Hello again,
Good day,
Welcome to day 8 of Beginners Mind where we'll be talking about Monkey Mind.
As always I'd like to start off by saying that I hope that yesterday's information and all the information you've received so far has been helpful to you.
I hope you've been able to carry some of it forward and I hope you'll be able to apply it.
Again I would encourage you to ask questions as you have them,
Especially about today's topic of Monkey Mind.
So what is Monkey Mind?
Well we briefly touched on it during our distraction day and Monkey Mind is a term that was coined millennia ago and was given to a mind that is so awash and frantic with thoughts and feelings that it is likened to a hyperactive monkey that is just jumping around a tree from branch to branch to branch to branch to branch so fast that you can barely even say that it's on one branch,
It seems like it's on and gone,
On and gone,
On and gone,
It's just everywhere all the time.
And maybe you've experienced it already but there will definitely be days where you will experience Monkey Mind,
Practices where you'll experience Monkey Mind.
Maybe you experience it for a moment or two,
Maybe you experience it for the whole practice.
It happens,
It happens to everyone.
And one of the important things to keep in mind about Monkey Mind,
Even though it can feel really really really overwhelming,
Is that at its core,
At its roots,
Monkey Mind is just another distraction.
It's just a fast,
Constant slew of distractions.
So it can be difficult to determine whether it is truly Monkey Mind or whether these are just other distractions,
Thoughts,
Feelings,
Whatever.
So this is where awareness becomes so important.
And I say awareness specifically in that when we meditate,
When we bring ourselves to center at the beginning of the meditation,
We don't just dump everything that we notice.
We notice the sounds and smells.
And when we move on from the sounds and smells,
They don't go away,
They just kind of stay on the periphery.
They're still there,
We're still aware of them,
We're just not focusing on them.
And so we continue that and continue that until we're focusing on and we're intent on just the sensations of the breath,
We're still aware of the rest of everything.
And this awareness can help you identify Monkey Mind and kind of discern it from usual thoughts or feelings and its own kind of true phenomenon.
So if you definitely cross that line where you're like no this is definitely Monkey Mind,
This is crazy today,
This is non-stop,
There's not even a gap in these thoughts,
Feelings,
Distractions.
Then there's a definite helpful and proven way to deal with Monkey Mind specifically.
What we do is once we've realized that Monkey Mind is what's happening,
We go through that similar process that we do at the beginning of the practice where we recenter ourselves.
So we release our attention from wherever we're attempting to focus,
We go back out,
We expand the attention,
We focus on the sounds and smells of the space around you again.
Then we focus on those physical sensations that we touch on in the beginning of the practice.
Then we focus on the breath through the whole body,
Then we focus on the breath where you feel it most.
The same as we do at the beginning of our practice.
And it doesn't have to be any prescribed length,
Preferably it's not as quick as a snap of a finger to move through each step,
But if it only takes you a moment or two to perceive and bring attention to the sounds and smells of the space around you again,
Well so be it.
If it takes you a full minute,
So be it.
But just work your way through,
Recenter on the breath from that one spot again,
And then proceed with your meditation.
Keep your attention focused on the breath and move on with the practice.
And what we're doing by doing this is instead of trying to wrangle that monkey and trying to hold it down and force it to stop,
Just kind of like that wild hog metaphor that we used on day one when we talked about what meditation is,
Which we know ultimately won't work.
So instead of trying to wrestle that monkey and force it to stop,
We're giving it a bigger cage to play in.
We're giving it real estate to move around in.
Then we're slowly decreasing the scope of our attention again so that we can practice.
And this is something you can do as many times as it takes,
Especially when you get into longer practices,
If the monkey mind is really really prevalent that day,
It may take two,
Three,
Five,
Ten attempts at this to kind of let the monkey mind settle down.
But I promise you that with patience,
Acceptance,
And persistence,
The monkey mind will calm down.
This recentering method does work,
And you can get on with your practice.
As always,
Thank you for listening.
I hope you have a great practice today.
