Unit 5 - The Subtle Mind

This week, after doing my reading Dacher's book, Integral Health, I realized that there is a logic behind the exercises he prescribes as necessary stages for opening the possibility of our becoming able to move from the inner chatter and images of our mind, to a state where we can experience our mind's being as a quality rather than a barrage of appearingly random thoughts and images. I then resolved to give the Loving Kindness exercise another try, and found its discipline and steps not difficult to follow at all. In order to do this, I had to stop my own inclination to judge (or prejudge) and allow myself to simply experience it as guided through the track for the exercise.



I had read the Subtle Mind exercise in Dacher's book, and then did the exercise with the help of the track for it. I was able to follow it without any difficulty, wanting to move on to experiencing my own mind in its quiet state, but felt that the audio was anchoring me to thinking and my mind's echoing its words. The experience was not positive, nor negative, but it seemed limiting.


I then moved on to doing the exercise without listening to the track and was surprised how my mind, produced images that seemed to stem from a root thought or another, but there was no inner chatter of my own in my mind. During the first part of the exercise, I began to recall the involuntary images and thoughts I have experienced in the past (some during clinical depression, which were painfully intense), and realized how free I am that today. As I led myself to further, I was able to experience my mind in its quiet state, and was surprised to sense how normal the experience appeared; there was no apprehension, but then again, there was no great revelation . . . Just another step in the training of my mind.