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Many of us have heard the term Monkey Mind these days. It’s used to describe the thought pattern that seems busy, nervous, compulsive and illogical (even though we pretend its logical) and totally reactive to whatever is going on, like it’s the end of the world or something.
(DOH!)
The Tibetan Buddhists call it “sem”. It’s the part of the mind that acts like a candle flickering in an open doorway, moving wildly and chaotically around with every passing puff of air.
The Monkey Mind will blow in the breeze on any topic. You KNOW what I’m talkin’ about, right?!
The bigger the anxiety or possibility for Not Knowing what will happen….or actually fearing something BAD could happen…the busier that Monkey gets.
Big topics are Losing Money, Troubling Relationships, Rejection, Health Declining, Death of Someone Close.
Anything that feels threatening really, to the Monkey Mind, will get it to rise up and chatter. Sometimes it will chatter so loud it wakes you up at night.
- I thought you’d be more successful by now!
- You only have “x” amount of years left on this planet, get moving!
- I can’t: lose weight, stop drinking, stop smoking, take care of myself
- If this pace keeps up, I’ll never reach enlightenment
- I give up
- She/he/they shouldn’t have said that, acted like that, done that
- I need more or better: money, food, house, car, body, partner, sex
- Thank you for sharing, Monkey Mind! (JEEZ!)
Have you noticed how mean that thing can be? So rude! So critical! It will attack everyone around; your best friend, the people closest to you, and then YOU too!
The great spiritual teachers and philosophers who have lived and written throughout the ages generally say the same thing about this aspect of the human experience of thinking…
They say that this voice, this busy bee hive colony, is not really YOU. It’s not your true nature, it’s not the whole of you, it’s not your genuine self, not all of your Mind.
The thing is, while it’s helpful to hear what those teachers say, it’s not so hard to find out for yourself that this Monkey within is not you.
You can question the thoughts it is throwing out. Then the thoughts begin to feel not so serious, or 100% true, or absolute, or important.
When you ANSWER questions like the ones offered in The Work (below) then some bigger part of you gets to have a look. The Observer.
How do you know where to begin? How do you know which thoughts you are thinking that you might want to question?
The thoughts that scare you or make you mad, sad, or unhappy.
And in the middle of the Monkey Mind screaming forest of sounds, you have to grab just ONE of the thoughts and look at it in depth…investigate it.
I need to figure this out, I must calm down, I have to have an answer, I need to know, I need help….
Is it true? Even if you think it IS true, can you absolutely know that it’s true?
How do you react when you’re believing the Monkey Thought? The one that seems so serious and important and real? Do you notice how stressful it is?
Who would you be or WHAT would you be if you didn’t even believe what that Monkey Mind was saying?
Who would you be if you were watching, but not in the middle of the tornado swirling, the cacophony of insane ideas and sounds, or if there was 85 kinds of music playing at once and you didn’t freak out?
Who would you be if you didn’t have to figure it out, or try to calm down, or interpret the situation, or find THE answer, or fix it, or get away from that person, or get more, or do more, or be different than you are?
This exercise of asking oneself who you would be without the stressful thoughts is what it is like to allow the whole situation, the whole predicament, the whole story…to be as it is without trying to change it anymore, mentally.
“The ego thinks we would become indifferent to everything and uncaring in the face of this nonresistance. But actually something different happens. Instead of being uncaring, we actually come into a deeper and more intimate relationship with what’s happening. We become very deeply connected….This opens up a door within us for an entirely different response—a response that’s not based in opposition.”~Adyashanti
What if all your stressful thoughts are not really YOU? What if all your worries don’t really matter? What if you let go?
What if there’s no perfect solution to the problem? What if you can’t fix it? What if there’s nothing you can do about it and it’s OK? More than OK?
“Having been reduced to nothing, nothing may then express itself. This expression of nothingness is love. Love is without a source and without an object, it has always been present.”~ Steven Harrison
Love,
Grace
Horrible Food Wonderful Food Weekend In-Person Intensive Seattle January 12-13, 2013 Saturday 10 – 5:30, Sunday 1:30-5:30. $215. To register click HERE now and then send me an email grace@workwithgrace.com.
Mark your calendar for Breitenbush, the end of June 2013! We will be looking at all aspects of what we consider to be flaws in the body, and Un-doing our beliefs about them. Stay tuned if you’d like to join me and Susan Grace Beekman from June 26-30, 2013. You can change your internal beliefs about what you think bodies should be like….and change your entire experience of being in yours.
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