Mind as a Mansion Controlling Awareness
You are not the mind, you are awareness moving through it, so instead of saying I am angry you can say I am in a place in the mind called anger and choose to walk into another room.
Dandapani explains the analogy he calls the most profound thing he learned from his guru: the mind as a vast space or a mansion of a hundred rooms, with awareness as a glowing ball of light that lights up whichever room it enters. He then describes using his whole day as a mental gym to practise moving that ball of light back where he wants it.
What this talk covers
- His guru described the mind as a vast space with many different areas, one for happiness, one for anger, one for jealousy, one for money, and you are pure awareness, a glowing ball of light that lights up whichever area it travels to.
- Rather than saying I am angry, the accurate statement is that you are in a place in the mind called anger, and you can leave it as easily as you entered.
- In the mansion analogy, awareness walks the hallway, opens a door, enters a room and closes it behind you, and that room is the state you are in.
- Once you know you are awareness moving in the mind, each day you either choose where it goes or let the people and things around you dictate it.
- He treats his whole day as a mental gym, so when a delayed flight sat on the tarmac for an hour and he saw his ball of light heading for the frustrated area of the mind, he grabbed it with willpower and brought it back.
But what you should be saying is, I'm in a place in the mind called anger.Dandapani
Questions
-
Picture a mansion of a hundred rooms where each room is a different state of mind. You are awareness walking the hallways, and whichever room you enter is what you experience.
-
Recognise that anger is an area of the mind your awareness has moved to, not who you are. With enough control over awareness you can pull it back with willpower and choose a different area.
-
Dandapani uses the entire day as a mental gym. In every interaction, at work or at home or on a delayed flight, he notices where his ball of light is going and brings it back to where he wants it.
Transcript
677 words · 3:11
You have an incredible analogy about awareness in the mind, where awareness is a glowing orb in the mind as vast as space. Can you explain that analogy a bit? I would say all the things I learned from my guru,
that was the most profound thing about the mind. He looked at the mind as a vast space with many different areas. So if you think one area of the mind is happy, joy, sad, food, sex, photography, money, you know, different areas of the mind.
and awareness as a glowing ball of light and all, and you are pure awareness. You're traveling to different areas of the mind, and wherever awareness goes in the mind,
it lights up that area and you become conscious of it. So if awareness goes to the anger area of the mind, it lights up that area, and you all of a sudden go, oh, I'm angry.
But what you should be saying is, I'm in a place in the mind called anger. I chose to be here as easily I can remove myself from here and move to another area of the mind.
And I get the analogy of a mansion. So imagine a mansion with a hundred rooms, and every room is a different state of mind or area of the mind.
So one room is anger, one room is happiness, one room is jealousy. I walk in the mansion, I'm pure awareness. I climb up the stairs, walk down the hallway.
I open the door, I go into the angry room, and I close the door behind me, and I am in rage. I come out of the room, I walk down the hallway, I open another room, I enter that room,
I'm in the room of happiness. Once you realize that you're not the mind, rather you're awareness moving within the mind, Now you have a choice every day to either choose where you want to go or allow your environment,
the people on things around you, to dictate where you want to go. So if you said to me, my shawl was ugly, I could let you take my ball of light to an angry area of the mine and I go like, Cody, how could you say that to me? Or I could go like, I should go shopping, you know?
MonkShawls.com. I think your shawl's lovely for the record. Thank you. We're actually going to match it.
Maybe I do that subconsciously. I like it. So that's the key, right? The key is to control awareness.
And every time throughout the whole day, regardless of what's going on in your family, your business, your awareness is perpetually moving in your mind. And if you can control where it goes,
you can control how you react and respond to a situation. For me, the way I practice is I look at my whole day as my gym, my mental gym. When I'm talking to an employee
who's not doing something I told them to do or something's going on with the business, whatever it is, every moment I have the choice choose where my awareness goes. And if someone does something to take my awareness to a different
area of the mind, then I go, okay, my ball of light's going to an area of the mind. I don't want it to go. I'm going to grab it with my willpower and bring it back here. And I'm going to stay here and choose not to go there. You know, I flew here yesterday and it's a classic example. My flight got delayed and everyone's in the plane was sitting for an hour and you could see people's awareness going
to the frustrated area of the mind. You know, like, what's going on? Why are we still sitting here and I saw my ball of light wanting to go there and I had to just bring it back and go like I don't need to go there. I can choose to be somewhere else.