Day 8: Making Friends With Your Monkey Mind

MAKING FRIENDS WITH YOUR MONKEY MIND

Why this could be the best choice you ever make.

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Hi %%FIRST_NAME%%,
Congratulations! You’re into week two of your 28 Day Meditation Challenge.

Last week, as you may have spotted, our meditation was all about grounding – getting out of our stressed minds and drawing our awareness back into the physical body, through watching our breathing.

This week we’re dealing with that pesky monkey mind! So make sure you move on to your week 2 meditation today. Here’s the link to download it:

http://www.28DayMeditationChallenge.com/home/#week2

{Remember, if you’d prefer a CD, here’s where you can order one: http://www.28DayMeditationChallenge.com/cd/.}

One of the things I am often asked at this stage is whether you ‘should’ meditate with your eyes opened or closed. Different traditions have differing viewpoints. I generally suggest that you have your eyes softly closed, so there is no tension in your eye or facial muscles. But, ultimately, enjoying your meditation is about choosing whatever works for you. Most people prefer to meditate with their eyes closed, because it shuts out visual distractions, but it’s up to you. Perhaps you could try it both ways, to experience the difference?

So, diving into the monkey mind…

Many of us find that, as soon as we sit still and quietly, our mind starts to race. It’s as though everything it has been trying to say to us all day has to come out at once, because it’s finally got our attention. In fact, this is the reason why many of us feel uncomfortable with silence. You can spot this by seeing whether you need to have the radio or television going in the background most of the day.

Actually, it races most of the time, but we’re used to keeping busy and drowning it out.

The problem with a racing monkey mind

There are many physiological and psychological effects from a racing monkey mind. These include:

• Stress hormones go wild.
  Our fight / flight mechanism is regularly triggered by stressful thoughts and the sympathetic nervous system goes into overdrive. This can lead to fatigue, difficulty with concentration and, if it’s regular, ill health.
• Shallow breathing.
  Shallow, upper-chest breathing is a common symptom of a racing mind. It reduces the amount of oxygen available to the body, which impacts everything from your cellular-level health to your mind’s ability to think. Oxygen is the body’s main food.
• Foggy mind.
  With the reduced oxygen levels, your mind will struggle to think clearly. With the constant stream of monkey mind commentary, it’s hard to access a state of mind that leads to insight and inspiration, so you’re more likely to find it hard to complete even simple tasks, let alone complex jobs.
• Stress creates stress.
  A stressed-out mind is like a perpetual motion machine: it just keeps going. If your monkey mind is telling you stories of stress and worry, it will breed more stories to keep that cycle going. It isn’t going to stop, unless you do something differently.

What’s Going On When You Meditate?

What’s still happening, when you’re doing ‘nothing’ (also known as meditating!)?

Thinking! Thinking! Thinking!

Your monkey mind provides a constant stream of entertainment and distraction. It will be:

• Re-running events
• Giving a commentary on your current activity
• Analysing
• Understanding
• Passing judgement
• Worrying about the past or future
• Planning whatever is next
• Reminding you of stuff

It will be absolutely anywhere, other than ‘here and now’.

Meditation invites us to sit with our thoughts; to stop fighting them; to stop resisting; to stop repressing them; to stop engaging with them – it’s about becoming a silent, non-judgemental observer of our thoughts.

As the psychotherapist Carl Jung famously said:

“What you resist persists.” ~ And that goes for your monkey mind, too.

As soon as we resist a thought, we are giving it our power and attention. As soon as we fight it, it wins. We make it stronger, by feeding it with our attention. Left to its own devices, it would simply melt away.

Many years ago a Buddhist monk taught me that no emotion or thought can last greater than 60 seconds without us ‘feeding it’ by telling ourselves stories or engaging with the thought.

I found that really challenging at the time, because I was very good at being stuck in a particular emotion for days on end. But, with practice, I found what he said to be true.

A thought left to its own devices arrives, grows and then gently fades away.

That is the natural course of the thought.

The reason our thoughts hang around for so long is because we keep feeding them.

The more you try to stop your mind racing, the more it will resist your efforts. Acceptance of the mind is the key to inner peace.

 

Allow yourself to become detached from them; stop telling the story when you notice the thought. Perhaps you might imagine your thoughts to be like soft clouds, floating across the sky – you observe them, but you are not engaging with them or trying to control them. And, just as silently as they arrive, so they can leave.

Of if you prefer you might imagine the thought being on a conveyor belt, it arrives on the conveyor belt, you notice it and it moves away without you having to do anything. Remember the number one meditation myth? Meditation is NOT about shutting up your monkey mind – or getting rid of it! (Remember Day One?).

But an untrained, untamed mind is like a kid that has never been taught boundaries, has been fed on a diet of rubbish food and ends up with an ASBO[1].

So the goal of your acceptance of your monkey mind is to stop resisting it and engaging with it. Whereas, the goal of your meditation practice is to teach it habits that lead to your inner peace, not to chaotic inner stress.

Remember to breathe!

People sometimes find that they concentrate so hard on this exercise that they hold their breath!

The idea is to be relaxed, but alert, in your meditative concentration and focus. So please remember to breathe – allow your breathing to be gentle and natural.

If you need to, it can help to repeat the 3 sighing breaths from the beginning of the meditation, if your breathing needs to relax.

You can practise this any time of day – you don’t need to wait for your attention. In fact, if you practise it regularly, even just for 60 seconds, you will soon notice a dramatic improvement in the quality of your meditation experiences.

Acceptance of our thoughts is one of the keys to meditation, to de-stressing, to feeling more calm and to feeling happier. Acceptance of our thoughts – and how to gently manage them – is what we are going to be focusing on this week.

So today, how about allowing your thoughts to turn into passing clouds?

I hope you enjoy your new week two meditation. Remember, you can listen to it or download it here: http://www.28daymeditationchallenge.com/home/#week2.

And if you have any questions or insights you’d like to share so far, here’s where you can connect with others on the course: https://www.clarejosa.com/forum/28-day-meditation-challenge-online-course-1/week-2-any-questions-lightbulbs-anything-to-share/

 

Day 8 AffirmationI choose to start making friends with my monkey mind.

Namaste,

Clare

 

P.S. Want to discover why making friends with your monkey mind could be the best move you ever make? There’s a bonus article for you:

“How Falling In Love With Your Monkey Mind Can Be The Key To Inner Peace”.

P.P.S. The key links you need for week two are:
Online Forum:
https://www.clarejosa.com/forum/28-day-meditation-challenge-online-course-1/

Week 2 Meditation:
https://www.clarejosa.com/28-day-meditation-challenge.com/home/#week2

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