How can we constantly remember that we are different from our mind?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So how do we learn to understand that our mind is different from us? It is not that we have to constantly be worried.
For example, when you ask the question, is it your mind that asks the question or you ask the question? When I am giving the answer, is my mind speaking or am I speaking? We have to function. And we cannot be so caught in analysis that it leads to paralysis. So we have to function.
But especially when we observe that we do things which we did not intend to do. I planned to do this, but I ended up doing that. See the mind tends to do what we don’t intend to do.
That is the nature of the mind. So especially when we decide to do something and then we are taken off track. Then that is the time when we understand the mind is distracting us.
So if we look back at our life and find out, okay, I had planned to do this, but then I ended up doing this. So what exactly happened at that time? Then we may decide, okay, I want to wake up early in the morning so that I can get a head start to my day. I can do my spiritual life in the morning, I sleep.
But then we wake up, we hear the alarm, put off the alarm and go to sleep. And then afterwards we beat ourselves up. Why did I not wake up? Why am I so lazy? But then if you think about it at that time, when we woke up, we heard the alarm, the mind speaks something.
So if we just beat ourselves up, you know, I have poor willpower, I have no willpower, I am so fallen. That is not going to be so helpful. We analyze.
Then we can catch, oh, and that’s how I got distracted. That’s how I didn’t do it. So then we will have to prepare our reasons for countering the mind’s lies.
The mind’s lies by which it distracts us from our intentions. So we, when we are distracted like this, we understand this was the time where the mind acted. And then next time, again the mind is going to act.
Tomorrow when I am going to wake up, again the mind is going to say go to sleep. So, okay, what do I do at that time? At one level, of course, our body needs enough rest and we have to give that rest. But sometimes the mind makes us sleep more than what is necessary even for the body.
So then what do we do? Okay, this is the way the mind is misleading you. Then once we become alert to it, okay, this is the situation, say when I have to sleep or when I have to eat or when I have to watch, when I get into watching TV or when I get into gossiping with friends, these are the times when I end up doing that which I didn’t intend to do. So that is the time when the mind is acting on us.
And then we can plan using our intelligence how to counter the mind’s lies. That means when, from my last experience, I know that this much time, so maybe we can write it down and keep it in the diary next to us, keep it in the phone next to us or even make our reasons for waking up like, like the, nowadays we can customize many tunes. So if we have heard some class of a senior devotee of a spiritual master about the importance of waking up, then we can make that as the alarm tune.
And then we get not just the alarm sound, but we get some food for the intelligence. And basically when the mind misleads us, then the intelligence has to counter the mind’s lies. So it is difficult to observe the mind misleading us when we are being misled.
But afterward, when we look back, then we can see, okay, this is the situation when it happens. And then when we are prepared, the next time when it happens, we will be able to note it, this is happening. And then we will be able to deal with it better.
And if we can nourish our intelligence, then it becomes even stronger. We can not only identify the mind, but we can then reject the mind also. And as we become more and more purified by the practice of bhakti, the mind’s voice will become weaker and Krishna’s voice will be heard more by us.
And then the distancing from the mind will become much easier.