So you need to dis-identify yourself.

Every day just spend 10 minutes in

the morning and see what are all the things that you are identified with,
which is actually not you. You will be surprised to see in how many
ridiculous ways and with how many ridiculous things you are identified.
Just mentally break all the things around you in your house and see, you
will know all the things you are identified with. Little things, big things,
your own house, your family, everything, mentally just break them and
see. All the things that hurt you, you are identified with them obviously.
Once you are identified with something that you are not, the mind is an
express train that you can't stop. Do what you want, it won't stop. So you
put the mind on full steam and you want to apply brakes – it doesn’t work
like that. You must take your leg off the throttle first, before you brake any
vehicle.

Editor's Note: Find more of Sadhguru's insights on the potential of the

human mind, in "Mind is Your Business".
  recently lost a friend of mine due to an aggressive form of  cancer. Towards the end, she was in
excruciating pain. The amount of narcotics needed to manage the pain and keep her comfortable was to
the point of rendering her pretty much unresponsive. My question is, at the time of death, if we are to try
and leave our bodies in full awareness, how does this work when one is rendered unresponsive or
obtunded from pain medicines? Are we supposed to not take pain medicine in a situation like this so we
can leave in awareness?

Sadhguru: When someone is in extreme pain, not taking medicine could be very cruel, and anyway,
maintaining awareness while being in such pain may also become difficult. But I’m sure there’s an in-
between way where pain can be considerably reduced without the person being knocked out. Above all,
even if someone is unresponsive to the outside world, they may still be very much conscious within
themselves. The medicine may be numbing the body, and the numbness of the body may not allow the
person to respond to external situations, but it may actually create an ideal situation within oneself to be
conscious. Beyond a certain point of course, depending on the doses of narcotics and other drugs, the
person becomes completely unconscious.

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I think most doctors would calibrate it to numb the system only to the extent that the pain is taken away.
There are also other ways that some doctors in some countries explore, like snapping off nerves to see that
the respective part of the body does not experience pain, or using laser to zap the nervous system in such a
way that it cannot conduct the impulses of pain. Modern technology and medicine is exploring many ways
to relieve one of pain – which is good. No one can advocate pain to anyone else for whatever reason.

If someone is in the unfortunate situation where it is pain versus awareness, I would say bring down the
pain first, because awareness is not something that you do. Awareness can happen in many different ways
because awareness is life. It has its own way of finding itself. It is not necessary to try to be aware. If one
has at least to some extent lived a conscious life, if one has been initiated, if one has been infused with
another dimension of energy, one could naturally become aware at the moment of death. Awareness is not
an act that we perform – it is a state, a dimension of our existence. So, it is not necessary to be concerned if
someone has been numbed so that they do not go through excruciating pain. They may be unresponsive,
but that does not mean they are incapable of being aware. If medicine is used only to numb the body, it
could actually become very easy to be aware.