A ZEN STORY
A while back I stumbled upon an interesting Zen story which I’d love to share with you:
A university professor went to visit a famous Zen master. While the master quietly served tea, the professor talked about Zen. The master poured the visitor’s cup to the brim, and then kept pouring. The professor watched the overflowing cup until he could no longer restrain himself. “It’s full! No more will go in!” the professor blurted. “This is you,” the master replied, “How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup.”
Our mind is full with thoughts most of the time. We have an average of 27.000 thoughts a day. In an average life there are too many happenings, events and things to do. And everything feels often urgent. Our heads are like the overflowing cup of the professor in the zen story.
I don’t know about you, but I find it a horrible feeling when I am in this state of mind! My brain feels tight and constricted, I feel and act agitated and short tempered. It feels like I’m stuck in a big grey thunderstorm cloud. It’s like I’m wearing the wrong glasses and I see everything blurry. I can’t see clearly. Over all I feel I’m in a low mood and I seem to be in a non-stop rush.
How amazing would it be if our mind would have an Emergency Exit right?
You probably recognize yourself being in above described state of mind. I’m pretty sure actually that with the lives we live in this modern fast paced 21th Century, 99% of humanity finds itself in this State of Mind. This includes our children!
OUR THINKING IS NOT OUR LIFE!
The shocking fact is that when we don’t recognise this state of mind we think our thoughts make up our life! We live in our thoughts! We live in the reality of our thoughts.
But there’s good news. What is going on in our heads, it is NOT our life! It’s just thinking going on. However, with our thinking we create our experience of life. With our thinking we create our feelings. Thought and feeling are one. Always! No exception. This is 100% true for everybody! This experience becomes our so called ‘reality’. We think this reality is our real life. It’s not! It’s just a ‘story’ or drama created from Thought.
For those of you who are familiar with The Three Principles by Sydney Banks will already have grown a certain level of understanding of this fundamental principle of life. If you have never heard of The Three Principles, pleasevisit the postin which I explain what they are. They may change the way you look at the world and your life!
But first back to humanity’s default state of mind, one that is overflowing with thoughts, thoughts and more thoughts :
I know of myself I get into this state when I just have too many things to do in a short space of time. I was burnt out once or twice in my life and I have learnt how to recognize the signs of overwhelm. Over the years, I learned to not plan too much in one day. I make sure I don’t have too much on my plate. I like and need breathing space. Space to take in, rest, digest and process life, space for getting inspired, space to just be and enjoy.
Now ‘normally’ I’m quite skilled at organizing my life in a way that I don’t get too revved up. However, sometimes I don’t read the signs in time and here I am…
My mind looks and feels like this:
And this is where I’d rather be, wouldn’t you?:
WHEN THE MIND CLEARS, WISDOM APPEARS
Why do we want a clear mind you may wonder? I often asked this question to the children I was teaching yoga and mindfulness a couple of years back. ‘Isn’t it a bit boring to have not so much in and on your mind?’ I would ask them. And don’t we definitely feel more important when we’re all busy with lots going on in our lives aka heads if we’re honest? Why on earth do we want a clear mind?
There’s several reasons why we would want a calm mind versus a cluttered and full mind with lots of thinking going on.
Speaking for myself, but I know this is true for the rest of humanity too, I am a much nicer person when I am in a calm state of mind and secondly, things just seem to go more in flow, as if life unfolds easily all by itself, without me having to figure it all out and without me having to work and strive so hard. How is that possible?
OUR INNER WISDOM
Now here’s the thing, and this is so important to understand. Imagine we all have an in built intelligent GPS navigation system inside ourselves. Like the Satnav in our cars. Just like the Satnav this ‘system’ is telling us when to turn left, when to go the right, where to expect obstacles on the road and where to slow down when there are speed camera’s. This system is called our Wisdom or our Intuition.
Now imagine you are in the car and you have the radio on high volume and you have several passengers traveling with you and they are chatting loudly on the back seat. Would you be able to hear the Satnav? It would be very hard indeed and chances you get lost are big because of not having heard clearly what the Satnav was trying to tell you.
This same principle we can apply where it comes to having a clear mind and our wisdom guiding us through our lives. Our own wisdom is unique to us. Only your wisdom knows what’s right for you. No one and nothing else outside ourselves can beat this! However, it is rooted into something much larger than ourselves.
WISDOM CAN BREAK THROUGH ANY MOMENT
Wisdom is sourced from a space called Universal Mind or some people call it The Universe, or The Great Spirit, The Source, God, it doesn’t matter what name we give it, they all refer to the same Principle: it’s the intelligence behind ALL life that is powering everything in our world. It is the force that makes your hair and nails grow and makes an acorn grow into an Oak.
Deeper feelings of love, peace and joy share this spacious home with wisdom. It speaks through us when we fall into the grace of Silence. Silence allows new and fresh thinking to pass through our minds. When our minds are open and empty, there’s room for what we call inspiration! To inspire, to breathe in new ideas and new thinking.
It is inspiration that leads to ‘action inspired by wisdom’. How can we recognize this? It is a doing which seems effortless. We are ‘in the flow’. Our own often small-minded personal thinking gets out of the way and gives way to something we couldn’t have imagined before. Life itself has taken over. The quality of this process is more one of an ‘allowing’, rather than a ‘doing’.
As soon as our thinking settles, as soon as we have a little less going on in our minds, we start to reconnect to that what is larger than ourselves. We start to reconnect to who we truly are beneath all the noise of our thinking.
So what can we do? How can we find our way back to a calm and clear mind?
2 STEPS TO CALM & CLEAR THE MIND
Although ‘in theory’ a calm state of mind is ever only one thought away, sometimes it can seem like we are really stuck in our minds and we can’t seem to find the way out. When we are in overwhelm it can be very hard to find the way out. What can we do?
1 Stop & Recognise
The first step back to a calm mind is to recognise that there is a lot of thinking going on in our head. Shifting our attention to the observation THAT we are thinking as opposed to the content of our thinking. This seems like a minor shift but it has huge consequences.
OK. Let’s do it:
I am recognizing there’s tons of thinking going on in my head and I am convinced I have every excuse for it!
I look at what’s happening in my life right now and realise there’s a lot on my plate:
Summing it all up, I know it is too much to hold really.
How do we recognise there is too much going on in our heads?
We start to lose our mojo, little things are going wrong, we feel short fused, irritated, agitated maybe?
So let’s stop here for a moment and take three deep breaths. Just do it! And start recognizing THAT you are caught in the act of thinking and stop focusing on the content of this thinking for just a little while.
So let’s stop here for a moment and take three deep breaths. Just do it! And start recognizing THAT you are caught in the act of thinking and stop focusing on the content of this thinking for just a little while.
As soon as we have recognised that we are thinking we are ready for the second step:
2 Slow Down!
After recognizing and identifying the state we’re in we have the choice to get off the thought train and slow down!
Do something that has NOTHING to do with all the content of your thinking, the things you are so busy with. Go for a walk in nature, jump on your yoga mat, do exercise, clean your house or sit still (if you can!) and just breathe. What ever you choose to do, DO IT SLOW and with all of your attention!
Cancel appointments and create some space.
I know this can feel really challenging when your experience is that everything is spinning out of control and we feel too caught up in it all.
WALKING IN SILENCE
To me personally, walking on my own in nature helps me drop into my inner Silence. I’ve come to realise that oftentimes all the talking about the problems in our lives with friends, with our spouse, our kids, can fire up our mind even more, keeping it busy and stuck in a certain place. It can’t settle into a calmer state. Wisdom nor inspiration can come through.
Walking on our own in silence, taking in the beauty and all the sounds around us does wonders. The simple act of walking just reorganises all of our bodily energy systems, including our mind.
The best way for me to describe this is using the example of a Snow Globe, remember this thing we used to shake as children? Our thoughts are like the snow whirling around in every direction. When we stop shaking, the snow slowly settles down. Aaaaaah! Suddenly inspiration is there. A solution coming out of nowhere… a clear Seeing
This is exactly what happens in our mind when walking in nature, in silence. Just noticing the green of the trees, the twittering of the birds, the babbling of a stream in the forest, the waves of the sea etc, help us become still and all of our whirling thoughts start to settle gradually, a little more with every step and every breathe.
And as our mind is clearing itself, feelings of joy and gratitude gently may bubble up. The joy of just being able to move our body freely, and the gratitude for so much beauty around us makes us feel lighter. More light hearted.
A CALM MIND HELPS DISSOLVING PROBLEMS
You know what the funny and fascinating thing is that happens as a result of slowing down to the speed of now? With the piles of thinking we have on all sorts of stuff, we create all sorts of problems.
Being in a calmer and clearer state of mind helps us See that there are no problems at all really, we just made them up.
By being in a calm and clear state of mind our problems are not resolved, they are dissolved. When we experience this we know we are harnessing the Power of Now.
I thank and bow to nature and silence for this powerful gift of helping us fall back into ease and grace and into a peaceful state of mind. I love the way nature and silence are reflecting back who we truly are, innately healthy and at ease and peace. Always.
By recognizing thinking happening inside our heads and slowing down we fall into remembering who we truly are underneath all the noise of our busy mind, all the stories, problems and drama’s we create because of the biggest misunderstanding in life, which is to believe our thoughts and feelings are separated. They are not.
Thought = feeling
Thought equals our feeling. Our experience of life, comes from the inside out. Understanding this will cause an ‘inside-out revolution’ in our lives. We are not victim of our circumstances any longer.
Automatically and naturally, without us having to figure it all out, things fall into place. The profound understanding of this principle is enough. Wisdom has an answer to everything and is waiting to break through your mind any moment.
Often we make ourselves to believe the thought that we have to ‘keep up’ with everything and everyone which makes us feel stressed. We have the power to choose to drop the thought once we have recognised that the thought is just a thought and never reality itself.
This is the true meaning of being free.
Bright Blessings
Ps .... When you're ready, here are a few ways in which I can guide you through the process of awakening, reclaiming your inner Wise Woman & embodying your unique Soul Path:- In my Online YIN Studio, women from all over the world experience the magical power of slowing down and dropping back into their body, their belly and their heart on a weekly base. Friday 10am and Tuesday 8pm CET
Sign up for a FREE taster session or simply hit REPLY to this email and let me know whether you'd like to pay us a visit.
- 4 Months Personal 'Her Soul' Intensive Master Mentorship Trajectory
Spaces are very limited. Find out more HERE and Apply for a first 1 hr FREE and non-binding Somatic Soul Session through my online Calendar.
0 Comments