“Monkey mind or mind monkey, from the Chinese compound xīnyuán and the Sino-Japanese compound shin'en 心猿 [lit. "heart-/mind-monkey"], is a Buddhist term meaning "unsettled; restless; capricious; whimsical; fanciful; inconstant; confused; indecisive; uncontrollable".” – Wikipedia
Can you figure out how many things are going on in your head at the same time? My mind is a circus, most times. As |I age, I find that I slip up, get clumsy, do not think full developed thoughts all the time. Once, I was your typical type A personality and could multi-task easily. Not any more. But yet, Critical Inner voice (Evil Inner witch) is voicing her run-on chatter critiquing everything I am physically doing. My heart is retracing feelings from the week before through into dreams of tomorrow. My soul is pulsing with sorrow that lingers. All this in a millisecond of time. The only thing Present is whatever it is I am physically doing. I am rote and detached, physically, in some way, from the circus going on in my head.
I cannot take a break, typically, and write down all the thoughts in my head. I am a list-maker, but the list of things I need to do is in my head. My Dr. said it was a type of OCD. If that list gets disrupted, I can lose focus and I cannot do what I am focusing on, physically. I set a time that I can be interrupted, fully. (Do not ask me to do something big until 10 am.) At ten, I begin working on my list. Until then, I blog, do some art prep for the day, set my list, and begin. There is always background noise on top of it all. I cannot sleep without the television yammering on and the lights flashing different values. My full brother is the same. We need that background noise and lights. It must be something genetic. We are both mental lsit-makers and keepers. We need to be physically engaged from the time we wake up, but for a time, we are organizing things and then, on top of that is the EIW making her comments, constantly.
I know that I can feel anxious or annoyed if something disrupts that hour or so in the morning. I am committed to the list by ten am and that can leave time for moving off the list for some adventure of some kind. It has taken years for me to switch off the list and go do something on the spur of the moment. I always enjoy the interruption but, yet, it feels like an interruption until my list is completed.
Right now, in my head, I am writing this blog, but I am planning brunch for my brother and his wife who, one day, decided to come here, and were here the next day. Brunch will be chicken sandwiches and grapes and a breakfast salad. After that, we will go to a tourist place they want to see. After that, I need to get my prescription to the drugstore. Then, the rest of the day is open to adventure. The only critical ‘thinking’ time is in the mornings.
Perhaps I keep my monkey thinking going because do not want negative thinking to happen. When I find negative thinking happen, I gt busy on my list in my head because that will distract me. Of course, there is a time and place to allow my monkey mind to go ‘there’. If I do, it is purposeful, and perhaps I intellectualize that kind of thinking. I make a list of those negative thoughts. Yes, I commit it all to paper and then I work through them. I chose the time and space. Sometimes we need to heal those things to hush them. Acknowledging them will help such thoughts dissipate. I really take some time to ‘think’ on each negative thought until I feel them begin to extinguish. It gives me such a sense of empowerment to do so. The chattering about some negative things seems to become a whisper and eventually I do not think that particular negative thought again. It sounds easy, doesn’t it? Well, it can happen that, in the moments of working on a negative thought, you can sweat blood and cry volumes of tears. But, the soul will cleanse itself and there is, as I said, a sense of such empowerment. Understanding oneself is empowerment. No one else can do the work for you. Understanding what emotions are attached to a negative thought will set you free of it. Know the WHY of it and it will extinguish the inner anguish that negative thoughts can bring. It is harder work to allow the negative thinking than it is to stop it.
During covid, I got a lot of monkey mind things taken care of. I had the time and space and I am understanding that as I age, I need to stop and think things through. There is a great deal more immediate things happening that need to be thought of. For instance, I spend much time during the day on Body thoughts. I have to remember to take my medication. Diabetes defines a great deal of list-making as I conquer the side effects of spikes and lows and food-driven problems. My lists in my head become more about things that I have to do, not should, would, could do.
Do you have a Monkey Mind and what have you done to hush it?
©Carol Desjarlais 4.22.22
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