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

When you sit still for 10 or 15 minutes and pay attention to your thoughts and feelings, you change the way you relate to what’s going on inside you in a big way. Instead of being swept away by the current, you become, for the time being, an observer on the bank watching the river of your experience flow by. Even though the difference may not seem like much, and you may not feel like you’re getting anywhere, your story has started to lose its grip on your life. Over time, you begin to notice gaps in your mind’s chatter, and what used to seem so serious and solid starts to feel lighter and more like fresh air. You might laugh at how much you worry and obsess, or you might take a moment to think about how you feel before you act.

As you get used to accepting your experience, including your judgments and self-criticisms, you may also notice that your attitude toward yourself starts to change in small ways. As you become more familiar with the repetitive patterns of your mind, you may begin to feel more self-acceptance instead of impatience or contempt. You might even feel sympathy for yourself if you see how critical, distracted, or scared you can be.

When you meditate regularly and pay attention to your thoughts and feelings, you start to notice themes and stories playing in your head. You might notice that you tend to think about all the times people misunderstood you or didn’t love you the way you wanted them to. Maybe you can see how you compare yourself to other people and decide if you are better or worse than them. Even if you’ve been happily married for years, you might still daydream about the perfect partner. Or, you might notice that you’re always thinking about the future and not paying attention to what’s happening.

No matter your patterns, you can see how they keep coming up to bother you and pull you away from the reality at hand, which could be something as simple as watching your breath or repeating your mantra. Gradually, you realise that your story is just that: a story that you keep telling yourself that keeps you apart from other people and hurts you. “Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans,” said John Lennon. When you start to see your story for what it is, it doesn’t confuse you as much.

After meditating for a while, you may notice that just being aware of your story can start to change it in small or big ways. When you get some distance from your account and realise that it’s just your story and not who you are, you naturally become less reactive, people treat you differently, and things change to match. Soon, your life will no longer be the same old story.

You may already be trying to change your life by changing your environment or reprogramming your mind with positive thinking or affirmations. But first, you have to apply the power of deep insight to your habitual patterns and stories. Otherwise, healthier perspectives and practices can’t take root, and you just keep running in the same old grooves.

Even if you become aware of your story, get some distance from it, and start to change it fundamentally, you may still identify with it until you can see who you are beyond your story.

Such glimpses can take several different forms. Maybe you have moments of peace or quiet that come out of the blue when your thoughts slow down or even stop, and a sweet silence fills your mind. Or you might feel a flood of unconditional love that opens your heart wide for a moment and gives you a glimpse of the oneness beyond all separation. Or you might suddenly sense that you are connected to everything or in the presence of something much bigger than yourself. No matter what kind of insight gets you past your story, it can change who you think you are forever.

You can never fully believe that your mind’s idea of who you are is all there is to you.

When you’ve had a glimpse of who you are beyond your mind you can keep returning to this deeper level of being in your meditations and everyday life. To use the lake I talked about earlier in the post as an example, you can always dive down to the bottom because you know what it looks like and how to get there.

Even if your story keeps playing on the video screen of your brain, you can learn to distance yourself from it or even stop identifying with it. You will realise that your personality is mistaken identity and that who you are is the vast expanse of being in which your thoughts and feelings arise and pass.

It might take years of meditation to come to such a profound realisation. Still, you can always have it, no matter how long you’ve been meditating or if you’ve ever meditated. People say they laugh hysterically when they finally realise that their true nature was as evident as the nose on their faces the whole time.

People often think that the purpose of meditation is to stop the mind. You can try to control your mind and see what happens to get a real sense of how useless these efforts are. Try out the following:

1. Sit still and slowly take a few deep breaths.

2. Try not to think for the next five minutes.

You’re right. Do everything you can to stop your mind from developing more ideas. Try humming to yourself, focusing on your big toe, or thinking about a beautiful day you spent outside. Or you could just try to stay as still as possible. Do what you feel will help you the most.

3. After five minutes, think about what you’ve done.

How well did things go? Could you go for a long time without thinking? Did you find that trying to stop thinking only made you feel more? This exercise shows how stubborn and determined your thinking mind can be, in case you hadn’t noticed.

People don’t become more detached and less interested in life when they learn to integrate this realisation and live their understanding in a moment-to-moment way, which is what most people think. Instead, because their story and sense of separation have lifted like a fog, they can see situations and people more clearly and with more compassion and act in a way that fits the situation better.

Be well.

We all need a helping hand from time to time. Please share this post with as many people as possible. You never know who might need it.

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