The Busy Mind
Currently I have a couple of clients who are plagued by racing minds. Both are intellectuals and grasp the truth of the concept that our feelings come from thought. In other words they get that their experience is being created from within, rather than from external circumstances. For each of them this just adds another layer of uncomfortable thinking: they can now blame themselves for feeling stressed out.
Someone caught in this trap is like a hamster running himself to exhaustion on a wheel, knowing he is the runner but unaware of how to stop. They just don’t have any sense of that. I get it. My Pilates teacher will say things like ‘let your shoulder blades slip under your body,’ and I have no idea what that means or how to make it happen.
Yet just as I trust that the Pilates teacher is pointing to something that would help me, I see my role as enabling the client to get a feel for the mind slowing.
Sometimes asking a question – such as, What do you think is causing your racing mind? Or to what to you attribute the feeling of overwhelm? – can reveal that they believe there is a cause, other than thought in the moment, which is creating the chaos. Even internal concepts such as ‘I’m prone to anxiety’ actually amount to an outside-in misunderstanding of how human experience is created. The belief in ‘anxiety-proneness’ has become a thing, distinct from the flow of moment to moment thought, which is being innocently blamed for the distress. However when someone sees insightfully, or at a deep level, that it is possible to experience life moment to moment without the burden of such concepts, immediately the mind slows and peace grows.
If you have never heard of the 3 Principles the last paragraph may be very confusing. Yet training in this understanding has led to a quantum improvement in state of mind in 88% of people on a 4 day training. And if you would like to see how this work might benefit you please do get in touch.