Peace of Mind is a Myth!

This is actually good news, I think. I always thought that the most enlightened or wise people are those that have more peace of mind. We are told often to have peace of mind as a goal.

My mind goes all over the place all the time, partly because I hate being bored and partly because I am very analytical in nature. If I don't have a huge issue to solve at work or in life, then I will create something in my mind and make it a big issue so I can solve it. Silly but true. Unfortunately, this much activity in the mind keeps me from sleeping well at times. I sometime will go to bed at night trying so hard to calm my mind so I can drift off to sleep, yet I can't. I start judging myself on top of that. Why can't I calm my mind and control it. How I wish I was a kid again where sleep was never an issue. Now, I may stay awake for hours especially when I am tired because I am fretting about how much sleep I need to get and how little I am getting since I can't fall asleep. It's a vicious cycle.

How is the fact "Peace of Mind is a myth!" is good news, you ask then? How is this even related? Well, recently in a discussion group I joined I learned something amazing and eye-opening. I always thought if someone is an enlightened being, like the Buddha, then they have peaceful minds, meaning they learned somehow to control their mind from having random, unstoppable thoughts. I imagined that all they feel is peace and harmony and have pictures of gardens and beautiful scenery in their mind. This is actually not true as I learned. The enlightened ones such as Buddha, actually still have screwed up minds like any human being. What they have mastered is detachment, an ability to watch their mind go crazy and unstoppable without judgment or emotion and still feel at peace.

This is good news because it actually means it's natural and human to have our mind be sometime full of too many thoughts. It is not actually controllable and whoever tries to control it is on a fool's errand. The more I have tried before, the worst sometimes it gets. Instead, I am learning to accept it as part of life and see if I can just watch it do its thing.

The morale of the story - I am not my mind! I may have become quite successful because of my mind's intellectual abilities, but who I am is not my mind's thoughts. I don't need to control it to have peace. I just need to let it be. Easier said then done, but it's somehow comforting

- Lei