Minding the "Monkey Mind"

This is a sappy (cheesy tourista) photo of me with a squirrel monkey resting on my crown chakra in a plaza in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico (on the "Mayan Riviera"). I'm sure that's not how the Mayans referred to this beautiful area on the Yucatan Peninsula, but I'm told it's a good name for tourism purposes. My daughter Emily is next to me with a monkey on her shoulder.


I am wearing a baseball cap, so I think that I am safe from "monkey business." :-)


The tie-in with the monkey resting his furry ass on my head is a humorous metaphor I heard that compares a busy mind to a nervous, out-of-control monkey running/ climbing / swinging to and fro nervously. Like a fearful and angry mind churning up all sorts of bad out comes. Running in circles. Pointless worry.


In reality, 90% + of the bad things you worry about never happen. Think about it.


To this point, last year I went to a book signing featuring: Wake Up Now, A Guide to the Journey of Spiritual Awakening by Stephan Bodian. The author said that when he was learning to meditate as a young Buddhist monk, the abbot in the monastery would describe the busy, wandering mind as a "monkey mind". A lower primate mind out of control. Not capable of being quiet or centered due to preoccupations.

It's true. If you watch what's going on in your mind when you are worrying, it's usually circular thoughts making up and creating outcomes that usually do not materialize.


I'm trying to refine and quiet my monkey mind, and I'm making progress. My wife and children need some more work.


I've been lecturing my wife and children recently on the need to calm their minds and limit the amount of small stuff that they complain and worry about. So the message that I try to convey (to reduce stress and worry) is to focus on the 90% that's going right and deal with the 10% problems the best you can,with a feeling of optimism that things will in the end turn out OK.


Why do I blog on this ? Because it is my belief that 85% illness is rooted in stress which is rooted in fear and anxiety of some kind. If you can quiet your mind, you can reduce allot of stress and lead a happier and healthier life. It's very often not just what you are eating....but what is eating you.

" The point of spiritual awakening is not to maximize your assets and minimize your losses, but to be free of attachment to gain or loss and to be peaceful and joyful in the midst of whatever life brings."


Stephan Bodian

Words of real wisdom.

"Feed that monkey in your mind a peanut and let him go on his way"

AHO

Richard

PS- This is my Internet version of my day standing in Speakers Corner, Hyde Park, London, delivering my philosophy of life to no one, save a few pecking pigeons (Mediterranean rock doves), a rat and maybe a squirrel or two.

PS.PS,- Rich Remedies, Volume 1 is finally being printed. Had I let the monkey mind get the best of me during the past 2 years of writing this book, it never would have come to fruition. At several intervals I thought I'd never finish.......it's now just a week away.