Wherever you find yourself right now, Ayurveda can help. Ayurveda identifies three tones — or states — of mind. Tamas with tones of darkness and destruction, Rajas with tones of birth and creativity, and Sattva with tones of sustenance and stability. Tamas is dull, decaying, and degenerative. Rajas is active, agitating, and generative. While Sattva is balanced, light, and joyful. Sattva is our highest state of mind.

As a state of mind, tamas is mentally the hardest place to be. Tamas is dark, dull, decaying, confused, and stubborn. Tamas is also normal and necessary. There is no mind without confusion – confusion is a natural process. But when confusion causes despondency, isolation, and overwhelm, we need support. Moving through tamas takes time and is also dependent on rajas to get things moving.

In Western terms, working through tamas can be helped by considering the following, very real, aspects of life: dullness, depression, lethargy, apathy, confusion, feeling ‘fed-up’, stagnation, disappointment, grief, hurt, pain, feeling ‘let-down’, memory, resentment, dwelling on the past, rumination, fatigue, exhaustion, overwhelm, loss of vitality, loss of compassion, difficulty helping others, selfishness, greed, inconsideration for others, and so on. Such symptoms should be temporary. If any of the above are deep and prolonged, there is cause for intervention and it’s important to get help.

Mindful writing has an aim, and that aim is mental stability in the form of clarity, balance, and joy. Working through (and beyond) tamas orientates us inwards. Lines of enquiry to improve our situation rely on admitting there’s a problem and we must be willing to work through the confusion of the mind. Mindful writing during this phase seeks light and clarity by inviting themes of personal growth, self-understanding, detachment, boundary setting, response-ability, and self-worth. When we are sitting in the murky pond of tamas, we are in need of rajas, of standing up and taking gentle action, to improve our situation.

When confusion has lifted and a sense of clarity and perspective gleaned, we know we are no longer bound by the tamas in our mind. We have achieved what we set out to achieve — we feel lighter and clearer, which translates into sharper cognitive processing, and an even more active mind (rajas again) as new feelings, relationships, experiences, and thoughts emerge. Introspective mindful writing will have given us hope, clarity, and perspective. And, the idea of detachment from the mind and all mental activity has become a possibility. The idea of detachment is a milestone. When we believe detachment from the mind is possible, something else is happening — and we are in a great position to explore that idea further.

Wherever you find yourself right now, Ayurveda can help. Ayurveda identifies three tones — or states — of mind. Tamas with tones of darkness and destruction, Rajas with tones of birth and creativity, and Sattva with tones of sustenance and stability. Tamas is dull, decaying, and degenerative. Rajas is active, agitating, and generative. While Sattva is balanced, light, and joyful. Sattva is our highest state of mind.

As a state of mind, rajas is disturbed and unsettling — aggrivated by our busy and excessive modern life.

Often, we fight against ourselves, our natural tendencies, our life (the way things are), and other people. This difficulty with acceptance, causes denial, friction, and agitation. An agitated mind is a rajas mind. Rajas is brighter than tamas and holds more clarity. But it is not a balanced mind. The rajas mind is overstimulated, overactive, intolerant, and often misinformed. Rajas has an agenda of self-importance. Rajas is both action and reaction. Rajas is extreme. A more balanced approach is necessary if we are to progress towards sattva — to find consistent and joy.

Mindful writing is a great tool for tracking the inconsistencies, volatility, excesses, and extremes of our choices and behaviours — and encourage a more harmonious path — one that is more detached from the mind. Mindful writing can address themes of self-centredness, control, manipulation, judging, ignoring, punishing, retaliating, violating, defying, lack of acceptance, lack of faith, and denial. To an extent, these symptoms exist in most of us and often carry the weight of shame. Mindful writing can help. However, deep and prolonged symptoms need intervention and if that is the case — it’s important to get help.

Mindful writing has an aim — mental stabillity in the form of clarity, balance, and joy. Working through (and beyond) rajas helps us rebalance. Lines of enquiry to improve our situation rely on working through the inconsistences in the mind and finding acceptance. Mindful writing during this phase invites themes of honesty, personal development, letting go, accepting being wrong, apologising, forgiveness, incompetence, despair, helplessness, weakness, and vulnerability. When we are thrown from pillar to post by the highly strung rajas mind, we must observe our behaviours with honesty and kindness in order to accept ourselves in our present situation.

When extremes have lessened and we find periods of balance — unprovoked by the rajas mind — we know we have achieved what we set out to achieve. We are less reactive and more considered in our daily approach to life. Our cognitive processing is less interfering, less judgemental, less moody, and more balance. Mindful writing has given us honesty and acceptance of exactly what is, not what has been before, or what we hope for in the future. Acceptance is a milestone. When we accept ourselves, our life (the way things are), and other people, we also accept that not everything is in our control, that we are learning, that we have faults. We commit, not to perfection, but to doing our best.

Only then do we seek to place those feelings and our lack of control in the hands of something else, something bigger and more powerful than ourselves, something we are vaguely aware of orchestrating the silent rhythms of life — something beyond the mind. A power greater than ourselves, unique to us, in whatever form it takes. In Ayurveda, the form of that greater power is consciousness, and is fundamental to mindful writing. For the purpose of mindful writing, belief in a greater power can be expressed as anything other than ourself — but belief must be unearthed and expressed. When we believe it is possible to detach from the mind, and that there exists another way to go about our life — then we are in a wonderful position to move on. Because when the mind is clear and balanced, there is sattva, whether we sought sattva or not — it is waiting for us.

Wherever you find yourself right now, Ayurveda can help. Ayurveda identifies three tones — or states — of mind. Tamas with tones of darkness and destruction, Rajas with tones of birth and creativity, and Sattva with tones of sustenance and stability. Tamas is dull, decaying, and degenerative. Rajas is active, agitating, and generative. While Sattva is balanced, light, and joyful.

Ayurveda honours the trinity of body, mind, and consciousness — or mindful awareness. Ayurveda is connected to our everyday life experience. It’s important to take time to understand our daily life, our daily living, the daily operating of our body, mind and consciousness.

In Ayurveda body, mind, and consciousness are working together. In Ayurveda, the mind is not contained to the brain, or even our head. The mind is a mind-channel that pervades the entire body, uniting the sense organs of the body where perception enters, to cognitive processes in the mind, and to the heart. Only in the heart space do we discover the seat of the mind. The heart is the place from which the mind arises, and returns.

The cognitive processes of the mind include perception through the senses, which causes sensation, and an internal response. Then comes reasoning, as cognition defines what is we are perceiving – oh, it is a tree. More often than not there is recognition – it’s a tree — an oak tree. And, image is formed. The next step is one of discrimination — image is formed, as separate to self.

All this cognitive processing takes place and all the while something else is happening, something else takes place, something else exists. A witnessing intelligence, separate from the mind. A consciousness, a constant, an enduring, loving, intelligent, mindful awareness. In mindful writing we are aiming for the type of mindful awareness only made possibly by shifting our point of view from within the mind, to within the heart — where we experience mindful awareness in the form of Sattva.

Sattva is clarity, balance, harmony, serenity, peace, purity, light, love, compassion, and joy.

Mindful writing has an aim, and that aim is mindful awareness in the form of clarity, balance, and joy. Through deep mindful awareness we orientate ourselves towards joy. Lines of enquiry rely on detachment from the mind, acceptance of the way things are, and connecting to inner awareness, or consciousness. Being the great observing principle beyond the borders of the mind, concealed within a fragment of our heart. Mindful writing during this phase seeks joy and invites themes of love, forgiveness, care, compassion, ease, peace, purity, harmony, gratitude, connection, intimacy, service, purpose, abundance, wealth, giving, knowledge, and wisdom. When these themes resonate and reverberate through us, we become sustained by the sattva mind. We have achieved what we set out to achieve – we have, and we are. We are clarity, we are balance, we are joy.