Better than any soap opera, this. The drama is off the charts. I can't keep from viewing! Every update rushes its way to my devices for me to peruse and anguish over, if that's my wont, which it isn't.
Though my life resembles a constant meditation anyway, this global event has been unescapable. You know, look at a web page and it shows up in your sidebar forever kind of thing.
That being said, I had to retrieve an old, familiar tool out of the arsenal to combat the disquiet all the coverage was bringing to my normally placid mind. Yes, it was time to go full advaita again.
Maybe it was all the talk about death that was bringing me to the threshold of a state of mind that I hadn't been in for a long, long time, a state of mind I knew like the back of my hand, one that was quite familiar but not on my A list. I remembered it to be anxiety, for which advaita is always the cure. Ready to apply the cure with me? C'mon, let's go there. It only takes a few minutes to calm the mind.
‘Me’
Ben Sweet- Unsplash.com
Sit on your sofa and prepare lots of space around you in case you are a fidgeter. Now, rise and go about turning off every device that might disrupt you. Cell phone- off! TV- off! Radio, stereo, whatever makes noise turn it off. Close the windows if your neighbor is making noise. It is not necessary to put on meditative music but if you can't drown out exterior (or interior) sounds, employ music as close to 'white noise' as possible. The goal is to quiet the mind, not be entertained.
Now that the stage is set, take up a comfortable postition on the sofa and try to sit up straight. It helps you to focus that way. Take a couple of deep breaths. You can close your eyes or keep them open. I like it better when my eyes are closed.
The first thing you're going to notice is that the mind doesn't want to stop. It's used to running like a puppy, checking out this and that, so rather than try and stop the mind, just observe what it's doing. What thoughts are arising? Probably a lot! Too many to keep track of. Watch and observe.
You'll notice after just a short while that you can't hold onto any thought for too long. New thoughts show up and kind of push the old ones aside. Watch your thoughts arise and disappear. Don't value any of your thoughts more than others, just watch and observe. Pretty soon you might have the thought that you are watching a movie but not directing the movie. Thoughts are just arising, disipating, then arising again, with absolutely no effort on your part.
The thought then comes that you can't be thinking these thoughts. After all, you are exerting zero effort, just observing. It then occurs to you that if you are not thinking these thoughts, there must at least be somebody, some ‘you’, that is observing them. Who is that? Who is this ‘you’ that can disinterestedly watch these thoughts arise? Where is this you? Search for this you. Is he/she/it standing inside your head, perhaps behind your mind?
You might at this point try to catch this you (let's give it a name- 'the observer') but every time you do, you can't locate it. "But-" you protest, "there has to be one!”. So you try and try. Nothing.
Congratulations. You have just found the non-self, and all along you thought you were somebody. Now the news isn't so frightful, is it? Who, exactly, are they talking to? Can't be 'you'. All that worry you had was happening to somebody else, an invention of your mind. You were only conditioned to believe that 'you' existed. You assumed that since everybody else thought they were a somebody you must be too.
Go ahead and watch the news with this new understanding. See the newscasters talk about all these nonexistent individuals. Where are they? Inhabiting bodies? If you can't find 'you' could it be that they couldn't find their idea of 'you' either, if they tried?
If you don't understand this, there are plenty of books about advaita to clue you in. It all sounds so very difficult when you're starting out but after a while you'll stop questioning what's obvious, your mind will give up looking, and space will be created where once there was nothing but busyness.