Before we speak our mind, we need to speak with our mind; otherwise, it is our mind that will speak—instead of us, and not for us.
Speaking our mind is often seen as a sign of candor and courage, where a person doesn’t beat around the bush or resort to sentimentalism for others’ feelings. There are indeed many situations in life where speaking our mind is a strength, especially when we are faced with imminent or immense danger and decisions on how to face it. Such decisions can have both immediate and long-term severe consequences.
Simultaneously, however, speaking our mind can be a weakness if it leads us to remove all filters, allowing any thought—uninformed or ill-formed—to have an unrestricted pathway from our mind to our mouth and then to those around us. We need the courage to speak our thoughts, but we also need the courage to evaluate whether our thoughts are worth speaking. This is why we need to speak with our mind. In other words, we need to have an inner dialogue in which the thoughts being formed within us are given due consideration and subjected to scrutiny based on essential parameters like rationality, relevance, comprehensibility, and applicability.
The two extremes we may face are having well-formed thoughts that we keep inside or ill-formed thoughts that we let out. The balanced approach lies in maintaining a guardrail between our mind and our mouth, ensuring that thoughts are sufficiently processed internally, as if we had two individuals inside us holding a robust dialogue. In this internal dialogue, one individual proposes the thought, and the other opposes it, subjecting it to necessary scrutiny. Without this scrutiny, it is the mind that speaks instead of us, and we may end up being perceived as short-sighted, impetuous, or foolish. Our voice may be neglected or even rejected in the future.
If we overvalue any thought that arises in our mind, believing it needs to be spoken immediately, and equate such haste with courage, we may end up with others devaluing our thoughts and eventually even devaluing us. No wonder the Bhagavad-gita 17.16 declares silence as one of the disciplines of the mind. By not giving our mind primary or exclusive control over our mouth, we ensure that our thoughts are processed internally and that what we have inside are dialogues rather than monologues. This habit increases our capacity to think carefully and critically, making our mind a better tool for facing reality—just as bodily discipline makes our body a better tool, so too can mental discipline in the form of silence make our mind a better tool for us.
Summary:
- Speaking our mind can be a virtue when it involves not being overly inhibited in sharing valid and valuable points.
- Speaking our mind can be a weakness when uninformed or ill-formed thoughts emerge unfiltered, leading to others devaluing our opinions over time.
- Between the two extremes of keeping well-formed thoughts inside and letting ill-formed thoughts rush out, we can use the mental discipline of silence to foster healthy inner dialogue.
- By acting as a scrutinizer of our thoughts (for which the mind is the proposer), we ensure our thinking becomes more careful and critical, and what we speak becomes more holistic and helpful.
Think it over:
- What are the two extremes regarding speaking our thoughts?
- How can silence help us elevate our thinking?
- Recall one incident each when you spoke too early and when you didn’t speak at all. Plan how you could establish a better working relationship between your mind and your mouth.
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17.16 And satisfaction, simplicity, gravity, self-control and purification of one’s existence are the austerities of the mind.
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