You know, I was sitting the other day
watching a bird at my window. And this
bird was doing what birds do, turning
its head sharply, listening, watching
every few seconds, a twitch, a glance
backward,
a sudden alertness to something I
couldn't even perceive. And I thought to
myself, that bird will never know. A
moment of what we call relaxation. It
can't afford to. The moment it stops
scanning for danger, it becomes danger's
next meal. And then it occurred to me,
"Your mind is that bird." We don't like
to think of it that way, do we? We
imagine that somewhere deep inside us
there ought to be a temple, a quiet
room, a still pond where thoughts settle
like dust, and everything finally
finally becomes peaceful. We've been
told this is possible.
We've been sold this idea in a thousand
different packages. meditation,
mindfulness courses, spiritual retreats
where you sit in silence until your legs
go numb and your back aches. All in
pursuit of this elusive thing we call
inner peace. But here's what no one
mentions. The mind, your mind was never
designed to give you that. Not because
it's broken, not because you're doing
something wrong, but because peace was
never its function. The mind is a tool
for survival. It evolved over millions
of years to do one thing exceptionally
well, keep you alive. And staying alive
requires vigilance. It requires memory.
It requires the ability to predict, to
calculate, to compare this moment with
past moments and future possibilities.
The mind is always asking,
"What could go wrong? What did I forget?
What's coming next?" That's not a bug.
That's the feature. So when you sit down
in the morning and try to quiet your
thoughts and instead you get an endless
stream of reminders, worries, plans, and
replays of yesterday's awkward
conversation. You think something's gone
wrong. You think, "I'm not doing this
right. Other people must have peaceful
minds. Why is mine so loud?" But what if
the loudness is exactly what minds do?
What if the chattering, the planning,
the worrying, what if that's just the
mind performing its evolutionary
function? And the real question isn't
how do I stop this, but rather why am I
asking a drum to be silent? Let me put
it another way.
Imagine you have a smoke alarm in your
house. Now, the smoke alarm has one job.
Detect danger and make noise. That's
what it's for. You don't walk past the
smoke alarm every day and think, "I wish
this thing would give me peace." That
would be absurd. The smoke alarm isn't
there for your serenity. It's there to
scream when something's burning. Your
mind is the smoke alarm. And the
extraordinary thing, the thing that
causes all this confusion is that the
smoke alarm is always on. It doesn't
just activate when there's real smoke.
It activates when you burn toast, when
someone lights a candle, when you're
cooking dinner and the steam drifts
toward the ceiling. The alarm doesn't
distinguish between a five alarm fire
and a slightly overcooked meal. It just
detects particles in the air and
responds. Your mind does the same thing.
It detects threats.
But in today's world, most of the
threats aren't real. They're imagined.
They're possibilities.
They're replays of things that already
happened or previews of things that
might never occur. But the mind doesn't
know the difference. It treats an
embarrassing memory from 10 years ago
with the same urgency it treats a car
swerving into your lane. And so you live
in a state of constant alertness.
Not because you're anxious, not because
you're neurotic, but because the mind is
doing exactly what it was built to do.
The suffering begins when you mistake
this mechanism for you. Think about it.
Your ancestors, the ones who survived
long enough to pass on their genes to
you. They weren't the relaxed ones. They
weren't the ones lying in the grass,
feeling at peace with the universe while
a predator stalked nearby. No, your
ancestors were the nervous ones, the
vigilant ones, the ones whose minds
never stopped scanning, never stopped
preparing, never stopped rehearsing
worst case scenarios, that anxious mind
kept them alive and they passed it down
to you. So when you feel that
restlessness,
that inability to simply be, you're not
failing at being human. You're
succeeding at being the descendant of
survivors. the mind's constant motion.
That's your inheritance. That's the gift
that allowed you to exist at all. But
here's where we get confused. We live in
a world now where most of those old
threats don't exist anymore. There's no
lion in the bushes, no rival tribe
waiting to attack. Yet, the mind still
operates as if there is. It scans your
social interactions for signs of
rejection. It rehearses conversations
that haven't happened yet. It replaced
mistakes from years ago searching for
what you should have said differently.
The mind is still doing its job. But the
job has become obsolete and we wonder
why we can't find peace.
Now here's where things get interesting.
Most people when they realize their mind
is noisy decide they need to fix it.
They think, "Okay, the mind is too loud.
I need to make it quiet. I need
discipline. I need a method. I need to
do something about this." And so they
try. They sit down. They close their
eyes. They attempt to force the mind
into submission. Be quiet, they command.
Stop thinking. Be still. And what
happens? The mind gets louder. Because
the moment you try to control the mind,
you've created an inner war. There's the
part of you that's thinking, and now
there's another part, the controller,
trying to stop the thinking. But here's
the twist. That controller is also a
thought. Let me say that again because
it's the whole game. The voice in your
head that says, "I need to stop thinking
so much." That's a thought. The impulse
that says, "I must be more present."
That's a thought. The critic that says,
"I'm doing this wrong, thought, thought,
thought." So now you have two problems.
You have the original mental noise and
you have the secondary noise of trying
to fix the original noise. It's like
trying to put out a fire by throwing
more fire on it. This is what I mean
when I say trying to control the mind
strengthens the mind. People spend
years, decades in this battle. They read
books about mindfulness.
They learn breathing techniques. They
practice concentration exercises.
They go to workshops where someone with
a very calm voice tells them to just let
go. And they try. They try so hard, but
the harder they try, the more exhausted
they become because they're locked in a
struggle with themselves. I've watched
this happen countless times. Someone
comes to me and says, "I've been
meditating for 5 years and my mind is
still noisy. What am I doing wrong?" And
I say, "Nothing. The mind is supposed to
be noisy. That's what minds do. And they
look at me with confusion.
Sometimes disappointment because they've
been sold a story. The story goes like
this. If you practice hard enough, if
you're dedicated enough, if you're
spiritual enough, eventually your mind
will become permanently quiet. You'll
achieve some state of lasting peace
where thoughts no longer disturb you.
But that's not how it works. That's not
how any of this works. The mind will
keep producing thoughts until the day
you die. That's its nature. And fighting
against its nature is like fighting
against the ocean because you want the
waves to stop. You can stand in the
water and push back against the waves
all day long. You can exhaust yourself
completely, but the waves don't care.
They'll keep coming. And the tragic part
is that the struggle itself is the
problem, not the mind. the struggle.
Imagine you're standing in a river
trying to stop the water from flowing.
You push against the current with all
your strength
and maybe for a moment you create a tiny
pocket of stillness right in front of
you. But the water doesn't stop. It just
goes around you and you're standing
there exhausted using all your energy to
hold back something that was never going
to stop in the first place. That's what
it's like to fight the mind. The water
wants to flow. Let it flow. The mind
wants to think.
Let it think. But here's what most
people never consider. Maybe the problem
isn't that the mind is thinking. Maybe
the problem is that you believe you're
supposed to stop it. So then the
question arises, if I can't control the
mind, and if trying to control it only
makes things worse, then what am I
supposed to do?
And that question that question is where
the real shift begins because the moment
you stop asking how do I fix this and
start asking what's actually happening
here something changes not in the mind
in you or rather in what you realize you
are. Let me take you somewhere for a
moment. Imagine you're sitting in a room
and outside there's a street,
cars passing, people talking, a dog
barking,
birds, wind, all this sound coming in
through the window. Now, are you the
sound? Are you the barking dog? Are you
the passing car? Of course not. You're
the one hearing the sound. The sound
happens. You're aware of it, but you're
not it. Now apply that same awareness to
your mind. Thoughts arise, worries
appear, plans form, memories surface.
But are you the thought or are you the
space in which the thought appears? This
is not a trick. This is not semantics.
This is the difference between suffering
and freedom. When you believe you are
the thinker, you're trapped. Because if
you're the thinker, then you're
responsible for every thought.
You have to manage them, control them,
improve them. It's exhausting. It's like
being a shepherd trying to herd a
thousand sheep in a thousand different
directions. But when you realize you're
not the thinker, when you see that
thoughts simply appear the same way
sounds appear, everything softens, you
don't have to stop the mind. You just
have to stop identifying with it. Here's
what I mean. Right now, as you're
listening to these words, there's a
sensation in your body. Maybe your back
against a chair. Maybe your feet on the
floor. You're aware of that sensation,
aren't you? But you don't think I am
that sensation. You don't identify with
it. It's just something you're
experiencing.
Thoughts are the same. They're just
experiences,
mental experiences. They come and go
like sensations, like sounds, like the
weather. But somehow we've learned to
treat thoughts differently. We've
learned to think we are our thoughts.
And that identification is the source of
all our psychological suffering. When a
thought says you're not good enough and
you believe you are that thought, you
suffer. When a thought says something
terrible might happen and you identify
with it, you suffer. But when you see
that these are just mental events
passing clouds in an open sky, the
suffering dissolves. Not because the
thoughts stop, but because you've
stopped confusing yourself with them.
Now, I know what some of you are
thinking. You're thinking, "Okay, that
sounds nice, very poetic, but how do I
do that? How do I stop identifying with
my thoughts?" And there it is again, the
same trap, the same question. How do I
do it? But you see, the question assumes
that you, the thinker, the doer, can
perform some action that will result in
freedom from the thinker. It's like
asking, "How do I use my hand to let go
of my hand?"
You can't because the one who would do
the letting go is the one who's holding
on. So then what are we stuck? Is there
no way out? Well, here's the beautiful
part. There's no way out because you
were never in. Let me explain
right now as you're listening to me.
Thoughts are happening. Maybe you're
thinking about what I just said. Maybe
you're planning what you'll do after
this. Maybe you're wondering if you left
the stove on. Whatever the thought is,
it's happening and you're aware of it.
But notice something. You didn't decide
to have that thought. It just appeared.
You didn't sit there and think, "Okay,
now I'm going to think about the stove."
The thought about the stove just showed
up uninvited like a cloud drifting
across the sky. Thoughts arise on their
own. They always have. You've never been
in control of them. You've only believed
you were. And here's the relief. If you
were never in control, then you can't
fail at controlling them.
The whole project was impossible from
the start. It's like someone telling
you, "You need to control the wind. Just
focus really hard and make the wind blow
in the direction you want." And you
spend years trying. You stand outside
with your arms stretched out,
concentrating, willing the wind to obey.
And sometimes it seems to work. The wind
happens to blow the way you wanted.
and you think, "Yes, I'm getting better
at this." But then it changes direction
and you feel like a failure. But you
were never controlling the wind. The
wind does what wind does and you were
just standing there taking credit or
blame for something that was never in
your power. The mind is the wind and
you've been standing there exhausted
trying to make it blow in a particular
direction.
So what's left? Just this awareness, the
simple open effortless recognition that
thoughts are happening, not your
thoughts, just thoughts. Mental weather,
patterns of energy moving through
consciousness. And when you see it that
way, when you stop trying to be the
controller and simply rest as the
awareness, something extraordinary
happens. The mind keeps doing what it
does. It keeps thinking, planning,
remembering, but it no longer disturbs
you. It's like the sound of traffic
outside your window. You hear it, but it
doesn't invade you. It's just part of
the environment. There's an old story I
like to tell. A student goes to a Zen
master and says, "Master, my mind is
constantly disturbed.
How can I find peace?" And the master
says, "Show me this mind that disturbs
you." The student is confused. What do
you mean show you? Bring it here. The
master says, "Put it on the table. Let
me see this troublesome mind." The
student stomps. "I I can't do that. It's
not a physical thing." "Then how do you
know it's disturbing you?" the master
asks. And the student pauses. He looks
inward. He tries to grasp the mind to
locate it to find the thing that's been
bothering him all this time. and he
realizes there's nothing to grasp.
Thoughts come and go, feelings rise and
fall, but there's no solid thing called
my mind that can be captured or
controlled. And in that moment, the
disturbance ends.
Not because the mind stopped thinking,
but because the student stopped
believing he was the mind. This is the
recognition that changes everything. Not
a technique, not a practice, just a
simple seeing. You look for the thing
you've been calling I, the thing you've
been trying to improve and control and
fix, and you realize it's not there. It
never was. There are thoughts, there are
sensations, there are perceptions, but
there's no separate entity standing
behind them, pulling the strings, making
it all happen. That entity is itself
just another thought, an idea, a story
you've been telling yourself for so long
that it started to feel true. But when
you look directly, when you search for
this eye that's supposedly in charge,
you can't find it. And the moment you
can't find it, the moment you realize it
was always just a concept, freedom
dawns, not the freedom to do something,
the freedom from the illusion that there
was ever someone who needed to do
something. Now, I want to be very
careful here. I'm not saying the mind is
bad. I'm not saying thoughts are the
enemy. That would be just another
version of the same war. The mind is a
magnificent instrument. It allows you to
learn, to communicate, to create, to
solve problems. When you need to plan a
trip, the mind is useful. When you're
figuring out how to build something, the
mind is essential. But the mind is meant
to be used, not lived in. Think of it
this way. You have a toolbox. Inside the
toolbox, there's a hammer. The hammer is
excellent for driving nails, but you
wouldn't carry the hammer around all
day, clutching it tightly, hitting
everything in sight. That would be
madness. You use the hammer when you
need it, and then you put it down. The
mind is the hammer. And most of us are
walking around swinging it at everything
all the time. Even when there's no nail
in sight, we use thought to solve
problems. That's good. But then we keep
thinking even when there's no problem to
solve. We lie in bed at night replaying
the day, rehearsing tomorrow, analyzing
conversations, creating scenarios. The
hammer keeps swinging and we wonder why
we're exhausted. So the invitation here
isn't to get rid of the mind. It's to
stop being hypnotized by it. To
recognize that you are not the voice in
your head. You are the awareness that
hears the voice. And when that
recognition dawn, even for a moment,
something shifts. The urgency dissolves.
The pressure lifts. You realize you
don't have to be anywhere other than
here. You don't have to become anyone
other than what you already are. Peace
isn't something you achieve.
It's not a state you arrive at after
years of practice. Peace is what's
already present when you stop demanding
that the mind be something it's not.
Here's the paradox, though. You can't
try to stop demanding because trying is
just another form of demand. So what do
you do? You do nothing.
You simply notice. You watch the mind do
its thing. Planning, worrying,
remembering, and you recognize that all
of it is just weather, mental weather.
It comes and it goes. And underneath it
all, there's a vast open sky that's
never disturbed by the weather. That sky
is what you are.
Not the thoughts, not the emotions, not
the stories about who you've been or who
you should become. You are the awareness
in which all of that appears. And here's
the thing about awareness. It doesn't
need improvement. It's not broken. It's
not lacking. It simply is. You don't
have to meditate your way to awareness.
You don't have to fix yourself first.
You don't have to become more spiritual
or more enlightened or more anything.
Awareness is already here. It's what's
listening these words. It's what's
hearing the sounds around you. It's
what's noticing the thoughts as they
arise and dissolve. You've been looking
for something you've never lost.
It's like searching for your glasses
while they're sitting on your head. You
look everywhere. You ask people if
they've seen them. You retrace your
steps. You get frustrated.
And all the while the glasses are right
there resting on your nose, allowing you
to see everything you're searching
through. Awareness is the glasses.
You can't find it because you're already
using it to look. You can't achieve it
because it's what's here. Noticing every
attempt to achieve something. This is
why all the seeking eventually becomes
exhausting because you're looking for
what's already looking. You're trying to
become what you already are. There's a
beautiful image in Dowist philosophy.
They speak of muddy water. When you stir
muddy water, it stays muddy. The more
you stir, the muddier it gets. But if
you simply let the water be if you stop
stirring, the mud settles on its own and
the water becomes clear. You don't make
the water clear. Clarity is what happens
when you stop interfering.
The same is true for the mind. Peace
isn't something you create. It's what
remains when you stop trying to force
the mind into silence.
This doesn't mean you become passive. It
doesn't mean you stop thinking or
planning or engaging with life. It just
means you stop believing that your
worth, your safety, your happiness
depends on controlling the mind. You let
the mind be what it is, a survival tool,
a pattern maker, a story generator, and
you rest as the awareness that's never
been entangled in any of it. I remember
years ago, I used to get so frustrated
with my own mind. I would sit to
meditate, determined to achieve some
state of perfect stillness, and the mind
would immediately start narrating. Okay,
I'm meditating now. I'm sitting very
still.
Wait, is my back straight? Yes. Good.
Now I'll focus on my breath. In. Out.
In. Wait. Did I lock the front door? I
think I did. Yes, I definitely did.
Okay, back to the breath. And in that
listening, there was peace. Not because
the thoughts stopped. They didn't, but
because I stopped treating them as a
problem. I stopped treating them as me.
The thoughts were just thoughts and I
was the space in which they appeared.
That was the end of the struggle. Not
because I won the struggle, but because
I realized there was no one to struggle
against. You see, we've been asking the
wrong question. We've been asking how do
I make my mind peaceful? When the real
question is, who is asking? If you look
closely, you'll see that the one asking
is a thought. The one seeking peace is a
mental construct. The eye that wants to
be better, calmer, more enlightened,
that's just another appearance in
awareness. And when you see that, the
game collapses. There's no one to fix.
There's nothing to achieve. There's just
this right now exactly as it is. The
mind thinking, the heart beating, the
breath moving, the sounds around you,
the sensation of your body, all of it
happening effortlessly without your
control. You are not the director of
this show. You never were. You're the
stage on which the show appears and the
stage is never disturbed by the
performance. Think about that for a
moment. In a theater, the stage doesn't
care what play is being performed.
Comedy, tragedy, drama, fast, the stage
remains unchanged. Actors come and go.
Sets are built and torn down. Emotions
rise and fall. But the stage just is.
You are that stage. And the mind is the
play being performed on you. Sometimes
it's a comedy, sometimes it's a tragedy,
sometimes it's confusing and doesn't
seem to have a plot at all. But you, the
awareness, you're never touched by it.
You are simply the space in which it all
unfolds. So where does that leave us?
What are you supposed to do with all of
this? Well, nothing and everything. You
don't have to do anything with it. You
can simply let it be seen. Let it be
known. Let the recognition settle in
like that muddy water becoming clear.
And as it settles, you might notice
something.
Life continues.
Thoughts continue.
Challenges continue. But there's a
lightness now, a sense of humor about
the whole thing. You see the mind doing
its dance and instead of being swept up
in it, you smile. You see the worry, the
planning, the stories and you think,
"Ah, there it is again. The mind doing
what minds do." And you let it be
because you've realized something
fundamental. The mind was never meant to
give you peace. It was meant to keep you
alive and it's doing a fine job of that.
But peace, real peace doesn't come from
the mind. It comes from the recognition
that you are not the mind. You are the
space in which the mind appears. And
that space has never been disturbed. Not
once, not ever. It's here now. It's
always been here. Quiet, open,
unchanging.
And when you rest in that space, when
you stop trying to fix, control, or
improve, you discover something
remarkable. Peace was never missing. You
were just looking for it in the wrong
place. You were looking for it in the
future, thinking, "I'll be at peace when
I finally get my mind under control."
But peace isn't in the future. It's here
now in the simple recognition that you
are not what you thought you were. You
were looking for it in circumstances,
thinking, "I'll be at peace when my life
settles down." But peace doesn't depend
on circumstances. It's the awareness
that remains regardless of what's
happening.
You are looking for it in thoughts,
trying to think your way to peace. But
peace isn't a thought. It's what remains
when you stop identifying with thoughts.
So let the mind speak. Let it plan and
worry and remember and predict. Let it
do its job. And you just rest. Rest as
the awareness that's never been anything
but whole. Because in the end, the mind
doesn't need your permission to be what
it is. And you don't need the mind's
permission to be free. This is not
something you earn. It's not something
you practice your way into. It's not a
reward for being spiritual enough or
disciplined enough or good enough. It's
already here. It's what you are right
now in this moment and in every moment.
The mind will keep talking. That's fine.
Let it talk. But you you can finally
stop listening to it as if it were the
voice of God. It's just the mind
doing mind things. And you are the vast
open undisturbed awareness in which all
of it, the noise, the peace, the
thoughts, the silence appears and
disappears like waves on an endless
ocean. So rest not in the stillness of a
silent mind, but in the stillness of
recognizing what you've always been.
That's peace, not as an achievement, but
as a homecoming.