Direct it to rest
The mind, oh the mind. What are we going to do with this mind of ours?
It is so busy, so stubborn, so incorrigible, or so it seems at least.
Let’s deal with each one of those descriptors and see where we end up. First it is so busy. It’s been described as a monkey mind, bouncing from tree to tree, never still. Countless times have I heard someone say they can’t quiet their mind, or can’t relax it. We don’t know where our thoughts even come from, one second not there, next there, and next we are lost in them. To rest it, there are a few things you need to understand. One is that it is easy for the mind to be all over the place. It takes no effort whatsoever. That isn’t news to you, I know, but what that means about Rest is that it takes effort. But one place that will derail us, is in the type of effort we apply. Too much force, strain, unnaturalness to our efforts and we just get lost in thought again and forget what we were even doing. Remember the effort is to rest, we are not fixing it, forcing it to be quiet, trying to stop it, or have some magical mystical experience. Just trying to rest. To rest the mind, our effort can be called Direction. If we direct our mind, we can keep it busy but on restful things. Think about the last time someone really cut you off in traffic, in a dangerous way, and how long you railed on about it. Or what memory from 10 or 20 years ago do you still get lost in today. You absolutely ARE able to focus your mind, you’re just focusing it on hectic and harmful things. With a little direction, and then practice you will find you have picked up the art of meditation rather easily, and it won’t be long before you’re really seeing changes in how you interact with the world.
The stubborness in our mind is evident when we think of depression or worry or remorse. We get hell-bent on these things and woe to anyone who try to talk you out of it or redirect you to something positive. Even when we have made plans that are not working out, we berate ourself over not getting everything done in time, yet there is no late, it was our made up timeline to begin with. Our stubborn mind is stuck on the plan and now stuck on our failure to fulfill the plan, and we suffer the attack. Buddhism calls it attachment, Christianity might call it worshipping an idle or other God, and there are plenty of other ways this universal struggle has been symbolized. Directing the mind to rest, is still the simple process to change this.
Incorrigible as the mind is - and if you need the definition : (of a person or their tendencies) not able to be corrected, improved, or reformed, it isn’t actually unable to change. It sure does seem like it, because you really really want it to change. You may have even done courses and classes and retreats, you may even meditate regularly and still it loops into its ways at the drop of a dime. Cultivation of rest for the mind does work, and if you currently meditate but still struggle, maybe we need to look back at the busy paragraph. Maybe your application could use some finesse. Directing the mind to rest, practicing it over and over, is the same process to deal with this also.
Directing the mind to rest is a wonderful skill to develop that can surely change all of these typical patterns of the mind. We begin learning the directing in our Body programs. Giving the mind a restful subject to attend to. Soon those benefits pay off and you’ll be looking for the next level, that is where Mind programs come in. It is important to continue practicing body, and directing the mind to rest or even adding in meditation at this point, because in mind we begin to delve into understanding which is a sort of vaporizor gun. It is wonderful to have a quieter mind, and be able to direct it to rest, but for any of us with challenges in life, our past, our relationships, our jobs, our family, whatever it is, we will keep coming into contact with things that seemingly send us right back to our old patterns. In the Mind programs, using the meditative awareness process, we gain understanding over our mind so fully that those patterns get vaporized. One by one, little by little, layer by layer. But when they are gone, they are gone. They don’t come back.
Life in the Body has the tools to walk you through each leg of the journey, with the goal of arriving at wholeness. Discovering your wholeness - its there already, just hidden beneath all that fluff.