Do you ever sit in silence and pay attention to your mind? The mind is a reality show, reflecting your past, present, and future in fascinating detail. Unprompted, it goes about its business of shedding light into every corner of your life. You needn’t do anything, except sit there and observe your mind in action. It’s like going to the movies.
So, sit back and enjoy the show as your mind creates the Movie of You. As director, you can select from the plethora of script ideas your mind arrays before you. It’s your story to create, not your mind’s. But remember, Karma stems from ideas you allow your mind to pursue. So, choose to act upon thoughts that lead to good behavior.
You can also pause your mind’s seemingly endless chatter by sitting still a while until it runs out of things to think about. Another way to pause your thinking is to shift your attention from the movie to the here-and-now space between thoughts. This is a simple matter of remembering to bring your attention back to your breathing or mantra. In that peaceful, calm and empty space you are connected to the source of life within.
One of the ways the inner source manifests itself is with thoughts. This is the realm of mind. So, when we sit back and observe our mind, we are literally observing thoughts coming from the deepest part of ourselves. From the perspective of a calm mental moment, a thought can be a sudden intrusion, rippling through the inner space. Your eyes shift quickly and inadvertently in a vain attempt to glimpse its form more clearly. In the meditative moment, however, you must have the presence of mind to deny the distraction of a thought hole, even though your story compels your attention.
“Chatter is only your mind trying to integrate the activity of recent moments in time. Eventually, your mind might settle into thinking more deeply about a specific past or future moment.”
There is potential advantage to the thought-stopping process during meditation. First, it’s practice for the many times we need to concentrate on something without mental chatter interfering with listening, reading, or building processes. But I believe the main benefit is to augment mental calm in the outer world mental space. It’s difficult to be calm when we are bombarded by life in the moment. Calmness isn’t a trait we can turn on at will. It takes practice and an appreciation of it as more salubrious than turmoil.
Turmoil is a good way to describe the “monkey mind,” with thoughts running helter-skelter, seemingly without a gap between them, and in no discernable order. This is the initial, surface level of meditation commonly encountered as one enters a period of silence. Chatter is only your mind trying to integrate the activity of recent moments in time. Eventually, your mind might settle into thinking more deeply about a specific past or future moment. But you aren’t doing the settling; it’s your mind beginning to think more deeply about specific aspects of your life, say, home, work, leisure, or whatever.
The monkey mind is still operative, but it seems more focused and insightful. New ideas arise to address new life issues. This inner process repeats itself day after day, but it’s never boring because events in the outer world are always changing within the movie of me. In outer world moments, my bywords are harmony, spontaneity, and improvisation. Acting is my most important pursuit, and I want to do a good job of it.