I had a really interesting conversation once with a friend, they were lamenting around the difficulty of what a busy mind they had.  They were saying, my mind is thinking six things at once, why can’t I be like other people who don’t have these many thoughts.  Then I asked how do you know how many thoughts other people are having?

This is so interesting to me because, again, we have this idea that our minds are too busy, they are a nuisance, we need them to stop.  But how do we know how other people’s minds are operating or how many thoughts they are thinking?  Did Einstein stop his stream of thinking because he deemed it busy?  Did Ghandi stop his planning and thinking because it wasn’t the “idea” of peace?  It’s this binary kind of thinking, that this is what peaceful looks like, there must be no thoughts. It again creates this idea of success or failure, which limits us to seeing that we may actually already have moments of peace happening but, because it doesn’t show up as I perceive it to be,  I don’t see it.

What I am discovering is that it’s not the function of thinking, it’s the relationship with the thinking.  I am peaceful when I can be with myself, when I can question the thinking that is here, when I can see the times when it can bring real inspiration and the times when it brings challenge but, even in that challenge, it is showing me something if I can hold it with curiosity and compassion.

I wonder why is it seen as OK to have a conversation with someone else, a friend someone outside of you, but, when you are having that internal discussion with yourself, it is deemed busy? It is seen as a bad thing, something we need to distract ourselves away from, Netflix anyone?

But, what if I developed the space within me that could hold the thinking, where I can be open to what’s here, with kindness compassion and curiosity, maybe that can be the beginning of peace? The more I lean back into this resource of myself, the more I can be within the world with peace.

“It is important to take refuge in yourself, recognizing the stability you already have, you have to make yourself into someone stable. You yourself are sufficient” Tich Nat Han