Mind Is The Enemy - Part 1: A Bug In The Deployed Code

Sharing my 'awakening' journey and transition from a hyper-stimulated reality filled with obsession, rigidity and external achievement into one of more peace, stillness and being.

"The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately, it is not so much that you use your mind wrongly—you usually don't use it at all. It uses you." - Eckhart Tolle

My entire life has always been ruled and controlled by my mind.

For 30 years, I’ve been entangled and trapped in its firm grip, but I had no awareness of what was beyond the rigidity.

I would hear people talk about concepts like ‘being’, ‘meditation’, ‘letting go’ and ‘stillness’, and my eyes would gloss over as my mind bolted toward thinking of something more tangible and productive.

I was perfectly fine moving through an existence where I could control everything... or so I thought.

Over the past couple of months, this clusterf**k of unconscious pre-programming dismantled as my belief and reality system was completely crushed and exposed for what it truly was.

I have gone from always needing to control and always needing to know to experiencing long-lasting moments of peace, bliss and stillness - and I didn’t try to do any of it.

Of course there were things I did, but there were no methods, tactics, strategies, processes or even intent.

Everything kinda just happened.

The whole idea of who I was, what I was, and why I’m here has now been obliterated, and it feels like I’ve been granted a second life.

This will be a multi-part series where I'll deconstruct these events in attempt to work out what might have happened.

This is a story of wonder, truth, love, self-inquiry and self-realisation.

I’m not an expert, I’m just a guy that’s being called to explore.

Lost

When I was a kid, it wasn’t my natural predisposition to be good at hands on type stuff.

Yep, that’s me! I often wish I could go back and experience my childhood again.

My parents knew this, and it was strange to them as migrants into Australia who only knew of hard and honest work with their own two hands... especially if they wanted to put food on the table.

The way my mind constantly latched onto curiosity in favour of pretty much anything felt intoxicating, and it was foreign to my siblings too which just left this awkward gap between us all.

I felt like an alien who didn't belong on this planet and I felt discouraged for being different.

So I'd shy away from any hands on work in favour of locking myself up in my room to get on the internet and figure out how both myself and the world around me worked.

It’s funny because back then it truly did feel like the most important mission in the world to me, even if it was unusual to everyone else.

This space was where I prided myself. That’s where I could be different, and that’s where I could be me - conceptualising, exploring and tracing until I couldn't keep my eyes open anymore.

Everything seemed great up until the point I graduated University and stepped into my career.

I went into Tech and became a Business Analyst/Solution Designer, and when I got there I just remember thinking that this whole world was insane.

Process flows, diagrams, logical pseudo-code, thinking like a system. Everything was so conceptual and it felt like my mind had just won the neurotransmitter lottery.

That's also when things started to go wrong. I began to notice my mind wasn't working as well as it once did.

I was hit with what felt like a total K.O avalanche of mind symptoms. Lack of clarity, brain fog, obsessive thought loops, anxiety and stress.

Then the body symptoms came shortly after. I didn’t have the energy to see my friends, work out or do anything anymore.

I’d crash on the couch after work every single day and wake up hours later totally disoriented.

My gut started to play up, and I had to stop eating the same foods I was completely fine eating only a couple months ago.

Then if that wasn't enough, my sex drive completely vanished, which completely broke my psyche as a 22 year old male.

All of this happened like it was a snap of the fingers or a flick of a light switch.

That’s when I got on a dead-set solve or die mission to ‘fix’ everything that was broken in me.

Every spare waking moment I had was spent at my computer searching, ruminating and obsessing over the answers.

I steamrolled my way through 20 plus doctors and natural therapists each with varying levels of experience, specialisations and interests, but no one could find anything ‘wrong’ with me.

How could I be normal one day, and then anxious, sick and broken the next?

It didn't make logical sense. This along with the fact that the answers alluded me only pissed me off and stressed me out even more.

At some point, I kinda gave up trying to fix my health at the cadence I was sprinting to - it was just energy depleting and soul destroying.

But the mind needed something else to feed it.

Instead of my solve or die mission being about fixing my health, next it was about fixing my life.

I thought if I could just escape the 9-5 grind, then I would have time.

Because if I had time, I would be happy and peaceful.

And if I was happy and peaceful, then I could solve all my problems.

But Not Forgotten

You'd think things should've got better and that they'd sort themselves out, but my mind refused to let go.

I got more sick and stressed as time went on but I blindly continued to wear my mask and pretend nothing was wrong.

The play was still going and the illusion still enslaved me. It was like someone had hit deploy on buggy code containing a program running an infinite loop, but then just never bothered to patch it.

I always say that COVID was the best thing that ever happened, because that's when the cracks started to show through.

Suddenly, I had so much time to myself, but instead of spending it thinking deeply and pondering existence in solitude like it sounded like everyone else did, I took up running.

I don't know what would've happened to me if I spent all that time doing more thinking.

I would tell people "running is my meditation" - and it was. It was the only time my mind was exhausted enough to shut up, and it was in this glorious gap of silence where I began to actually hear myself and find stillness for the first time.

Then I met my partner, and more cracks started to appear.

Here I was thinking I was so smart that I found a way to bypass emotions, feelings and intuition, but life had clearly had other plans when it presented me with a woman who was starting to build her life and career around psychotherapy.

I know what you're thinking... "here we go... another hyper-logical achievement driven dude asleep at the wheel his whole life. Dude meets woman. Woman teaches him that he actually did have emotions and feelings this whole time, and now, he's reawakened... cool story bro.".

I wasn't asleep though, far from it. I was very awake and aware.

Sometimes it felt like I was too aware for my own good. That's what Mum used to tell me as a kid: "You know what your problem is Roc? You know too much. You're aware of everything". She was right.

When you've got something beneath the surface that's constantly gnawing, shouting and gouging for your attention it's kinda hard to ignore it.

What makes it even harder is this appears to other people on the outside as though you are "constantly searching" for something.

So now not only are you dealing with this little scratch of a voice inside that you can barely hear and already feels like resistance, you're faced with the resistance of society and everyone else too.

Yet, I was there. I was always there, quietly watching and observing in the backdrop of life, with my light on.

'I' just didn't know that I was there, until recently.

I couldn't know because my mind was the more powerful 'I' in the tug-of-war between the hyper-cognitive and the stillness and beingness of space.

If only I could go back to 22 year old me and tell him that search for answers and resolution is an illusive path and is the exact thing sabotaging you from going where you need to go.

But the jig is up now, and the infinite code loop that was running behind the mind program has been exposed for what it is - a total scam.

When I zoom out and look at all these events and people I met next, I just laugh in awe as I recognise the absurdity and sheer beauty of what this thing we call life really is.

See you for Part 2.

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