meditation used as mental training, which is what I teach, helps you build these skills over time.
The goal is to get your mind on your side, and while the nature of the mind isn’t under your direct control, neither is your ability to control its direction. Familiarity with the experience of the mind in meditation helps you learn to influence your mind more directly over time.
The mind is like a glass of water
The teacher walks out onto the stage with a glass of water and a spoon. He sits down, looks at the audience, and stirs the water with the spoon. Sand stirred up from the bottom of the glass soon makes the water cloudy and dark.
The teacher then places the glass on a desk as he teaches his students the day’s practices. At the end of the class, he lifts the glass, which has now become crystal clear.
The message is as clear as the water in the glass.
Clarity of mind comes through resting the mind and not by winning a struggle with it, or by endless diversions, and not by changing the state of the mind with some substance.
Clarity comes through learning to rest the mind and allow it to heal and recover.
Through gentle repetition, you can train your subconscious to notice when you are on autopilot and to come back to the present moment.
The mind is like a fire hose.
In the consumer world, a constant stream of messages runs across the mind. We’re deluged with messages from the people around us, the news, our phones, and everything we read and watch. With every message comes a feeling as the mind tries to make sense of it all at once. There are so many messages that it can feel like drinking from a fire hose of information, thoughts, and feelings.
But you can learn how to choose not to drink from it.
That is what meditation, as a mental practice, does. It doesn’t turn the hose off. Instead of drinking from the fire hose, we can slow down and taste the crystal-clear mountain water.
The mind is like a mountain stream
Imagine sitting on the banks of a mountain stream in the summer. In the centre of the stream is a partly submerged rock. Just enough is above the water to keep our eyes focused on the rock.
Continuous movement surrounds us. The sun and the clouds slowly move across the sky. The grass and trees wave in the wind. Birds, insects, and other creatures go about their business. Dragonflies dart across the stream just above the water.
It’s a busy world, with movement all around. As we stay calmly focused on the rock, we stay in the present moment, observing the movement around us and feeling the warmth of the sun and the breeze in our hair. We witness the present moment as it passes through our awareness.
Constant change, constantly flowing through the present moment, is the experience of the present moment. That connection to the present moment, which we are all so aware of when we watch the mountain stream, is around us all the time. We just need to learn how to see it.
To experience the present moment, we need to find our rock in the stream of passing time. The easiest and most convenient rock is the breath. If you notice the breath, you are observing the passage of time, and the only place you can do that from is the present moment.
Welcome to the present moment.