CHANGING YOUR CONDITONING:

[Pravin Kumar]

Changing Your Conditioning:

The only way to change the Conditioned Mind is to have something in place that will allow it to be changed. This is where quietness comes in because without it, there won't be awareness something needs changing.

Watching television is not my favorite way to past time, but the other night I caught the last hour of a ballgame. When the game was over I began looking for something else to watch. Twenty seconds on one channel, ten seconds on another, five on another, than another and another, you get the picture. It’s amazing how we stay fixated on something, in this case the TV, when it comes to the mind. We're so reluctant to change the conditioning even though we’re going round and round in circles. Actually what's on the TV (the fixation) is mostly reruns, yet we'll watch the same channel (thought) over an over. Even though there are many channels (thoughts) we get stuck on the TV and don't know how to go to change this.

Think of something you get fixated on and see how hard it is to change your mind when it gets you in its grip. Unless there's total awareness of this, changing your conditioning will be just about impossible. The only way to change the Conditioned Mind is to have something in place that will allow it to be changed. This is where quietness comes in because without it there won't be awareness something needs changing. It may be a repeated thought disguised with many different labels, but it's still an old thought. Watch the subtleness of this and in time you’ll see the mind for what it is and how it likes to default to what’s familiar. The issue is you can get so comfortable with this that it's not realized the conditioning needs to be changed; this realization will only occur if you have something in place that's worth changing to.

MICHAEL CUPO