Good plumber, bad plumber, and ...

There are, in all probability, only three kinds of people in the world—the good plumber, the bad plumber, and the one who goes beyond being just a plumber—the kind of person, who cleans up all the muck and redesigns the entire system in a way that the muck never shows up.

I always aspire to be the third kind. However, I’m seeing so much muck lately, that I’m beginning to doubt if I would ever be able to clean it all up. Two of my very close friends—patience and hope—are helping me. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

Taming the monkey mind

The mind has a natural tendency to roam between the sensory inputs. Every sensory input creates a ripple in the mind—a surge of electricity that bind neurons and creates pathways in the brain. Based on the inputs we receive, new pathways are created and old pathways are pruned. Little by little the structure of our brain changes, little by little we change as individuals. I’m not the same person I was yesterday. You are not the same person you were yesterday. Little by little we are transformed completely.

Transformation induced by sensory inputs makes us reactive—the state of the brain where we are no more in control of our actions, but merely responding to external stimuli. At that point, we are caught in a vicious circle—a sensory input creates a ripple in the mind, the ripple causes us to react, the reaction induces other sensory inputs, again causing a ripple and so on. The ripples created in our mind shapes our personality and make us who we are.

Is there a way out of this vicious circle? Is there a way out of this reactive behavior?

Yes, there are several ways. We could start by trying to understand how the mind works. We could use meditation as a tool—a tool that may help us to collect the fragments of our mind—fragmented by our own sense perception.

Withdraw your senses and observe how it changes you. Focus between your eyebrows and forget everything else.