Your mind or mine is like a fish tank

You may find at the start of the journey of meditation and self-discovery that your mind is like an aquarium filled with all sorts of life.  What you thought was you yourself turns out to be a seething mass of these fish like slippery shapes, like fish amongst predators who rise from the deep and swirl with their great strong tails, snapping and snorting their way around the smaller fry.  Your (our) job is to watch them all, large and small and discern what emotions they provoke .  This is your chance to change the legacy of your mindset.  So, here is a guide to the way the Aquarium works;  first, remember that it isn't natural, it is a quasi real environment and remembering this is the most important thing.  So remember that this mind and its shenanigans  aren't the natural way of being;  this set up of aquarium/mind is a world made to resemble reality where  the water and food are brought in by the owner, that very person also chose the fish who would be in there.  You (or I ) am the person whose aquarium is being watched.  In my aquarium/mind I can see the movements of the fish ideas, little familiar flashes of this and that, no threat at all to the peaceful clear water but then something moves on the back of a sound, maybe a name is spoken and stirs an emotion, a memory and then swirling up from the bottom of the tank comes a dark shape, a shark or a whale sort of shadow and with it fear or anger or resentment moves the golden tiny fish into a rush.  This is where you (I) watch unmoved and our watching of the tank of our mind over time will make the dark sharks and his friends smaller and eventually even totally disappear.  It is the oddest thing that the sharks and sharks mates were ever allowed in by the keeper of the aquarium but they were and our job is to let them go again and again and again until they never rise again.