How your mind causes stress and what you can do to stop it. Part 3 of 6.

The difference between ordinary and creative thought: When your mind keeps coming up with a never-ending stream of thoughts linked together like carriages on a train, you’re trapped by your claustrophobic way of thinking and can’t come up with new ideas or solve problems. When your mind is open and unfurnished, which is a state of mind you can develop through meditation, you have a lot of space inside for creative thoughts to bubble up from their source in pure being. Unlike most thoughts, these thoughts are perfect for the situation at hand.

Functional thinking vs psychological memory: The more you meditate, the more you free your mind of psychological memory, which is the kind of chaotic, obsessive, self-centred thinking that comes from your stories and focuses on the separate, fragmented person you think you are. Instead, your thoughts become primarily practical. They come up in response to events and stop when they are no longer needed.

Emotivity vs emotion: The solid and upsetting feelings that sometimes seem to run your life come from your stories, not from reality, and have little in common with genuine emotion. Genuine emotion is more subtle than emotion and is rooted in love. It arises naturally from being itself in response to situations where the illusion of separation has been lessened or gone away through meditation or another spiritual practice like self-inquiry.

One minute you might be worried about the future—how will I make enough money, plan a great vacation, impress my lover, or keep my kids entertained?—and the next, you might be lost in a dream full of hope and fear. The next thing you know, you’re stuck in the past, asking yourself, “Why didn’t I tell the truth, take that job, or say yes to that proposal?” You’re filled with regret and anger at yourself.

You may have noticed, to your dismay, that you don’t have much control over your mind’s worrying, fantasising, and obsessing. Rather than having thoughts and feelings, it may sometimes feel like they have you.

These thoughts and feelings seem impossible to control because they come from a more profound story or life script that may be mostly unconscious. For example, you may think subconsciously that nothing you do is good enough, so you work hard to make up for your mistakes. Or, on the other hand, you may think you deserve more than what you have, so you’re unhappy with what you have. Maybe you believe you are not attractive at all, so no matter what you do to make yourself look better, you still feel embarrassed and awkward around people of the opposite sex. Or, you might think that close relationships are inherently dangerous, so you do everything possible to avoid being weak.

Whether you are aware of it or not, your inner story or drama has a strong force that moves you forward. Sometimes it may seem like a tragedy, with bad guys and people who get hurt. At other times, it might seem more like a comedy, a romance, a fantasy, or a boring documentary. The point is that you’re the centre of this drama, and you’re often so caught up in the setting that you can’t see what’s happening outside in the real world around you.

Because of this, you may react too often incorrectly, not because of the actual situation but because of the distorted pictures in your head. Also, you risk missing the beauty and immediacy of the present moment as it happens.

Most of your suffering and stress come from this inner drama, not the experiences themselves. Not that everyone doesn’t have their share of hard times and painful situations, like the homeless in cities and the children who are hungry. But when the mind interprets experience in a negative or limited way, it often adds an extra layer of suffering that doesn’t need to be there. Now, let’s talk about some of the main ways your mind makes you feel stressed.

When I say that the “mind” causes pain and stress, I use the word “mind” broadly to include emotions and thoughts since they are inseparable. Some Eastern languages, like Chinese and Sanskrit, use the same word for both mind and heart.

When you think about things that could be stressful, like relationships, work, money problems, or significant changes in your life, you almost always feel something, even if it is subliminally. The field of mind-body medicine has shown that the mind and body are not separate. Thoughts cause chemical changes in the blood that affect metabolism and immunity. Changes in blood chemistry caused by drugs, environmental toxins, or stress can change how you think and feel.

In the same way, the stories that run your life are made up of many layers of feelings, beliefs, and physical tension that are hard to separate. By meditating regularly, you can start to peel back these layers, bring awareness to them, and see the patterns that hold them together.

Like most people’s minds, yours may jump from the past to the future and back again, and it may not stay in the present very often. When you’re worried about what might happen next month or next year, you experience stressful emotions like hope, fear, and anticipation that have nothing to do with what’s happening right now. And when you keep thinking about the past, which doesn’t exist outside your thoughts and images, you may go from regret to anger to sadness and grief.

When you meditate, on the other hand, you practise bringing your mind back to the present moment. You can get away from the stressful things in your head by focusing on the simple here and now.

Most people work hard and aren’t happily trying to get what they think they need to be happy while ignoring or actively disliking what they already have. I’m not saying you should just sit back and do nothing to improve your life. But one of my teachers used to say that the key to making your life better is first to learn to accept things as they are. Meditation can teach you how to do this. Most of the time, people who don’t like the way things are, are either resistant to change or resistant to pain.

Come back tomorrow for part 4.

Be well.

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