Mind — The Trojan Horse Exercise
Most of you must know the story of the Trojan Horse; here is a summary for those who don’t. “The Trojan Horse is a story from Greek mythology. It was a strategic trick used by the Greeks to enter the Trojans’ city of Troy and end the Trojan War. It was a giant hollow wooden horse built by Greeks and hid soldiers inside. The Greeks pretended to abandon the war and sailed to a nearby island, leaving the horse behind as a gift for the Trojans as an offering to the goddess Athena. Sinon stayed and convinced the Trojans that the horse was a parting gift. The Trojans took the horse inside their city walls, as they did not notice it was full of brave Greek soldiers. At dark, the soldiers emerged from the horse and unlocked the gates for the rest of the Greek army, who sacked Troy.”
“Trojan Horse” — In our case, this is an analogy for how thoughts sneak into our minds without us realizing it. Just like the Trojans deceived by the Greeks, we can be fooled by our minds. The sneaky thoughts can influence our behavior and decisions without our awareness. The Trojan Horse metaphor is used for ideas and to open the gates of the mind to become aware of consciousness. For you, thinking is the beginning and end of suffering, joy, and imagination.
Mind brought us into enslavement, with its learnings, from the external world — molded with thoughts, of others and its own, from memories, drawn into the bondage of the social order, losing individual freedom. In life, acting upon one’s thoughts or otherwise will have consequences. We are not currently going into that aspect of our daily life for the exercise you will take up now.
Mind is the tool that needs to be used diligently. Here we will use it as a trojan horse of thoughts directed toward the truth of one’s reality. As you are aware, we cannot stop thoughts. But that can be achieved to an extent by looking within, by being a spectator instead of a participant in the ebb and flow of thoughts.
Remember, the mind is unreliable at the end of the day. It returns to its earlier ways, constantly chattering, jumping from one thought to another. The exercise we are taking up has to be a mindful practice to be aware of bringing the mind into reality and seeing the truth of the present.
The Experiment
When you have free time, do this experiment by sitting in a peaceful location by closing your eyes. You will not use your intellect in this experiment to give direction to your thoughts.
When you sit for this exercise what, ever comes to your mind, don’t think if it is right or wrong, good or evil, natural or unnatural, or even human or inhuman. Do not judge any thought that arises in your mind. Now, you have granted it the complete freedom to bring up whatever it wants to display without barriers. Let it bring it on. Remember, you are only an observer, not involved in the unfolding drama.
Let us start the exercise. Don’t identify yourself with the thoughts that may arise. You be the witness. You are not the thoughts; you are the consciousness; you are the witness of whatever appears in your mind. When your mind drifts, become aware and tell yourself, “I’m the witness.” Understand that instruction is a thought too. Hold on to it. It is your Trojan horse.
Allow your mind to freely bring forth the thoughts that arise in all their splendor or darkness. You sit and watch as if witnessing the drama from the glass window. Your awareness must be of “I’m the witness” and nothing else, and be ready to watch the clouds of fluffy thoughts as they arise, one after the other, pass, change, merge with the other, or disappear altogether in the sky of the mind. But you be only the witness. Let the dark clouds cover the sun; if it rains, a deluge of thoughts, let it flow and flood naturally. If it is a show of thunder, lightning, and rainbows, of thoughts, let them be. Remember, you are only witnessing and not a participator. Don’t let the thoughts stagnate, be open to the thoughts when they unfold by themselves, with drama and emotions, or turn from the silliest to the most complex, going into multiple directions and possibilities. Remember, in all this drama, “you are a spectator” uninterested in engaging in them.
Say to your mind, let whatever thought it wants to throw at the screen of your awareness it is welcome. Let thoughts arise surely with ease, without hesitation, for “you are a willing witness.” Even otherwise, it is the characteristic trait of the mind to let in the thoughts stealthily to take you over. If it happens, just calm down. Go back to being the witness.
In the whole act of this exercise, you are open and let the thoughts flow without hindrance. Let them come and go. You are not participating. You are only a spectator. Notwithstanding thoughts, you remain unchanged. At that moment, you become utterly conscious of your consciousness, the untouched, the steady one, the absolute unity within. You realize it is not affected by everything happening in your surroundings, with your body, emotions, or mind.
Be ready for the magical play of thoughts to display their splendor in all their glory or with gory detail, heightening the perceptions of the senses and feelings. Let the thoughts dance and weave their web of tales ever imagined from the plain boring to the exquisite, obscene to wholesome, indeed from the past or imagination. Welcome your mind to show the beautiful and the harsh. You behold, indifferently all through. Then they remain as just thoughts, for you are not participating in stirring up or tasting from the cauldron of soup of emotions and feelings that arise from it. By not participating, you don’t get attached to the thoughts and become that otherwise thinker, and thought becomes one.
The Result:
Here is the absolute truth of what will happen when you sit with such open intention and full awareness “as a witness.” With the complete understanding of the thought of being a witness, the thinker, the intellect is no longer the thought. Then thoughts lose meaning and relevance in the moment as they are not accepted, so the mind freezes when unaware. The thoughts that always obscured your thinking consistently seeping through the trojan horse of the mind suddenly get exposed as you mark it in its own game, and the mind stops in its tracks. It is a moment of reckoning. All the knowledge you have acquired is of no use in this instant. You go beyond knowledge. Thoughts stop because you are sitting as a witness, ultimately, in pure conscious awareness — the absolute. You are not controlled by the thoughts of your mind, even if it is a pause between two thoughts for a few moments.
Now this is important to understand, the thinker is the thoughts that carry on the thinking from one to another, weighing choices between them, and that is intellect. All of these functions are part of the mind. That pause is when you become aware of your consciousness, looking through and witnessing without being colored by your thoughts as the mind stops in its tracks in a flash. The flow state of existence continues as you notice the stillness of space within when no thoughts arise. You are indeed in the moment. This is because thoughts are not necessary in the present from moment to moment in this exercise.
When the mind is silent as thoughts subside, pure conscious awareness of completeness remains. It is as if absolute existence is witnessing itself and its creation from your point of view.
You realize “I am,” “me,” that you define yourself as for society is only a figment of thought, a memory, or aspirational thought for the future that arises in the mind. The “I” before “I am” is the thinker of your presence when coupled with the “am,” is colored by the thought or becomes that. For example, when I look back on this article so far, I can classify myself as:
I — am a writer.
I — am a thinker.
I — am a philosopher.
I — am a scientist.
I — am a psychologist.
I — am male.
I — am a human being.
As in the above examples, the ‘I am’ both the thinker and the thought are born out of thought. The ‘I’ before the thought is the ‘Self,’ the ‘Ego.’ It is your projection in your mind arising out of the experiences. Notice how the Self reacts to the world; you will realize it is your fondness for your thoughts and not the thoughts themselves. This fondness creates the Self-image, an identification in your mind. It leads to your suffering and small joys of the world with personal association with the voice in your head. But in all this endless mind chatter and bodily activity, behind all that is in your life, the reality that remains the constant witness is your consciousness. Realize that you are consciousness, not one who is conscious — the mind makes you into a separate self with all your projections of yourself in society.
But the actual ‘self,’ the consciousness remains tranquil. At the moment when the mind is silenced, the duality of the mind is transcended into the realization that these thoughts and memories are merely experiences in the wholesome comprehension of human life, which don’t last beyond death. But the intelligent systems of immeasurable existence continue to renew themselves after us, into newer sequences, for creation is the creator. And consciousness is the life energy of the creation. It is the absolute one, looking through a small aperture called you as you think over, create, destroy, and live with the world lost in the play of the mind before you die.
The Benefit of this Exercise
In a world with humankind that is gradually more disconnected from reality, it is essential to spend some time not thinking. And so, meditate. It leads to a glorious moment of reckoning for you to pause, look within, and understand yourself.
Thinking is not a distraction. If you want to do something, see things clearly before acting upon those thoughts. If you are upset and disturbed, you won’t see clearly. Any strong emotion you carry will come in the way of seeing things clearly. You can be much more effective when you are not disturbed. And so, pausing, not thinking, is required to clear your mind and think calmly. Your mind will be much more discerning and decisive when connected with reality from within, distanced from the world of abstractions. Thought has value and consequences. The thoughts and actions of Oppenheimer created the atomic bomb. I believe such things are not supposed to be acted upon, and now the world will never be the same again. But you always have a choice. You can make your thoughts more valuable when you work towards creating a better world for yourself and others.
Is this meditation? No. It is an exercise, a process, a learning that points towards the path. Once you understand the concept, you discard everything to explore the way toward the truth within. And that silence would be true meditation.
Try the exercise and share your experience and thoughts in the comments section. I am looking forward to discussing and learning along the way.