Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
Monkey mind and my world view breaking down.
Rhodian
Loser Veteran
Hello,
Since I am meditating I am enjoying it really looking forward to it, I am afraid I might get to attached to my practice and meditation.
At the same time I am thinking in the style of 'oh no now for the rest of my life I always have to spend time meditation.'
I also think 'Oh no no more alcohol.' So on and so on, that I sometimes think let's give up and just drink and chase as much pleasure as possible. It keeps gnawing at me, did any of you ever feel like this or experience such a thing? I think it's just a thing I feel because I am beginning etc. But I wanted to talk about it and ask you people.
I am very sorry for all the topics I make, but I have no place close to me no sangha nothing.
0
Comments
Hi @
Sounds like normal background chatter to me. Thing is, if it wasn't meditation and your Buddhist practice, your mind would find something else to worry about. Part of your meditation is learning to recognize these thoughts as just junk thrown up by your mind from habit and let them come and go without giving them any importance.
As for thoughts of saying to heck with everything, I occasionally want to mail the keys to the house back to the bank, pack a few things, and hit the road to explore America. But then I remind myself I'll be giving up the good along with the bad in my life and trading one set of worries for another. So yes, even after all these years of meditating I still have background junk going on in my mind. Part of what makes me, me.
Hi, @Rhodian!
If you don't allow the monkey mind to hop from one extreme to the other, and gear for Middle Path, you'll probably settle down better in the new positive life that you want to create for yourself.
You have been through a lot already, so you don't need to bring on more suffering into your life.
Alcohol once in a while, a pleasure once in a while is okay, as long as you don't end up feeling more dissatisfied or frustrated in the end.
Happens to everyone. Only last Friday was I threatening my hyperactive son with packing my suitcase and fleeing to a yoga retreat in Thailand.
Another Mum in distress had one such day too, so for a moment we were indulging in fantasies of Thelma and Louise fleeing the household routine
>
Even though I haven't been at it much longer than you (maybe 1-2 months), I've come to think of it as every bit as important as brushing my teeth.
^indeed. Meditation is another part of self-care, the same way feeding yourself, sleeping, seeing the doctor/dentist, whatever else you do to care for yourself. It's not an indulgence to care for the mind as well as you care for the body. But, one can become obsessed in a way that is unhealthy even to the healthiest of subjects. Brushing your teeth is important. But if you do it 25 times a day out of fear or obsession, it becomes something else entirely. Balance
I've always taken Ajahn Thanissaro's advice that being attached to meditation is a skillful attachment.
@Jason -- Go ahead and give it a whirl but don't be surprised if it doesn't pan out.
So far, it has. It's like the simile of the raft. You don't let go of it in the middle of a great expanse of water; you let go of it once you reach the safety of the other shore. Without an assortment of skillful attachments and refuges like the precepts, meditation, etc., the path would be exponentially harder for me to walk.
This feels so familiar to me, especially the alcohol.
Sometimes the issues are the symptoms not the problem. I rarely meditate now and I drink far to much. Except when I am away from home when the opposite is the case.
So please look at other factors not just the obvious ones.
consistently meditating for a couple of years is better than meditating often, but stopping and starting. if I could pick something to get attached to I would rather it be meditation than most anything else just as I would rather be attached to exercise than eating fast food.
@Rhodian,
And remember: when it comes to life's pleasures "Everything in moderation!" (The middle way)...
Did someone call?
Oh.... wait.......