One is a simple conscious being endowed with a body-mind, and independent of it. The body-mind is just an instrument which you, the simple conscious being uses to gain experiences of the world.
However what has happened is that you have as though become your mind by identifying with it and seeing it as yourself.
The mind seems to keep you totally occupied with thinking of either the experienced past, or the imagined future or even the present conditions of your life. Consequently you don't seem to enjoy any peace of mind.
Because of this preoccupation with your mind, you don't have any occasion to consciously recognise that in reality you have a peaceful existence which is independent of your mind.
So it is important to examine and analyse if you are really your mind or are you in reality independent of your mind.
Vedanta uses the method of discrimination between the self and the non-self to to make you aware of the fact that in every experience you are the awareful conscious being who is ever the subject of the experience, the drk, and never the object of the experience. Without your changeless presence illuminating every changing experience, how can change be appreciated?
To be able to appreciate this truth which you cognitively recognize and yet want to appreciate experientially, a quiet focussed mind is very useful. In a noisy cluttered mind, it is difficult to even cognitively appreciate this fundamental fact about the self. Even if one does cognitively appreciate the fact of one's self being independent of the body-mind, that understanding does not bless one's life with the sense of abiding freedom.
So investing time to take to practices that help one gain a focussed mind free of impurities of strong identification with egoic thinking are a must for the person who recognizes that what he/she really wants is to own up the abiding freedom of the self.
Om Tat Sat
