Stage of Growth: Conquering The Mind.

[oOo]

Conquering the mind. The place where all thought originates. All emotion is contemplated. All imagination is possible. All memory of identity, is held. 

The purpose of this journal is to document my own journey at this stage of my personal growth. 

With everything that has transpired over these past few years and the road ahead, "Conquering the Mind" is a sentiment that rings all too true.

Across generations from philosophy to martial arts, time and time again for no less peculiar of a reason for my own beginning here this sentiment has struck at the core of countless humans that have walked this earth and have now passed through it.

They have left their written deeds in philosophy, their cultural impacts through stories still written in song, film and play, and their various disciplines in meditation to martial arts. 

And in that claim, they leave us four words in their example: X marks the spot. 

"x", that elusive singular point in consciousness that is nameless and yet has every name we can possibly conceive of, is faceless, and yet holds our most vulnerable one, is nothing and yet reveals the weight of our own potential that must fill it. Not just in realisation for the sake of doing so, as life has shown us that we can acquire only so much to satisfy ourselves. Nor even as an act of knowing oneself at a deeper level, for life has shown us that it is possible to become too full of oneself without much 'knowing'. Nor even for conquering goals in our external reality before us, though its wise to keep them plentiful. But all in all, its because the mind is the seed to all creation and thus the seed to all that can be created by our own minds. Including too then in that creation, the degree of sophistication that is born, grown and tended to in the wielding of our own minds for our own purposes.

Best wishes.

 

“Conquer your own mind, and conquer the world.”
— Guru Nanak

“He who conquers his mind is greater than those who conquer dominions in the war.”
— Swami Sivananda

“For him who has conquered the mind, the mind is the best of friends.”
— Bhagavad Gita

“Those who conquer their own minds, by Guru’s Grace, conquer the world.”
— Guru Granth Sahib

“The mind is difficult to control and restless; but by practice and by dispassion it may be restrained.”
— Bhagavad Gita

“Conquer the mind slowly and carefully through intelligent means.”
— Swami Sivananda

“You can’t control the fight if you can’t control your mind.”
— Ando Mierzwa

“Conquer your mind and then conquer the entire universe with your spirituality and divine force.”
— Swami Sivananda

“The Yogi who by meditation and Yogic discipline conquers his mind, conquers easily the world of matter.”
— Swami Sivananda

“Even though you have not conquered the battles of the world, you become the world-conqueror when you conquer your mind.”
— Attributed to Swami Chinmayananda

“To conquer mind is more difficult than to conquer the whole world.”
— Swami Abhedananda

“You will conquer the mind if you rest content in the self, undistracted by the concepts.”
— Yoga Vasistha

“The mind is the captain of the army of your bodily and mental senses.”
— Yoga Vasistha

“When the mind is conquered, its turbulent wanderings are stopped.”
— Guru Granth Sahib

“Rare is the one who knows the medicine to conquer the mind.”
— Guru Granth Sahib

“Without conquering his mind, no one can be successful.”
— Guru Granth Sahib

“To conquer the mind is the knowledge of the six Shastras.”
— Guru Granth Sahib

“Without sound reasoning it is impossible to conquer the mind.”
— Annapurna Upanishad

“You should first conquer the mind through Vichara or enquiry of ‘Who am I?’”
— Swami Sivananda

“I have mastery over the mind.”
— Uppalavanna Sutta

“To control the mind, to place it just where we want it requires special training.”
— Swami Vivekananda

 

 

Edited 14 hours ago by oOo

[oOo]

 

A measurement of the Mind's compulsive axis. 

In the beginning of existence, is now in this moment, where the only thing that relents further are the m emories that preoccupy its waters edge. 
I feel my brain rewiring, finding a satisfaction in reappraising the emptiness of existence as a celebration and liberation more than something I had to name and uphold in false praise. 

"Do not bear false witness upon this world, or it will observe you with clearer sight."

That is to say that there is no need to detail the world in any other way other than it is. More than this, that the world itself does not commit this same mistake. The natural world, exists as it is and does not try to be anything more. Humankind projects upon it and then become the very victims of those projections as the natural world will not commit the same faux pas. 

I live in the void, and in one sense it feels like an unrelenting truth but in reality it is like a candle that has been lit in a calm room. A flame where every shade gets to be heard while the light is only as bright as it aids, its own sight. I feel every bodily signal bubble up to the surface of my minds awareness with a glee indistinguishable from the certainty it imposes on the psyches order. 

"I'm coming for you. I'm overpowering you. I'm dominating you. I own you." 

Bodily cravings, external attractions that convert into the minds insatiable appetite to enslave its every desire that does not bring closure to the mind's resolve in conquering itself. 

Of what else is a more worthy challenge that pays any reward from its achievement for as long as you own it? In fact its more distinguishable characteristic is the ownership itself, for what else can we truly own in this world other than the mastery our souls have over our own minds?

I feel like I am standing at the edge of a pier, with raging seas and a situation that only wishes to push me over the edge. So I dive instead of waiting, wrestling with unpredictability, turbulence and an ache where its impossible to determine the difference between a blinding headache and mind that wants to conquer itself only more.

By the end of todays grace, blessed upon the ground I walk. As I take the path of the brightest light, whether it paralyses the mind in its struggle to live beyond the pain of its glow, or the mind is forced to adapt. Tomorrow will feel its effect and the newly forming neural grooves that inform its sight.

Disowning yesterdays predictable march where recovery had reasonable excuses. Breaking open a new door in a white room into darkness where I thought light could not be made. This is what it means for a mind to save itself, bound to a calm flame in a quiet room while natures rage exists at the edges of its light. For depth, find the horizon, for the horizon, go deeper. The rage against the machine, the machinations of unchangeability, devolution, and sovereignty that exists only in ease, comfort and subjugation to the weathers of the mind, turning true mind into compulsion without soul. This is ascension without a reason, destination, name or calling; it is the rage of mother nature. Everflowing, changing and evolving in its seas, an axis that does not need a computation of purpose or reason, but to simply be its truest essence. 

Bring me light, but let me start from darkness.
 

Edited just now by oOo