The friendly mind is a neutral inner voice that guides you during emotional distress, asking questions and occasionally joking rather than forcing positivity. Accessing this voice when you feel terrible is itself a major win, even if your feelings haven't caught up yet.
I'm imagining some people actually arguing with themselves, arguing with their friendliest mind. And so could you just offer some, some, some ways in which that voice might come out? Friendly mind voice.
Right. So it's very subtle because we can think we're in friendly mind and not realize that what it sounds like often is very neutral, positive thoughts. And we will get confused thinking that it should be also positive feelings. Now sometimes what it sounds like is positive questions with again an even affect. Now occasionally, when we really see how absurd it is that we're trying to do something that's completely impossible, friendly mind sounds like jokester. It may sound like it gets the absurd. It may occasionally be a little bit playful. Oh, so you want to feel good while you're feeling lousy. Oh, I see. So you think that you can be younger. So you think you can just snap your fingers and get out of this anxiety. So friendly mind has a quality of neutrality. It has a quality of seeing absurdity. Occasionally there can be a low level of playfulness. And I say low level because if it was a high level of playfulness, that means you're feeling better, but it's always, always going to be steering you for what are the thoughts that are most helpful to you. And while it's saying that to you, it's going to be even keeled. So instead of our goal being to feel better, friendly mind itself in the feel of it, one of neutrality with a really good focus, and we're saying to ourselves, I'm no longer at this moment trying to feel better. I'm just trying to be neutral in guiding myself. And oftentimes what friendly mind will do is it will say to us, this is the hardest time in life while you're really feeling lousy and the lousiest. So for you to be neutral is the hardest work you'll ever do in your life. When I have felt the worst in my life, which I've felt plenty of, many, many times, and I find my friendly mind, my friendly mind almost invariably will say to me, you know, you're working harder now than you ever did when you're only feeling a little bit bad or you're feeling good, this is the time you deserve the most credit. Even though you can't feel it now, the way that's delivered is hopefully with as much of a equanimity or evenness as possible. And it's even okay if it's slightly down or slightly anxious or slightly corrupted or co opted by the feeling. The key is the thought is guiding you in the direction that you need to go. I'm hoping that you, like I have myself felt that you've earned your stripes the most when you're feeling the worst. And you can access friendly mind in its neutrality and be at least intellectually appreciative. Because again, you can't be emotionally appreciative necessarily. But intuitively, some quiet place inside you knows that the biggest victory is when you can be neutral and positively focused in thought when you feel the worst.
That's beautiful. It just makes me feel like I want to be more gentle just thinking about it.
Exactly. And it takes the pressure off having to feel anything. It's like I want to meet me where I am forever in as neutral a place as I possibly can be. And the worse I feel, the bigger the potential victory in being able to be a neutral, friendly mind.
