Preside Open 11: The 9 Levels Of Monkey Mind Distraction

As you meditate more, especially in an independent, unguided manner, the Monkey Mind will escalate its tactics to distract you from meditation, to match your growing capabilities as a meditation practitioner.

This session will brief you on what to expect, and outline the 9 major levels of Monkey Mind distraction so you are prepared to meet it

Transcript

Hi,

This is Arty Woo with Preside Meditation and in this video what I'd like to do is talk about the Monkey Mind playbook.

In other words,

How does Monkey Mind distract you and what are the different angles of attack that it uses to come after you?

And basically the reason I want to share this with you now is that by this point you've had several sessions of meditation under your belt and I'm certain that you've had multiple episodes of tangling one-on-one with Monkey Mind.

And at this point I want to give you that extra insight into how the Monkey Mind works more specifically so that you can have a better chance of spotting the Monkey Mind's tactics so that you can more successfully step away from them when you're meditating.

And the thing is you won't see all of these plays right away because what happens is Monkey Mind escalates.

If it doesn't need to escalate to the next level of sophistication,

It's not going to because it doesn't have to.

So this is also you can think of as a sneak peek ahead into your future as a meditator.

So basically there are nine different levels of obstacles and tactics that Monkey Mind uses to get you to derail your meditation.

And I'll go in order of escalation and sophistication and my favorite by far is number nine.

My all-time favorite.

So just make sure you stick around to the end of the video so you can hear that.

So I'm going to go in order and I'm going to try to move quickly.

So the first level of Monkey Mind distraction is simple physical discomfort.

It'll make your face itch,

Your leg cramp,

All of a sudden you have to go to the bathroom or you'll suddenly realize that the room is too cold or too warm or you're too full from dinner or maybe you had one too many cocktails at dinner and you know you're too groggy to meditate.

So number one is physical discomfort.

Number two is doubt.

That constant whispering of like,

Well,

What are you doing?

Is this a waste of time?

Do you have time to meditate right now?

You have all this other stuff to do.

Why don't you just get up?

Let's go.

This is dumb.

And of course none of this is logical.

You've got your 30 years of research saying meditation is super good for you.

It's pleasurable.

It's helping you sleep.

But in the face of all that,

Monkey Mind will still put out whatever arguments you can come up with to say this is a waste of time because obviously it doesn't want to be calmed down.

It makes it very,

Very nervous.

So that's number two,

Doubt.

Number three is going to be outside influences.

So the car alarm going off outside in the street,

Someone walking into the room and saying,

Hey,

What are you doing?

You get a call or a text message.

Number four is desire.

So you've gotten past the first three and you're calm for a little bit and then all of a sudden you realize,

Oh,

My stomach's grumbling.

I'm really hungry.

I'm dying for a cheeseburger out of nowhere all of a sudden.

Or I'm dying for a beer or a cocktail or even just a lemonade or a glass of milk.

I'm really thirsty.

Or even I feel like I really like to have sex right now.

I mean my girlfriend or boyfriend,

Spouse,

Partner is at home.

We're not really doing anything and why don't we have sex?

Why not?

And the desire obstacle is just why not?

Why don't you do some of this other stuff that you really have a craving for instead of meditating and calming down the cravings?

It's a very logical kind of gambit to play.

So the next level,

Level five is what I call drama.

And this is very powerful and actually quite interesting when you get to this level.

So at this level,

Monkey Mind will start playing past conversations,

Rehearsing future conversations with people.

You'll start replaying old arguments and discussions you've had and just thinking through what you could have said differently,

What you should have said differently.

I mean basically,

Monkey Mind is scanning for drama.

So it'll play all of these arguments and conversations and dialogues in your head over and over again until it hits one that totally engrosses you.

It's like it just keeps changing the channel on the TV until it finds a show that totally draws you in.

And the funny thing is Monkey Mind doesn't even care what the scene is as long as it engrosses you and pulls you out of meditation.

It doesn't even need to be a conversation with a real person that actually ever happened.

I mean,

You may find that the most effective Monkey Mind dramas that get you engrossed are scenes from movies.

So it could be a really emotional scene that you watched in a movie last weekend or even ten years ago.

Monkey Mind's going to cycle through and find the scenes of drama that are most compelling to you.

If you get past that,

You'll hit level six.

And level six is criticism of yourself,

Negative feelings about yourself.

And it doesn't have to be criticism around your meditation.

It can just be general criticism like,

You know,

You're fat,

You're ugly,

You're lazy,

You're not trying hard enough,

You know,

All these different feelings to basically try to get you into that dialogue with yourself and the drama of generating criticism against yourself.

And level seven is sleep.

So if you've gotten past all the previous levels,

You may be enjoying,

You know,

Sort of a dip in the ocean of bliss at this point.

All of a sudden you'll realize that,

Oh,

You know,

I'm really kind of sleepy.

I'm really tired.

And my philosophy on this is that,

You know,

You can power through,

You can just preside over yourself sleeping or feeling sleepy.

And what'll probably happen is you'll just fall asleep.

And I'm actually okay with that,

Right?

Because if you're anxious and your monkey mind's going crazy and you actually end up falling asleep as a result of your meditation,

That's actually not half bad.

Right?

And odds are if you are sleepy during meditation,

Right,

Chances are you're probably sleep deprived and you have a sleep deficit.

So my recommendation in that case is,

You know,

Get a night or two of really good sleep and then come back to meditation after that.

And,

You know,

In that case,

Are you giving into monkey mind?

Yeah.

And it's okay.

It's a give and take.

And with meditation,

There's no urgency.

There's no deadline.

There's no timeline.

And if you're finding that you are sleepy,

Go ahead and sleep if you feel like it.

Level eight is fascinating.

And it's a level that you're going to hit after you've conquered everything else probably.

You've gone into the ocean of bliss.

You're really enjoying yourself in the ocean of bliss.

And during one of the breaks of this immense intoxicating pleasure,

Your monkey mind will present you with boredom.

Right?

In other words,

The monkey mind will come to you and say,

Okay,

You know,

Nice job with this meditation.

You hit the ocean of bliss.

Oh,

Wasn't that incredible?

That's great.

And,

You know,

So we've done it now.

We've been in meditation for like 35,

40 minutes.

Good job.

Good going.

And I mean,

Aren't you bored?

I mean,

Are we done now?

Can we just get up and do something else?

And the point at this level is not that you have to say no and keep going.

The point at this level is if it presents you with boredom,

You need to have the tools and techniques to be able to choose of your own will,

Whether you do want to continue meditating or whether you feel like it's okay to get up.

Right?

I mean,

The point is not that you have to meditate for eight hours or whatever.

That's not the point at all.

The point is that at any given point,

You need to have the power to choose what you want to do.

Now,

The number nine level of monkey mind playbook distraction is my favorite.

Right?

And at this point,

You know,

You're probably deep in the ocean of bliss.

You're probably halfway down and then you hit this crossroads where you are about to go down even deeper into the ocean of bliss.

And this is a pretty advanced state to be in.

But just to give you a peek of the future and what's going to happen at this point is monkey mind will step up to you and basically present you with what I call upside.

Okay.

And that's level nine.

Level nine is upside.

And what's going to happen here is that monkey mind is going to present you with a brilliant flash of insight about something that you could benefit from.

So it could be a multi-million dollar business idea.

It could be the solution to a problem,

You know,

A financial problem,

A health problem,

A career,

A family problem that you have been just banging your head against the wall for weeks or even months.

And it's just going to come through,

Cut through all the clutter and it's going to be like the clouds part and you know,

This heavenly light comes down and you're like,

Oh my God,

This is the solution to my problem.

It's brilliant.

And at that point,

You know,

There is no should,

Right?

You can choose either way you want,

But the choice you're going to be presented with is I can either get up,

Write this idea down,

Disrupt my meditation,

Capture the idea,

And then maybe if I want to go back into meditation and then I've got to claw my way back to where I just got,

Right,

Or where I just came up from and odds are you're not going to be able to do it.

All right.

So I can pass on the idea and go even further down,

But the cost is if you go further down from that point deeper into the ocean of bliss,

When you come out,

You will have lost the idea.

You're not going to remember the idea.

When you're down that deep and you come out,

You don't even remember your own name.

So at that point it is the brilliant advanced tactic of monkey mind to derail you with incredible flash of insight.

So in summary,

In the face of all these nine tactics,

You know,

What do you do?

Well,

The whole point of the course and the whole point of Preside Meditation is to give you an arsenal of different techniques to basically dodge,

Block,

And parry all of these tactics.

But at a baseline,

You've already learned the basics of what to do,

Right?

In the face of all of this,

You can just preside.

You can preside over yourself and you can preside over monkey mind doing any of these nine levels of things.

And just presiding will give you enough detachment from the drama of what's going on to basically take say 80% of the wind out of the sails of the tactic.

And it should be enough wiggle room to allow you to get through.

And that's in meditation.

But even outside of meditation,

The funny thing is monkey mind doesn't just do these things when you're in meditation.

If you're paying attention,

You'll notice that it's doing this stuff all the time.

Like when you're driving,

When you're trying to get to sleep,

When you're trying to concentrate on work.

And even when you're not in meditation,

You can still use just the basic preside method of just preside to calm down monkey mind,

Even when you're not actually meditating,

So that you can focus on whatever it is you're trying to focus on.

Reviews

Very useful.my mind starts very soon with number 5🤦.
Thanks ❤️