“Unboxing the Mind” with Benjamin this Sunday at Minneapolis Insight

Dear Community,

Sunday 10am Community Practice & Discussion

This Sunday Benjamin will lead a practice and exploration of “Unboxing the Mind,” based on  Ajahn Sundara’s writing in her book Walking the World (freely available here). Below is an excerpt from the book’s first reflection titled “Another Dimension” (pp. 9-11):

As we are sitting, we recognize when we are going to war with ourselves, or trying to control our thoughts and perceptions so that they constantly fit into the perfect world we want. We start to realize how our mind tries to fit our consciousness into a little box. We have this tendency to want to control because we remember something that was pleasant, something that worked for us in the past or works for us even now, and we have the idea that if we do things the same way we did them in the past we will be okay. So we look through the microscope of our mind and notice the pressure to keep going back to what we know, to keep fitting our world into the box of the comfortable and the known – the well-trodden path that our mind has already walked. But in the process of going back to the past we are pressurising our minds. We are not open and relaxed in the present moment…

Life is always open and the mind too is always open, but we have created so many little boxes and little worlds. These boxes are all created through memories – perceptual memories, feeling memories, thought memories, stories and even sensory memories; a certain sound we like, a certain taste. Our world is very much boxed up into this memory cage. So the mind is good at creating pressure and stress, and holding on to a whole world of memories. But if we just go back to the simple act of practising metta, then when we start to face the present moment, we begin to turn our back on the past and learn the practice of ‘letting go’. We learn to let go of the world of memories – letting go of those boxes, drawers and cupboards where we have neatly packed our consciousness.

When we practise mindfulness, we are aware of a mind that is not caught in memory. We can relate to consciousness without the baggage of our box of memories, and then we can see the memories clearly as they are. We still see the past, but we see everything from a fresh perspective… Once we begin to let go of this habit and open up to the world, the result is quite magical. The world is a magical place when we stop creating it from memory.

All are welcome to join this exploration on Sunday! Registration and Zoom information available here.

With mettā,
Minneapolis Insight