We live enclosed in our own minds, and we carry that enclosure with us everywhere. So whatsoever we see, whatsoever we hear, whatsoever happens around us, it is never transmitted to the inner consciousness directly. The mind remains in between, always playing tricks.
One must be aware that this is happening […] – to be aware of what your mind is doing to you. It is coming in between. Wherever you move, it moves before you. It is not like a shadow which follows. you have become a shadow to it. It goes, and you have to move. It moves before you and colors everything.
So you are never in contact with the “facticity” of anything. The mind creates a fiction. You must be aware of this phenomenon of what the mind is doing. But you are not – because we are identified with the mind, we never think that the mind is doing something. When I say something and it does not tally with your thought, it is not that you will think that your mind is not tallying with the thought. You will think, “No, I am not convinced.” You do not have a gap between you and your mind. You are identified – and that is really the problem. […]
You are identified with a thought or with a thought process. And this is strange, because only two days before this the thought was not yours. You heard it somewhere; now you have absorbed it and it has become your own. And now this thought will say, “No – this is not right because this is not according to me.” You will not feel the difference that this is mind speaking, memory speaking, the mechanism speaking. You will not feel that “I must remain aloof.” […]
The mind can be changed, and you must remain capable of changing it. If you become identified with it, then you lose your freedom. The greatest freedom is to be free of one’s own mind. The greatest I say – to be free from one’s own mind – because it is a subtle bondage, so deep that you never feel it as a bondage. The very prison becomes your home.
Be constantly aware that your mind is not your consciousness. And the more you are aware, the more you will feel that consciousness is something totally different. Consciousness is the energy; mind is just the thought content. Be the master of it! Don’t allow it to be the master; don’t allow it to just go ahead of you everywhere. Let it follow you, use it, but don’t be used by it. It is an instrument, but we are identified with this instrument. Mm? So break the identification. Remember that you are not the mind.
-Osho
From The Ultimate Alchemy, V.1 #2, Q3
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I heard that one time “the mind” decided to take a vacation, but as it realized it was everywhere, all it had to do was stay home.
The point is that these things are tricky. Never be against your own self.
Nothing wrong with being clever with words as long as one is also capable of being the one who sees the words.