Over the years one of the primary reasons people have come to my classes has been to address what is commonly known as monkey mind or racing mind. Monkey mind is the experience of non stop thinking. The mind goes from one thought to the next without taking a breather. It seems to be a condition that has intensified with the advent of the technological era. In fact, in my current class of 25 people, monkey mind was expressed as being the number one concern of everyone in the class. There are many reasons people come to a mindfulness based stress reduction program but this is the first time monkey mind was the unanimous concern.
The racing mind has been around for a long time but because it has intensified recently now is a good time to put additional attention on it. There have been many approaches over the years that have tried to address this issue, most being ways to distract and disconnect. Even benign practices such as chanting, visualization, prayer and so forth only stem the tide temporarily. It seems like the harder we resist our thoughts the more they persist in coming back. By the time I found mindfulness I had tried a number of these approaches. Like everyone else I discovered that although there were many interesting things to be learned with these practices, slowing down the mind was not one of them.
It wasn’t until I started practicing mindfulness that my mind began to slow down. It was a revelation to me to discover that when I stopped resisting my thoughts and simply noticing them objectively that the constant thinking actually began to slow down. I also learned that my thoughts weren’t necessarily true and needed to be taken with a grain of salt.
In time, I began to notice spaces between thoughts. As I began to explore those spaces I discovered that they would increase during the discovery process. In those spaces between thoughts I came to the experience of stillness, quiet and peace. To this day I continue to explore this and I have found no end to the depth of these experiences. It almost seemed like a recording on some level.
After more practice I found my thoughts stopping for extended periods of time and it took intention to start them up again. That’s when I realized that I could choose to think or not think. I must say that it is very restful to choose not to think for awhile. When choosing to think the quality of my thoughts is much more lucid and efficient. There is also a greater sense of creativity, clarity and intuition that comes with this new way of thinking. I now view the mind like a horse. I wouldn’t think of getting on a wild horse until it was trained to the point where it would follow my directions and could be trusted. I know many of us are trying to ride a wild horse but with some mindfulness training why not tame the horse and enjoy it.