Quiet Mind by Jenny Devine

Why Can’t I Just Live In the Now?

Have you noticed your mind today? Perhaps you managed to get out of it long enough to observe what was going on back there inside it? Sometimes I “see” my mind and its endless thinking and I just have to say “STOP”; and “stop” it does. We take a little breath together my mind and I and for a while its constant analysis, planning, list making, pondering, decision making and rationalising ceases. We are still.

In these moments I become acutely aware of the present moment and my surroundings. I wake up. I breathe more deeply. Life seems a lot less serious. Without any apparent mental processing my life prioritises itself. I can’t help but feel a sense of gratitude and lightness. In this state of heightened awareness (or “awakeness”) I know instinctively when and how to take care of myself. Life is more peaceful and living is generally more pleasant.

So, knowing all of that and having plenty of practice at it, why do I not choose to live in an awakened state more regularly or even continuously? In fact, why don’t we all choose to quieten our minds at our choosing and experience the infinite benefits that manifest from that quietened place?

The answer, I believe, lies in the simple fact that the large majority of human beings are slaves, even victims, to the mechanics of their own minds. We are drawn helplessly inwards until we fall into the human trap of believing that we are our thinking; that the thoughts and us are one. From first thing in the morning until we fall asleep at night the thinking mind barely pauses...and look out if we should wake in the early hours of the morning...like slow torture it begins again; over and over, a master at repetition.

You may well have observed that your mind is unable to rest in the present moment or the “now”. It is an uninhabitable place for it. Its favourite place is the past; that is its reference point and why it has so completely mastered the art of repetition. It’s as if the thinking mind’s motto is “as was done before shall be done again and again”.

The future is the other place the thinking mind runs to as it looks for that future moment when all will be well and perfect. “When this is done...or that is achieved...then I will be happy/peaceful/satisfied/content.”

The undeniable truth, however, is that the heaven we seek cannot be found through the mind. Our heaven lies beyond it. It is in the pauses between the thinking; in the stillness when all is quiet.

Take a breath with me. Then another. There. You’ve begun. Slow breath. Quiet mind. Deep breath. Quiet mind.