Mind Cleaning

Or The Stevie Wonder Method of Always Living in the Positive, or Pratipaksa Bhavana.

Gita Virtue number 24 is “chastity”, but chastity here is not just about restraining sexual impulses. The word comes from Latin, castitatem (nominative castitas) "purity, chastity" from castus, which in turn is from the root “kas” or “kes” “to cut off”. What does it mean to cut off or be cut off? Yes, it’s similar to cutting off testicles, castration, but it refers to “cut off from faults, and hence pure”.  It goes back to the Sanskrit term “Saucam” meaning cleanliness, purity, purity of heart or mind.

The ancients described the mind as being a vessel. A vessel contains material. Water can be poured in. Wine can be stored in it. Grain and seeds can be kept inside. Whatever. But if the mind is a vessel, what do we store in it? You have to look inside and see. There are memories, even if we don’t know exactly how they are remembered; there are thoughts that run on and on perpetually; there are flashes of feeling that rise up and subside; desires, wants, needs; and there is SOMEONE watching this as it happens. That someone is you, your Self-Awareness. As long as there is some degree of self-awareness, there can be a degree of “control” or “observance” of states of mind. You can see a thought, feeling or sensation as it arises. If you can’t, if you’re not “present inside yourself”, you are in “Self-Awareness State 2” (normal waking existence), and therefore you are your thought, feeling or sensation. This is called a state of attachment or identification. It is the basic egoic state. You are identified so completely with your thought, your imagined self or your “ego”, that you have no choice but to be that. At that moment you are nothing else but that. This is the state where all the damage is done, the state of irresponsibility, a state largely enveloped in negativity. This state needs a tool for working on it and dealing with the negativity. This tool is the same as above: increased Self-Awareness, to be able to “clean the mind”.

Our everyday “thinking mind” has to be ironed out and brought into a better condition for any real change to happen. Do you remember an old story about building on a stable full of dung? Hercules had to clean out the Augean Stables as one of the twelve necessary labours, listed as his fifth labour. These Twelve Labours were to atone for his “sins” and be rewarded with immortality. There is no intention of being high-handed by using the word “sin”. The original Greek word (used in the Bible) was hamartano/hamartia, which simply meant “missing  the mark” (as in archery), presupposing there is a “mark” and that when we miss it, we fail to receive our prize. The mark is the achievement of Virtue, the method is by diverting rivers from their course (the flow of unconsciousness) and sending them through the stables of the mind, where the dung is washed out in one day if we are as brave and as strong as Hercules. Or in various days, months or years if we are more ordinary people carrying no laurels on our brows.

One method of cleaning the mind is listening to the Stevie Wonder song “Positivity”, believing the song and applying it. The same method was re-introduced by Swami Vivekananda in the late 19th century after being lost in ancient history for ages. It is simply a practical application of the Bhagavad Gita texts from two millennia before Christ. Ancient wisdom, yes, and it’s called Pratipaksa Bhavana, which means “taking the opposite point of view”. This is an example of the right functioning of the human thinking process to clean up the mind. It presupposes you know what “dirtiness” of the mind is. Dirtiness of the mind is anything that is not Virtue. Since there are about 26 virtues, anything other than these is dirt – unnecessary, useless, expenders of vital energy for no good purpose, to be corrected by the practise of the Virtues.

It is our language that makes us believe certain things, because they have always been described this way. “I feel angry, I feel sad, I feel depressed”, as if the whole of YOU were that feeling and nothing else existed! This is bad psychology, impractical for our purposes. It is more correct to say “I give way to Anger, I give way to Sadness, I give way to Depression.” These states of mind are waves of energy that influence us and exert their power over us. Either you give way to them or you prevent them from taking over your whole being. If you are caught in the middle, then you can apply Pratipaksa Bhavana. Let’s do the exercise:

Anger (wrath)

Someone has said or done something “terrible” to me and I give way to Anger. But I take a few deep breaths, get back into my present moment, and intentionally use my thinking process in the following way (instead of allowing it to continue with my angry thoughts). I start thinking thoughts opposite to the negative thoughts that first came to my mind and which produced the anger. I think as follows:

“Well, this person sees things in a different way, and I don’t know exactly how he sees them, but perhaps earlier on he got angry himself, because something happened to him this morning – he got fired, lost his job, had a fight with his partner, lost his dog, or maybe someone in his family died recently and he’s feeling terrible. So:

1) There are imagined reasons for his anger which I do not know.

2) He can’t always be like this, no one is. He can’t always be angry with everybody, he must show some affection or tenderness to someone at some point, so he can’t be all bad. He must be loving in some cases, it’s just not this time with me.

3) And looking to myself, I think: And why should I give way to anger just because he has insulted me? Does he really know me? If he doesn’t, then his insult isn’t really directed at “me”. If he does, he may be using insider information to get at me, and why should I let him? Why should a close friend or family member use privileged information to insult me or try to hurt me? What is this “me” anyway? I don’t know all of it, and neither does he, so I can’t permit this Angriness to continue inside me, because it is bad for me, will cause a conflict, turn to guilt, self-condemnation, fester and canker in the mind, etc.

4) In any case, I am more than the “me” receiving the Anger and the “him” trying to pass it on to me. What about my inner worth, my human condition of having a spark of Life, Mind or Soul, my intrinsic value and virtue as a person? I am more than one fleeting emotion. And so is this person."

And so after thinking things through rightly, and realising that “negative” things are only incidental to, and not essential to, the person, I apply the Virtue of Forgiveness and exempt the other person from responsibility by taking the responsibility of Forgiving upon myself. And I continue to concentrate on my breathing and I stay in my Present Moment, not going back to reminisce or speculate on the past, because that is just dirtying the mind again, and I have just successfully cleaned away the dirt in a flash. And my next event is in the Now.

So if you want to practise, take out each negative feeling (produced by thought) that you experience and write out your Positive Thinking or Pratipaksa Bhavana about it. Then Forgive and Live. And listen to Stevie Wonder’s “Positivity” if you need a reminder. 

ü  Anger (wrath)

ü  Impatience (initial non-acceptance, leading to annoyance)

ü  Annoyance (the start of irritation)

ü  Irritation (annoyance getting worse)

ü  Frustration (the result of allowing annoyance and irritation to dwell and produce depression)

ü  Boredom (need to be stimulated)

ü  Anxiety (gnawing worry)

ü  Nervousness (fidgeting and worrying)

ü  Covetousness (grasping and desiring)

ü  Despair (disappointment)

ü  Disgust (rejection)

ü  Guilt (shame)

ü  Hostility (bitterness)

ü  Contempt (hate, violence)

ü  Jealousy (fear of someone taking what you think is yours)

ü  Envy (desire for another’s perceived superiority)

ü  Pride (vanity, overweening importance of self)

ü  Sadness (sorrow, hurt)