The Mind and Thoughts Never Stop
In January 2020 I arrived in Auckland New Zealand it was the start of my world travel and challenging myself to build my coaching business while on the road. To start this year and to help me truly understand what my mind was doing. I signed up for a 10-day silent retreat which is called a Vipassana.
Now this was so out of character for me, even my yoga teacher didn’t know how I would not talk for 10 days. I’m a talker and I love talking to people so to set this goal for myself I knew it would be challenging and pushing me into the uncomfortable.
The days starts at 5am with a gong ringing to wake you up as the first meditation session is at 5.30am. You can choose to go to this meditation I had set myself the goal to go to the morning ones. There were four meditations a day ranging from 1-2 hours that you had to go to as part of the vipassana the rest were optional.
Before I arrived, I’d assumed the not talking would be the hardest part. However as everyone is doing it within a few hours you get with the program and don’t want to disrupt other people’s practise by being the one that talked. You might get caught out in moments of politeness someone opening the door for you or accidently bumping into a person and a sorry would slip out.
In silence all you have is the mind and the thoughts running around even as you try to focus on the meditation and bringing yourself back to the present moment within a few minutes a thought would pop up. I can see why monks spend all their life trying to quiet the mind through hours of meditation.
My mind during that time had three main story themes the first was ‘What is funny about this?’ the second was ‘Romantic Comedy’ and lastly ‘Creativity’. As stories go, I’m very lucky to have those themes but they are not by chance these have been built from my behaviour patterns.
Your mind is the way it is because firstly you wanted love from your parents, so you built a pattern of behaviour to get love from them. I decided I would get love from being the fun one or as my dad used to call me ‘Cheeky’. Be very careful how you label your children as they will live up to it!
Now cheeky seemed to work well not just for my parents but other people in my life so I became addicted to making them laugh. Didn’t always work with the teachers in school but as it mostly worked, I kept it for many years.
The romantic comedy stories came from reading all my sister’s Mills and Boon books and getting an idea of romance that was not based on reality. This was not helpful in my dating life, but I had no awareness of this for many years. I also had a fixed mindset when it came to dating which was another obstacle but because my mind was in a pattern, I didn’t know any different.
Creativity was built from the fact I’m dyslexic and needed to adapt my learning, and creativity felt easier verses learning reading and spelling. Now I know I can do both as we are not stuck one way it is simply our mindset being in fixed rather than growth.
In silence I realised the mind likes stories I had built a wonderful romantic comedy with a guy I knew all set around us travelling around New Zealand together. My mind likes happy stories whenever I feel stressed as a form of escape from reality. Now you would think this is a wonderful, but it can make the present moment seem very dull and unfulfilling.
Through the meditation the aim is to get control over the busy mind and keep yourself in the present moment through focus on the breath. I like to add another approach to the mind and understanding it has helped me and my meditation practise.
The mind and thoughts will never stop when in silence they are like a loudspeaker that you can’t turn off. Even in sleep you can have such vivid dreams that it doesn’t feel like you rested at all. I understand why they use solitary confinement as a punishment in prison.
In my 10 days I realised that I needed to become friends with my mind I had never given it any real attention. I began to listen to what it was saying and took action to help it change. I built tools to help me counter the old patterns I had and to tell the mind ok we are changing now. The mind is in a routine and its up to you to find out what are the main theme’s running around.
Now I can say I’m best friends with my mind I know when it starts to take me into a story and why it does it. I understand its need to be right about something and it stops listening. I know its just trying to keep me safe that’s why it will go for the negative if I don’t move it to the positive quickly. I appreciate when my themes come up and that if I want to break from the mind, I must focus on something 100% and stay in the present moment.
