Restless Mind

Understanding the nature of a restless mind is one of the attributes of waking up. But it’s not the restlessness of the world that one wakes up from, it’s the restlessness of your own mind…

What is a restless mind that runs your life? The restless mind manifests because there’s attachment to your thoughts. The thought that arises about something is inconsequential, it’s the attachment to the thought that forms the restless mind. To understand the restless mind one must be aware of its attachments, desires, confusions, and the way your mind works. Without this awareness the puppet on string pattern prevails. Certain practices turns one inward to see this. If what you’re doing doesn’t turn you inward, you’ll remain trapped to your restless state of mind. This is why nothing from the outside truly changes a person because anything from the outside is part of the restless mind. A restless mind can’t fix itself and as long as it’s reaching for something on the outside, it remains trying to fix itself and thus it remains restless. Until this truth is seen, things would stay as they are because nothing is being done to make it different.

We can only go beyond the surface view if there’s awareness of it. What this means is one has to develop mindfulness of what they are doing as they are doing it so there‘s awareness of what’s being done. If you know what you’re doing as you’re doing it, it leaves little room for the restless mind to arise. Mindfulness is probably the single most discipline to develop as it anchors you in the moment of what is being done. A restless mind only occurs when one lives in the story of a past or future. These restless mind made constructs keeps the restlessness active. The present moment can be seen without making it a story even though it passes as quickly as it arises, but the past and future can never truly be seen without a story. Because of this lack of discipline to be present, most people live a restless mind existence…