Remember to Recognize

Transcript

Thinking about a phrase for this talk today, remember to recognize.

Interesting I’m saying remember to recognize I’m actually talking about an integrative process here.

Of course when we cognize we think about words or an image or sound or feeling. We cognize and then as a kind of meditation we can recognize the thought. We can notice that we are thinking.

It’s not just thoughts that we start to notice, we start to notice impulses and feelings. Things which might have been subconscious previous.

Now we recognize and pull them into full view so we know actually that we are thinking.

That’s what it means to recognize in this case. Then remember to recognize, not just doing it now in one moment but implementing that throughout our lives so we have these two levels of metaconciousness aware of our own consciousness and thoughts.

And we also continue doing it, we are aware enough that we persist with that habit.

This morning about 1am I woke up from a weird dream, actually the most bizzare dream I’ve ever had.

I won’t get into it now but after that my mind was racing and it’s actually not thinking about the dream but other things like coronavirus. Those thoughts weren’t that important when I was going back to sleep at 1-2 am.

What happened was I started to think about what was going on with my mind. Normally, because I’m well practiced at this I can notice that my mind wants to move in a particular direction or have this subconscious desire I made conscious.

There is this desire in me that wants to keep thinking about something, keep imagining arguments or whatever it is.

Talking to people in my mind as if they’re really there.

This morning I had to go through that process and I would notice that my mind was wandering, I notice I am thinking about these things.

I try to quiet my mind a little bit and rest my mind in that peaceful space that always exists for us, the space between thoughts.

And then just for a few moments perhaps my mind would be at rest.

Then this impulse would begin again.

And so I would attempt to recognize the thoughts and process and recognize the impulse.

A lot of the time we don’t have to fight the impulse or anything like that, we don’t have to resist it.

You might have heard what you resist will persist. My friend said to me “I’ve been working on mediation, I’ve been trying to sit for 15 minutes a day. But what I’m starting to find after sitting even for a few minutes is wander and I have these desires and get into fantasies, sexual fantasies or whatever.

Imagine certain situations in life.

I said that’s fine, there’s nothing wrong with what’s happening, that’s part of the process. The only thing I would suggest is when the mind does begin to wander and you do get into these fantasies because obviously you want to get into these fantasies the only thing you need to do is notice you want that, recognize your own desire, recognize the impulse.

As I said, deeper and deeper start to notice more and more aspects of our own minds previously hidden from us.

And then we can do what so many great philosophers recommended before us, we know ourselves or we remember to recognize.

Thank you for taking the time to notice your own emotions or having a little look at your own emotional state right now. Maybe you notice background noise or different little things going on in the back of your mind that you’ve tried to shut off.

Thank you for noticing, thank you for recognizing and have a great day.