"No thought has any power. You have power. And when you identify and believe in the thought, you give power to the thought." - Mooji"It was 2004. I was on day three of a six-month meditation retreat, and my restless and turbulent mind was driving me nuts.
The prospect of sitting on this wretched cushion for another five minutes (let alone six months) was freaking me out.
“What on earth have I let myself in for? This is a crazy idea. I want to go home.”
My restless monkey mind was more like King Kong on amphetamines.
“No, remember how messed up you were before you arrived—and the crazy synchronicity that led you here,” a second, conciliatory voice chipped in.
Destiny had indeed dragged my ass across the world onto this bright red meditation cushion in mysterious ways.
Long story short, my housemate Jack had come to this meditation center after spraining his wrist and having to pull out of a yoga retreat he was supposed to attend in the US.
A few days later, he called me to say he loved it there and believed he’d found his teacher. He was really excited.
At the time, I was going through a particularly difficult period in my life. I had hit a brick wall and had no idea where to turn. So you can imagine my delight when I received a message from Jack, saying, “You’ll never guess what happened. I was talking to my teacher about you and he said, ‘Tell him to come to Canada as soon as he can and not to worry about the money. Just come.’”
Ten days later, I found myself perched on a bright red meditation cushion on a stunning property in the Canadian Rockies.
And this is where the real story begins.
As I sat on my cushion on day three, my restless mind was spinning out on overdrive. I needed help.
Unable to sit any longer, I stood up and approached the head monk:
“I’m really struggling here. I need to talk,” I said.
The conversation that ensued remains etched in my mind to this day. It went something like this:
“What’s the problem?” he asked with a look of compassion.
“I can’t stop thinking,” I replied.
“No, you can’t,” he smiled.
I was taken aback. It wasn’t the answer I was expecting.
“Nobody can. If you didn’t have a crazy, messed up mind, you wouldn’t be human.”
“But I’m going nuts. My mind is driving me crazy,” I pleaded.
“What the mind gets up to needn’t be any of your business,” he continued. “You are suffering because you’re open for business. You need to shut up shop. Just relax, be alert, and focus on your breath. Let the thoughts come and go without resistance. Leave the mind in peace to do its thing and it will leave you in peace to do yours. The mind can only trouble you if you entertain it.”
If You Didn’t Have A Crazy, Messed Up Mind, You Wouldn’t Be Human
Boy, that’s quite a statement!We tend to see ourselves as special cases.
Nobody is quite as screwed up as I am, right?
If people only knew the nonsense that goes on inside my head, I’d have no friends at all, right?
Over the following six-month period, many of my long-held beliefs about the nature of the mind and the causes of suffering crumbled away.
When I showed up in Canada, I was riddled with self-judgment. I believed that finding peace (if it was even possible, which I doubted) would be a monumental task, requiring a complete overhaul of my broken mind.
Here are some of the key points I came to understand:
- Being messed up is an inevitable and unavoidable part of being human. Don’t beat yourself up over it.
- Peace of mind is an illusion because restlessness is the nature of mind. Disturbance and mind are one and the same thing.
- You don’t need to change or fix your thoughts in order to experience peace. You need to recognize the mind for what it is.
- There is no distance between you and peace. It is available to each of us in every moment… no matter what is going on in the mind.
Over time, I began to grasp and apply what my teacher meant by shutting up shop and minding your own business.
I learned that the key to experiencing ongoing contentment is to leave the mind in peace to do it’s crazy, messed up dance—in other words, to mind your own business.
“Allow thoughts to arise but don’t give them a place to land.” ~PapajiPeace is the natural consequence of not minding what the mind gets up to.
Fast forward six months and I was a person transformed.
I was now finding my time on the cushion enjoyable and hugely rewarding. I was quite prone to experiencing blissful episodes… even with a chaotic mind. I had never known peace like this before.
I had also, much to my own surprise, taken my novice vows as a monk and received a new name. I wondered how that was going to go down with my family at home!
The following are seven key lessons I learned for dealing with an unruly mind to experience ongoing peace." ... read more
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