The Mighty Trickster

Our Mind

Our mind is the biggest trickster and most difficult to control. Mahatmas (great realized souls) compare it to a mad drunken monkey that is bitten by a scorpion. Imagining a mad monkey is difficult, now one that is mad, drunk and in excruciating pain, can we even imagine one such? That is how crazy our mind is... Now that kind of a mind has some powers too: the veiling power and the power of projection. First, the mind veils the true nature of a phenomenon, and then it misinterprets it. It covers the truth and makes us mistake the truth for something else. 

A man was walking alone along a village path. It was getting dark, and he was struggling to find his way in the dim light. Suddenly, something bit him in the foot. He felt the area with his hand and discovered a small wound. He could also feel that it was bleeding. He suddenly froze when he saw a snake lying coiled in a bush next to him. He must have been bitten by the snake. The panic stricken man screamed at the top of his lungs, ‘Help! I have been bitten by a poisonous snake! I’m going to die! Please, someone come and take me to a doctor!’ The man was hysterical. He called and he called. He was now beginning to feel terribly tired and his head was spinning as if he were about to faint. He sat on the ground and continued to call for help. Within a few minutes, a man appeared out of the dark. He was carrying a torch. ‘What is the matter? What happened?’ he asked. ‘I was bitten by a poisonous snake. I am dying. Can you take me to a doctor?’ ‘Don’t worry. Of course I will help you. But where exactly did it happen?’ asked the stranger. ‘Right here, on this very spot,’ replied the man. ‘Look at that bush. There’s a snake there!’ The stranger turned his torch towards the bush, and what did he see? A thorn bush with a piece of rope entangled in it. The stranger said, ‘Take a good look! It’s a thorn bush. A thorn must have pricked your foot. The unfortunate thing was that you simultaneously saw the rope in the dim light and mistook it for a snake. Thus you were convinced that you had been bitten by a snake. But now that you know the truth, you can calm down.’ Once the man realized the truth, all symptoms of tiredness and dizziness disappeared, and he began to relax."

This is how the mind plays its tricks on us. Thats precisely why, we need to be calm in times of distress . We need our mind to be our friend to help us make sense of a situation. But well... As Lord Krishna says in the Bhagavatham Gita, the mind is our best friend if it is in our control and our worst enemy if we are in its control. And most of us are... Slaves to our own mind... Jumping to its every like! We are all well experienced in the 'slave to our mind' scenario! No proof needed! And yes... I know the feeling! So how then can we make our mind to guide us rather than misguide us when necessity arises? I think it's  possible only through constant perseverance and loads of positivity. 

The mind is like a big bucket of salt water. Every positive thing we read, hear, speak, share... all helps. They r all like the small drops of fresh water we continuously add into our bucket of salt water, which is currently our mind. The more fresh water we add, the less and less the salty taste. The more often we add, the faster we clean the saltiness. As we continuously do it, we bring down the saltiness of our bucket and eventually there will be nothing salty but fresh water in the bucket of our mind. And that is when, we can make our mind our friend! But beware, not to add more salt back in for every few drops of fresh water!!! Well, if we begin today, probably we can accomplish the magic of getting our own mind to be our own dearest friend before we bid goodbye to this place and this existence. It's a treasure worthy the try.