Changing the Channel of Your Mind

Local awareness is like a radio tuner or TV remote that can intentionally shift us to different bandwidths of consciousness. Local awareness can tune away from the narrow, mental, ego-identified station that is the everyday mind and tune in to the station of the body’s senses. Local awareness can also tune in to spacious awareness, the expression of awake awareness that is unconditioned, boundless, pure awareness.

Your mind is like a TV or radio with lots of stations playing all at once. Many of us are tuned in to the Thinking Channel all day long, and most of these programs are talk shows. We don’t realize that there is a tuner that will allow us to change the channel. However, when we learn to use local awareness, then talk shows on the Thinking Channel no longer need to be our regularly scheduled programs. There are other dimensions of mind and identity that are always available and can be accessed with local awareness.

There’s initial relief when we’re able to tune away from the Thinking Channel, but if we don’t know what to tune in to next, we may land on Negative-Mood Music Channel or the Unconscious Nightmare Station. Some people might subscribe to the Too-Serious Satellite Channel or You’re No Good FM or the Fear-and-Worry News Network. In fact, we might become identified with one voice in our heads and believe this single, small bandwidth is who we are. This loud I-AM radio station is preset to override the other bandwidths of our lives.

You might be seeing old episodes from your early life playing in your mind’s eye. Whether these are soap operas or horror shows, you’re likely seeing them from the point of view of a character inside the story rather than that of an outside viewer. It’s easy to get involved with chase scenes, revenge plot-lines, or romantic tragedies if you don’t know that they’re only recordings being played over and over again. We think these regularly scheduled programs are the place to look for solutions to our dissatisfaction with our lives, so we channel-surf through them constantly. But reruns, reality shows, or game shows that offer cash and prizes are the wrong place to find satisfaction.

We can shift out of being located in ego-identification, which is looking through our eyes as if the world is virtual reality or reality TV. Fortunately, with local awareness, we can learn to intentionally tune away from chattering bandwidths and tune in to the silent music of the awake awareness that is always in the background. When we shift into awake awareness and awake awareness is embodied, we are in real contact with the world and ourselves.

For more information, see Loch’s book and audio of meditations, Shift Into Freedom