The Bliss Of Unknowing | A Method To Stop Overthinking

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00:30

The Bliss Of Unknowing | A Method To Stop Overthinking

by Corin Bryant

Type

talks

Activity

Meditation

Suitable for

Everyone

Plays

2

In this video, I share a method that I have found effective for stopping overthinking and alleviating anxious thoughts. This is a meditative practice in which you simply allow yourself to 'Not know' the answer to all of the problems and troubles that usually run through your mind. To simply say "I don't know" whenever the mind presents a problem to be solved can bring total relaxation to the body and mind that feels overly responsible for micromanaging the entire universe. This is a temporary practice that gives relief from overthinking and is not intended as an overall attitude towards life. This is based on the spiritual principle of 'Bhakti,' which can be translated as acceptance, surrender, or devotion. This technique is inspired by the tradition of Advaita Vedanta, Zen, Secular Mindfulness and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Anxiety & Stress. The primary benefit is relief from overthinking, rumination, and anxious thoughts.

Overthinking Anxiety Acceptance Uncertainty Mental Clarity Stress Surrender Insight Emotional Resilience Zen Mindfulness Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Overthinking Management Anxiety Relief Acceptance Practice Stress Management Surrender Practice

Meet your Teacher

Exmouth, UK

Meet your Teacher

Exmouth, UK

Transcript

Hi team. I want to share a practice that I have found very useful in my recovery from overthinking and anxiety. This is a very powerful practice, A very direct practice. And what it does is it gives us the option to step out of the overthinking loop. In a sense it gives us the option to get off of a train of thought at the next station, At the next stop. If you've suffered from overthinking and rumination and anxious thoughts, You'll know how distressing and demoralizing it can be to feel as though I just can't stop my mind, I just can't stop thinking, It's just endless worry, Endless rumination. Endlessly thinking about all the problems and situations in the mind. Work, Health, Relationships, Finances, All of that sort of stuff. If you've ever suffered from overthinking, Stress, Anxiety, You'll know how. Just how painful, Really, Being caught in that state of mind is. So I wanted to share this practice because I used to really suffer with all those things. And this is just one tool in the toolkit that might help. It's not always. This is quite a complex matter. Every now and then this just saves me. It really does. So it might be of some benefit, It might be of some use, Just try it next time you're overthinking or caught in anxious thoughts. I do need to be very clear. This isn't. . . An overarching attitude that you take towards life. This isn't like a a blanket one-size-fits-all spiritual practice or meditative practice. It's just a method of meditation that you might try and just see if it helps. So in this practice. . . Essentially, You give yourself a period of time, I'd recommend about 20 minutes, Where you sit and simply hold your hands up and say, I don't know. I just don't know. All of those problems in your mind that you're trying to solve. Just for this short amount of time, You just quite simply say, Actually, I don't know. I just don't. I can't figure this out. I don't know what to do. I don't know how to fix this. I don't know how to solve this. I don't know the right answer. And I'd recommend you set a timer for this. So for me it's about 20 minutes. And we can make a concession to the mind. And we can say. . . I'll go back to figuring this out after. So we're not like giving up on life. That's not the purpose of the practice. You're not giving up and it's not a sense of saying I don't care about myself or I don't care about my life. We can go back to trying to improve our life and improve our situation after the meditation. But what we do in the meditation is just give ourselves. A compassionate break from all of this mind activity. All of our worry, All of our attempts to solve often unsolvable problems. Often the problems in our mind, We've thought about them enough. We keep thinking about them, We think about them all the time. 24 hours a day it's on the mind and we're no closer to a solution. Often actually what we need is to give the situation some space. Give it give it a chance to breathe just give it some time and space we might find that it sorts itself out or some elements of it sort itself out but within that 20 minutes or however long it is that you set aside to do this. You're just saying actually I don't know. And that's alright. I don't know. I don't know what to do about work, All those problems, All of the politics at work, All of the colleague relationships, Everything. I don't know. I don't know what to do about my finances. I don't know. I've tried to figure it out. I've been trying, I've been trying my whole life to sort a lot of these problems out and I just never seem to get any closer to an answer, So. . . Just for this short time now. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what to do about the world. About the state of the world. I know it's a mess. You know what? I don't know. It's beyond me. I just don't know. Those health problems that I have that have been going on and I'm worried about. Where this is going to go in future or how long it's going to go on for. I've worried and worried and worried and actually I'm now at a point where I'm just gonna accept and surrender and say I don't know. I don't know why I've developed this problem. I don't know how long it's going to go on for. And I don't know the solution. This can be particularly helpful if you have health anxiety over some chronic conditions. Trying to find a solution, Trying to fix it for so long, This is a powerful bit of relief. We can just allow the body and mind to just relax into this. Every little thing that comes up in the mind. Beat these. These thoughts that feel so urgent So immediate. Your mind just presents you with these problems and says you have to fix this and you have to fix it now. Every single one of those thoughts, Same response, I don't know. I just don't. I really don't. I don't know. I've thought about it enough and I just don't know. And this can, This can be applied to even some of the really high ticket stuff, Some of the really hot button stuff. And remember, We're not saying this as. . . As the solution. To the problem because we can go back. To finding solutions and ways forwards after this. This is a sense of. . . Clearing your mind, Clearing your energy. Clearing your being. So that you can better take care of these things after so you've got a bit more stability. A bit more groundedness, A bit more presence, A bit more consciousness to actually work through these things. But you could have some really like high ticket stuff like a family member who's suffering from addiction. And you've just been thinking about it, Thinking about, Worried about it. What am I going to do? What am I going to do? Or other problems in the family. There could be divorces going on or problems with people's children or your own children and stuff, This really high ticket stuff. Or you're worried about a serious health condition that you have. You're worried, You know you're going to be losing your job. 2-3 months time and you've got no plan, You've got no way forwards. Worried about your finances, You can't make ends meet. Problems with partners. Just for this time you just give yourself just however long that you're comfortable giving 10 20 minutes you know what I don't know. This is out of my hands. It's out of my hands, I just, I just don't know. I don't know, I don't know what to do. And then it also helps us with the more surface level day-to-day stuff as well. That weird thing that somebody said to you at work yesterday. The weird message that came through on your phone. The fact you don't know what to wear to the work party tomorrow. You know, These little things that just sort of, They play on our minds. If we don't have a solution for them, If we don't have a principled approach to them. They can snowball, They can spiral into overthinking and anxiety, But this cuts it off before that snowball begins to pick up momentum. So you're worried about, I don't know what to wear, I don't have any clothes for the party tomorrow. I don't know, Actually. I'm sure the answer will come up, I'm sure I'll think of something, But just for this time. . . Everything. Everything that comes up in your mind, It's I don't know. You'll find wow okay oh i see I don't have to think about these problems every single second of every single day. I can step out. Of these thoughts. And the situation's not going anywhere. You know, These situations are all still there, They all need attention, And you will give them attention at some point. But right now. I dunno. I don't know. As simple as that. You feel the relaxation of that? To light yourself off the hook. Why am I in charge anyway? What have I been tasked with figuring all this out? A lot of this stuff was here before I got here. And a lot of this stuff is actually just the way the world is. It's just the way life is. It's just the way reality is. It's just the way health is. It's the way human relationships are. It's the way humans have organised themselves recently, It's. . . Turbulent, There's chaos, There's turmoil, It's tricky. That's not really got anything to do with you. You didn't invent the system. You didn't come up with all this. You didn't design the human mind. You didn't design the human body. You didn't design the universe. You just got here. So maybe you can actually start to disengage a little and say, Well, There seems to be a rhythm to all of this. There seems to be some kind of harmony. And There's been lots of very difficult situations in the past. That you've been through. That seemed unsolvable at the time that you felt like. You had to fix, You had to get to the bottom of, But you just couldn't figure out a way forwards. There was just no way forwards with it. Well, Where are those problems now? Where's that situation now? There was a period of time you thought, This will never end. There's no answer, There's no solution, I can't get to the other side of this. But right now, You look at that and realise, Oh, I am on the other side of this. It did resolve. It just worked out. Now all of your current struggles. All of the current things on your mind that you feel don't have a solution are no different That will happen in future at some point. This will rectify. Whether you're involved or not. And you notice this is the power of this practice by giving this time each day. You realize the world doesn't fall apart just because you disengaged. Just because you unattached yourself from the world for this period of time. Your body didn't fall apart, Nothing got worse, That's the other really interesting thing, Your health didn't get worse because you stopped worrying about it, It actually got better, It felt better for a while. Your marriage didn't fall apart because you weren't worrying about it for a second. You didn't absolutely have a complete collapse of your work life, All of your professional life. It didn't just completely evaporate and dissolve and just completely break down because you took a few moments to just say, You know what, I'm just going to completely leave it. Actually, I don't know the answer to any of this. It's got nothing to do with me actually. Everything works out okay. Yeah, Okay, Right. Now you'll find, On the other side of this. . . When you come towards the end of the practice, You might feel worried as you come to the end of the practice because you're like, Oh, I really enjoyed that actually. Now I've got to go back to worrying about everything. But you find you're not quite so anxious, You're not quite so worried. And the curious thing that happens is. . . It's like draining the swamp. All of the surface level really quite petty minor stuff that was on your mind has gone. It's just. . . It's, It's no longer there. It's no longer on the workbench of the mind. Because you said I don't know, I don't know what to do about it, And it just actually disappeared, You realised it wasn't a problem in the first place. But what remains are the things that, Yeah, This needs attention. This does need working through. That remains. The family member who's suffering with addiction. Your child's difficulties at school, Your health problems that you need to see the medical professionals about. You're not going to forget all of those things. You won't forget them. You can't forget them. They are the things that, For whatever reason, Have arrived on your desk to work through. And you wouldn't want to neglect those things. So that's what I mean when I say this isn't an overarching philosophy towards life. This isn't a blanket approach you can apply to everything in life because. . . I suspect you're quite a conscientious person if you're watching a video like this on a platform like this. I suspect that you are a very compassionate person. And you do see problems in the world that you feel you can help with, You can help to alleviate. You can alleviate the suffering around it, You might be able to fix it. So, You're already not a neglectful person, So don't worry that by doing this practice 10-20 minutes a day you'll suddenly become, Like, Narcissistically self-obsessed and you just don't care about anyone or the world. That's never gonna happen, Is it? It's never gonna happen, It's not in your nature. It's not how you are. It's not your fundamental being. Your fundamental being is kind. Very compassionate, Very warm, Very caring. That's your fundamental nature. What we have to learn to do, If you're naturally like that, You have to learn, Which is quite tricky, That not everything is your thing to fix. It's not your thing to solve if you take on every single problem that you see. As your thing to fix, You're gonna burn out. You're gonna burn out. And you won't be of any use to anyone if you're completely burnt to a crisp. There's a lot of very empathic, Compassionate people whose nervous systems are just fried. Deep-fried nervous system just absolutely frazzled. Because they're taking on all the problems in the world. Common one, All the problems in the world. How do I fix the global geopolitical stuff? Honestly. You'll make more of a difference in the world actually by starting very small. Very small, The stuff that's on the workbench today. So don't worry about becoming like, Oh, But because you might hear practices like this that I don't know or the unknown, The unknowing. You might worry that, But I don't want to completely check out. I still care about my life. I still want to improve things and move forwards. Absolutely. And that's a good thing. Just giving yourself a break each day to just relax relax and I don't know I don't know I don't know can actually be just massively liberating in itself when you're stuck in overthinking, What am I going to do about it? I don't know actually. I don't know. I don't know. At this time. Now, You also find there's a bit of a fear barrier that can come in. Because what happens is you're faced with the uncertainty thing again. This actually reveals why we get caught in overthinking and anxiety in the first place. Because the mind jumps in. And there's this subconscious belief that as long as I worry about things enough, Then I'm somehow safe from it. Right, Does that sound familiar? Like if I just think about it enough, If I worry about it enough and I kind of keep the uncertainty of life contained, Controlled somehow. If I just worry enough, Then I'm somehow safe from problems. So when we start saying, I'm going to stop worrying. I'm going to allow myself to surrender into the I don't know. We face a lot of fear because we're afraid of uncertainty. And if I don't think about things, Everything's going to be very uncertain. So this actually reveals this very powerful insight for you. You realize, Ah, That's, That's the root. That's actually the seed of my overthinking and anxiety in the first place. I feel like if I think hard enough, I'm mitigating the uncertainty of life. But we've realised now, We've come all this way, We've lived all this time and realised Actually, All of this worrying doesn't help. And no matter how much I worry, How much I think about things. Sadly. Life remains uncertain. I'm laughing because it's incredibly liberating when you get this, When you realise you don't have to be afraid of uncertainty. Actually, The uncertainty and chaos of life is actually very freeing. Once we get on board with it and we go with the flow. We go with the current rather than fight against it. The uncertainty is liberating. You just don't know. You don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. This is part of the I don't know practice. I don't know. You're worried about all the things that could happen tomorrow. An infinite number of things could happen tomorrow. Infinite. And the mind is finite. The mind can only calculate a small number of possibilities. Might seem like a lot, But it's a very small number compared to infinity. So an infinite number of things could happen tomorrow. And the mind is trying to think of every single possibility. It can't be done. It can't be done. It's perfectly useless. Utterly pointless. Like trying to empty the ocean with a teaspoon. You know, If I just do it enough times, Eventually I'll empty it. No, It's not going to happen. So we have to just. If we find a way to become comfortable with uncertainty. Your overthinking will end. Your anxiety will end. By becoming comfortable with the fear of uncertainty. Everything's so uncertain, Yeah it is, And that liberates you. It means you can stop trying to calculate all of the possibilities. What could happen? This could happen. That could happen. This could happen. That could happen. I mean, How many times are you sat there worrying about the next day? That email I've got to send, What if my car breaks down on the way to work, What about that meeting that I've got, What if that difficult co-worker is really difficult tomorrow, What if, What if, What if, What if, What if I get sick, What if I can't, What if this happens, What if that happens, All of the what ifs. Well, There are so many what-ifs. What if, Instead of the what if, You just said I don't know? I'll deal with what comes up. I'll deal with what comes up. Whatever happens, Happens. I'm okay with that. Just knowing, It can just be helpful to know that the fear of uncertainty is actually a root cause of our overthinking and anxiety in the first place. So when we do the I don't know practice, That's what you're going to face. But that's as bad as it gets. It's never, It's not going to get any worse than that. Just fear, Just a bit of fear. Feel it in the body. And you go, Oh, Wow, Okay. And that fear can transmute into excitement. Because you're like wow I'm letting go of so much I'm unclenching my mind I don't need to think about all these things. No, You really don't. You really don't. In fact, It's one of the safest and most productive things you can do is to let go. It frees up energy. And then paradoxically, But don't try to make this happen, Paradoxically, The intuition of how to fix these problems will come through naturally. The insight arises. The epiphany. Oh, That's what I should do. Oh, That's the answer! Oh, That's the solution! You think, Oh, I could apply for that job at that other place. Oh, I could get that qualification I've been meaning to get. Oh, I could have a conversation with my partner or break up with my partner. Oh, I could speak to the school about this problem my child's having. I could speak to that teacher that I get on quite well with. I don't. . . I'm at a sticking point because there's that one teacher I don't get on with and I can't talk to them about anything. Ah, I could go to. . . Their HR department or a different teacher or something. It's just that the intuition comes through. Oh, I see. Or the thing about your health. There's just the sudden Ah, The epiphany! Oh, I could try that! Oh, I could try that new vitamin supplement. Or, Oh yeah, There was that thing. Maybe I'll ask the doctor about that. But those epiphanies and insights are only free to come through when we don't have the endless chatter and noise of the monkey mind, The neocortex, Wittering away, Unhelpful. So it's far deeper wisdom, Viveka Buddhi coming in, Deep wisdom. And this, This I don't know thing, The unknown, The I don't know. People might think oh but that seems a bit like it's a bit new agey or it seems a little bit like that's a too easy that's too much of an easy fix that isn't deep spiritual practice that's just like A new age. Social media fad type thing, Right? It's actually one of the deepest spiritual principles there are. It's something called Bhakti. Which is translated in a few different ways. Sometimes translated as devotion, But just as good a translation is surrender or acceptance. So we have the path of jñāna, Which is the path of knowledge. We also have the path of bhakti, Which is devotion, Surrender or acceptance. And it's this surrender. Surrender. That's the I don't know. I'm gonna leave everything to the universe. The whole lot. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what to do about body, Mind. Even, I don't know. I don't know what meditation is. I don't know what spiritual practice is. I don't know what reality is. I don't know, Actually. I don't know all this about soul and God and consciousness, Everything. I don't know. I don't know what any of that is. What I do know is, I'm not gonna know it on the level of the mind. That's so low down. If I ever figure this stuff out, The knowing will be on a far deeper level. Ever figure out this reality, This universe. It's not going to be something that Monkey Mind figures out. Eh, I don't know. Deeper than that. And you will find it when you let go. But only then. Thank you so much for watching team. Thank you so much for following. I appreciate absolutely every single one of you. I look forward to hearing if you find any of this useful, Or if you try this practice for yourself, Let me know how you get on. Thank you so much for watching team. Take care, Be well. Stay present.