NOTE: Quoted sections in this post are excerpted from What You Have Given Your Mind to Do, by Michael Singer.

Experiment

Say "hello" to yourself three times, not out loud but in your mind. Leave a couple seconds between each one. Can you hear that voice?

Q: Which one is more fundamental to who you are: the one speaking? Or the one listening?

The Impossible

If you mistreat an animal, it becomes afraid. This is what has happened to your psyche. You have mistreated it by giving it a responsibility that is incomprehensible. Just stop for a moment and see what you have given your mind to do.

Or more accurately, what has your mind been given to do? Not only by your but by your parents, your family, friends, society?

One way to think about this is like the movie Inception, where Matt Damon's character creates shared dream spaces so he can steal people's subconscious thoughts without them knowing. Then he's asked to do the opposite, to insert a thought/belief into someone's subconscious without them knowing so they will make a certain decision later.

In our case, there wasn't necessarily a Hollywood plot of good-and-evil, but the result is the same. We took on many beliefs about what our life should be like and how we should go about making it that way

Q: What has your mind been given to do? What is your mind trying to accomplish or make real in this life?

Eight Worldly Concerns

In Buddhism, the Eight Worldly Concerns identify the main themes of human wants and desires, for example:

• To achieve or acquire whatever I chose
• Never to lose anything I want
• To be praised by everyone in everything I do
• Never to be blamed by anyone for anything I do
• To be seen in a certain way: as smart, powerful, beautiful
• Never to stop being seen in these ways
• To be happy all the time
• Never to feel any pain or suffering

Making it Real?

Now mind, go figure out how to make every one of these things a reality, even if you have to think about it day and night." And of course your mind says, “I’m on the job. I will work on it constantly.

Q: How does your mind try to make these a reality?

Watching the Mind (But Don't Listen)

By watching your mind, you will notice that it is engaged in the process of trying to make everything okay. Consciously remember that this is not what you want to do, and then gently disengage it. Do not fight it...Instead of fighting the mind, just don’t participate in it. When you see the mind telling you how to fix the world and everyone in it in order to suit yourself, just don’t listen.

Q: What do you think of when you hear "Just don't listen"?

The key is to be quiet. It’s not that your mind has to be quiet. You be quiet. You, the one inside watching the neurotic mind, just relax. You will then naturally fall behind the mind because you have always been there. You are not the thinking mind; you are aware of the thinking mind.

This is closely related to one of the four questions in Byron Katie's The Work:

Who or what would you be without that thought? - Byron Katie

Don't treat this like a geography or math question, like there is correct answer you should know or that you have to find. Simply ask it and then hold it, contemplate it, until something is revealed.

Just Practice

Just keep doing this with all those little things that come up each day...You will soon see that your mind is driving you crazy over nothing. If you don’t want to be like that, then stop putting energy into your psyche. That is all there is to it...When you start to see this stuff going on inside, you just relax your shoulders, relax your heart and fall back behind it. Do not touch it. Do not get involved in it. And do not try to stop it. Simply be aware that you are seeing it. That’s how you get out. You just let it go.

The River Cannot Go Back

By Kahlil Gibran.

It is said that before entering the sea
a river trembles with fear.
She looks back at the path she has traveled,
from the peaks of the mountains,
the long winding road crossing forests and villages.
And in front of her,
she sees an ocean so vast,
that to enter
there seems nothing more than to disappear forever.
But there is no other way.
The river can not go back.
Nobody can go back.
To go back is impossible in existence.
The river needs to take the risk
of entering the ocean
because only then will fear disappear,
because that’s where the river will know
it’s not about disappearing into the ocean,
but of becoming the ocean.

From Awakin.org.