How to keep your Monkey Mind from wreaking havoc on your relationship

Monkeys in a plum tree by Mori Sosen (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Are your relationship problems due to your Monkey Mind?

Our Monkey Mind wrecks havoc on our ability to have a satisfying life and relationships. 

How to keep a Monkey-Mind from wreaking havoc on your relationship.

First thing first, know what you’re up against. Here are some common ways Monkey-Mind will distract you from the present moment:

Future Tripping

Being preoccupied with the future:

• To-do list items
• Plans
• Uncertainty and apprehension about some future things like how a project or conversation will go.
• Rehearsing conversations in your head that you may or may not ever have.

Advice: Notice that you’re future tripping, name it, and get it out of your head and either on to some paper or into your digital planner. If you need to make dinner reservations for your out-of-town guests, schedule some time to do it, set a reminder, or stop scrolling through twitter and do it now. The idea here is your monkey mind is working to remember to make the reservation, your mind is going through a lot of effort to bring it to the foreground so you don’t forget about it completely. Let your handy device do the remembering for you so you can take a deep breath, get present, and give your partner a nice smooch.  

Worrying About the Past

To live our best lives, we must stay in the present… and that means chasing Monkey Mind away. Here’s a guide to addressing this invisible troublemaker.

• Obsessing about the past
• Replaying convos in your head
• Worrying that you didn’t show up as your best self
• Wishing you had spoken up.
• Beating yourself up for how you handled things.

Advice: This is guilt, shame, and regret territory. And it’s a huge waste of your precious presence if you’re stuck in the past worrying about a bunch of stuff that already happened—you’re missing out on so much that’s happening NOW. You’re going to need to stop the self-criticism and abuse and learn to drop the story about how you handled things, if you can learn anything from the past event, certainly take stock and apply your life nugget. But that doesn’t mean keep beating yourself up about it over and over. Take note and move on, clearing the internal clutter so there’s more space for presence in your life. Get out of the past, get back in your body, and feel your breath come in and out for a few minutes.

If you think about it your mind is a lot like a crazy monkey, it’s always running off, following this thought or that thought. You have no idea how you strayed from the path or when but you definitely did and now you’re caught in a thicket of thoughts, stressing out over this future event or that deadline. And just like that! You’re off on a whole mental detour, away from the present.

Monkey Mind (we all have one by the way) wreaks havoc on your ability to have a satisfying life—when you get carried off in a stream of thoughts, and you end up thinking about life as opposed to actually living it and enjoying it as it happens. And that’s a real problem for your relationships because you lose connection to not just your own physical and emotional experience but also to everything that’s going on between you and your partner.

Imagine: you’re together with your partner hanging out, having fun, or running errands and you get caught up in mentally composing that work email to your team; it means you’re missing out on your lady’s beautiful smile or that witty joke she cracked while you were only half-listening. It means you didn’t even notice that she lovingly put her hand on your knee while driving and kept it there the whole way home or that she always plants a kiss on your cheek when you hold the door open for her.

Opportunities for authenticity and intimacy show up all the time, but you’ll miss them if you succumb to your monkey-mind tendencies. Listen, when you consistently fail to seize those opportunities for connection, you’ll both end up feeling the distance and disconnection in your relationship, which I know isn’t what you ultimately want at all.

When presence is lacking, both parties can end up feeling alone, dissatisfied, confused, and blame themselves or each other for the disconnect. No fun.

Here’s how to stop your Monkey Mind

Stop Avoiding Difficult Emotions:

• Anger
• Frustration
• Resentment
• Disappointment
• Sadness
• Loneliness
• Feeling left out
• Confusion
• Overwhelm
• Stress
• Grief

Advice: Let’s face it, none of these emotions are easy to be with and how to handle our emotional upsets is something we simply aren’t taught in our culture. So we avoid them and try to either stuff them down or blame them on somebody or something. Both avoidance and blame require a lot of mental gymnastics to manage, which of course takes you right out of the here-and-now. So the trick is to learn how to feel and skillfully be with whatever’s happening for you. Emotions are what add the richness to our lives. Emotions, even the difficult ones, can serve as a compass to guide us. Sharing your emotional world with your partner is the doorway to a deeper connection and more intimacy. This means avoiding them and pretending you aren’t feeling the way you’re feeling is actually counterproductive. But it’s important to become adequate at understanding and supporting our emotional selves first. You have to feel it to heal it, and Meditation is a great tool for recognizing and understanding these difficult emotions.

Audio: Discussion on Mindfulness one of the Seven Factors of Enlightenment

Here Are 5 Steps to Mindfully Be with Difficult Emotions:

• Name the emotion and feel it in your body. For example: ‘Anxiety is present and my belly feels tight.’
• Notice the storyline about the emotion, this often includes blaming how you feel on circumstances or other people; ‘I wouldn’t have been in such a foul mood if I wasn’t late and I wouldn’t have been late if it wasn’t raining’. Drop the storyline and drop the blame.
• Don’t stuff it down and try to avoid how you’re feeling, own it, and feel it. ‘You have to feel it to heal it’, as the adage goes.
• Have compassion for the part of you that’s upset, no criticizing, or self-judgment here. Practice being a good friend to the part of you that’s feeling bad. You can use the breath to slowly breathe into the area you feel the emotion.
• Practice sharing what’s happening for you with your partner without needing/wanting them to change or fix anything.

Tip: Taming the Monkey-Mind is a lifelong process and one of the best ways to start this worthwhile undertaking is to take up a regular meditation practice, keep it short to start, three to five minutes maximum. 

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Who was Siddhartha Gautama The Buddha? 

A very brief intro.

The Siddhartha was a spiritual teacher who lived in India sometime between the 6th and 4th centuries BC. His philosophy ended up creating the religion we now know as Buddhism, and tends to counter much of what we're taught in the West.

After many years spent in deep meditation, he realized that attachment and desire lead to unhappiness. He believed that Enlightenment, or "Nirvana", was achieved when one's mind is compassionate, free of attachment, and focused on the present moment.

He spent the rest of his life teaching others how to free themselves from suffering and live a life of compassion, fearlessness, and joy.

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Leading A Buddhist Life

What is the purpose of life?

Man is the highest fruit on the tree of evolution. It is for man to realize his position in nature and understand the true meaning of his life. To know the purpose of life, you will first have to study the subject through your experience and insight. Then, you will discover for yourself the true meaning of life. Guidelines can be given. but you must create the necessary conditions for the arising of realization yourself. There are several prerequisites to the discovery of the purpose of life;

1. First, you must understand the nature of man and the nature of life. 
2. Keep your mind calm and peaceful through the adoption of a religion. 
3. Lastly, when these conditions are met, the answer you seek will come like the gentle rain from the sky. 

5 Hindrances To Buddhist Practice

5 Things That Hinder Buddhist Practice and The Antidotes....

In Buddhism, there are five things that hinder our practice and make us more prone to unskilful or unwholesome behaviour.

These 5 hindrances are desire, aversion, sloth, restlessness and doubt

For each of these there are some simple antidotes that are suggested to counter their strength and effects.

Hindrance: Desire/Attraction

is the desire for anything that touches one of our six sense doors (sight, smell, touch, taste, feeling, thought). It usually involves desiring a pleasant experience. It may be food, sleep, a thought, sex, etc. Desire is one of the chief causes of suffering, and is an ever-pervasive hindrance in many people’s practice. It blocks mindfulness as we get carried away by our craving, and creates dukkha in our lives and practice.

Antidotes:

As with all of the hindrances, the Buddha suggested that we know when it is present and know when it is not. We are also to know how it arises, how it ceases, and how to keep it from arising in the future. This goes for all of the hindrances, as the Buddha mentions in the Satipatthana Sutta.

With sensual desire, there are a few other antidotes. First, we can guard the sense doors. This means we don’t go out chasing thoughts, sounds, feelings, etc. Let what comes to you come, but don’t reach out for other experiences. Second, we can do contemplations on death and the repulsiveness of the body. These are mindfulness practices that help us disenchant ourselves with the body, and also may be found in the Satipatthana Sutta.

Finally, practice concentration. Strange to think that concentration can serve as an antidote to something that impeded concentration, but it is true. Through practicing concentration, we focus the mind mind more clearly on one object and the mind doesn’t wander as much.

Hindrance: Aversion/ill-will

The second hindrance, ill-will, is also one of the chief causes of suffering in our lives. It’s a quality of aversiveness, or pushing experience away. Ill-will most often arises in response to unpleasant thoughts or sensations. When something arises that we find unpleasant, the mind responds by trying to distance it from us. This is a major cause of dukkha in our lives, and we should work to bring awareness to this process.

Antidote:

Bringing awareness to it when it arises is really the most important tool we have. You don’t need to suddenly love the unpleasant experiences, but learn to watch for ill-will arising. It’s often such a quick reaction that we don’t even notice it happening. Continue to watch the process unfold.

A great antidote to ill-will is metta or loving-kindness practice. In metta practice, we bring a gentle friendliness to our experience. It helps us with ill-will toward others, ourselves, events, thoughts, and anything toward which we apply it. Loving-kindness really is the most commonly used antidote to ill-will, but you may also reflect on the kamma being created by anger, hatred, etc. What does being angry do to you?

Hindrance: Sloth/Torpor/Dullness

The third hindrance is commonly translated as sloth and torpor. This comes in the form of a drowsiness or dullness in our practice. It may be the result of a lack of sleep, overeating, an uninterested mind, aversiveness, or many other causes. Sleepiness is something many meditators are faced with, especially on retreat. It may be one of the easier hindrances to notice in our practice, yet we struggle with it greatly. Sloth and torpor may be in the mind or in the body, giving the sense of a tired and lazy body or a dull mind.

Antidotes:

The Buddha also gave a few suggestions for moments of sloth and torpor during practice: open your eyes, look toward the light, stand up, or tug on your earlobes. There are people standing during meditation at every retreat I’ve been on. It is a great way to keep the mind alert. The Buddha even recommended standing meditation as a form of practice in the Satipatthana Sutta. You may also switch to a walking meditation practice. Be aware of what leads to this hindrance. Overeating is a common cause of sleepiness, as is over or undersleeping. You may also try bringing some joy and energy into your practice. Many people find it helpful to switch to a mudita practice when experiencing this hindrance.

Hindrance: Restlessness and Worry

The fourth hindrance is restlessness and worry. This is the quality of anxiety, monkey mind, or too much misplaced energy. We may feel the restlessness in the body, often in the chest or limbs. The mental part shows up often as a tense mind,  a rapidly firing mind, or a mind preoccupied with the future. Restlessness and worry prevent the mind and body from settling, and often involves giving unwise attention to thoughts.

Antidotes:

The antidotes offered in the suttas to this hindrance are quite varied. It’s suggested to spend time with who posses dignity, practice concentration, and develop tranquility. Equanimity practice is often helpful to develop this tranquil, concentrated state and no longer succumb to the thinking mind. You may also try walking meditation, this releases some of the extra energy in a skillful way.

Hindrance: Doubt

The fifth hindrance is the hindrance of doubt. Doubt may come up in many different ways. We may doubt the teachings, if we’re practicing correctly, our teachers, or the experience we’re having. It may arise with a disguise that seduces us into believing our thoughts. When the mind is trying to figure out some aspect of our practice, doubt is often present. This is a dangerous hindrance because if unnoticed, it may pull us away from our practice completely.

Antidotes:

The antidote to doubt is simply to notice it, as with the other hindrances. This breaks it down. We also may cultivate faith or conviction, reflecting on the benefits of practice in ourselves or others around us. Generally with doubt, the most effective thing we can do is just to bring awareness to its arising. When you are caught in thoughts of trying to figure something out or reason with yourself, check if doubt is present. Ask yourself – is it wholesome or unwholesome to be having this doubt? Confirm faith in your practice by having direct experiences that validate the benefits.

This article is merely an overview of the five hindrances and some antidotes. As always I hope this benefits you in someway in your practice.

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