In our waking state, without awareness and focus, we tend to fall into ‘the dream’ more often than we’d like to believe. We are then enslaved by the dream that dwells in the unreal and in the lies. We become unconscious of our ability to wake ourselves up and to see where we are, in the present moment. It is possible, with practice to snap ourselves awake and remember ‘it was just a dream’. In Buddhism this remembrance is called Smrti.
There are many ways to ‘remember’.
I find using mantras as a great way to turning the mind’s gaze to the Real. I have used and still use the traditional mantras and have experienced their immense power, but for the purpose of this blog I take a mantra to be a sentence or a word (even a line from a poem) that can pull us back to reality. In the same way that in hypnosis, a tap, a phrase or a movement is used to take someone in and out of trance. Mantras can be used as a reminder whenever it is needed throughout the day. One of my favourite mantras is: Is it true? – when I find a thought upsetting. Another one is looking around and asking ‘where is the problem?’
One day, you might find yourself having to remind yourself ten times and another day one hundred, depending on the pull of the events and how much power they have to sway the mind to the dreamland. The ones with the strongest pull are the ones that are attached strongly to our desires and fears and they’re the ones that seem to be repeated over and over. The more we wake ourselves up from the dreams they drag us to, the weaker they become. When we intend to put Smrti into practice, it is vital to bear in mind that:
