Minding the Mind!

Can you be fully present when you do something?  May sound like an odd question…

This past week seemed to be a vehicle cleaning week…must be in the air.  After I vacuumed out the car, I decided to vacuum out the truck.  Little did I know the lesson I was in for!

As I started to vacuum…my mind started to bring up thoughts around cleaning.  It played the same thoughts over and over.  My mind took me out of the now moment and reminded me about the last time I cleaned the truck. It was spotless…or so I wanted to believe.   It was about a week before my husband took the truck hunting with a number of hunting buddies. At the time, I wasn’t aware he intended on taking the truck.  After being in the bush for a number of days, the truck came back looking not so clean.

When I had first started to vacuum, I wasn’t even thinking about the last hunting trip.  In no time, there I was…thoughts started to run through my head about all the work I did for nothing….about not getting to enjoy my cleaning efforts…about how no one will even appreciate having a clean truck.  The thoughts didn’t stop there.  My mind continued to tell me that I was the only one who cared about keeping the truck clean.  How is that for the power of the mind?  Was I in the now moment of being with what I was doing?

Have you ever experienced that?  Have you ever experienced being in a great space where you are feeling the joy of doing something and by the time you are done you wished your mind would  stop already?

The mind can take a perfectly peaceful joyful moment and toss you out of that moment feeling bothered and agitated.  That can happen so many times in a day.  The interesting thing about the mind is most of the time we aren’t even consciously aware of what is taking place.

It was in those first few minutes of vacuuming the truck that I realized first hand what was truly going on!  After about the fifth time of hearing those repeated thoughts, I said to my Divine, ‘I ask You to silence the mind.’  In no time my mind had become quiet and I once again experienced the joy of what I was doing in the moment.

You will know your mind is at work when you start thinking about justifying and exaggerating.  I knew it was my mind speaking when I started to think that I was the only one who cared about keeping the truck clean.  That is not a truth.  Words like ‘everyone is doing….and all the people….no one else…’ are signs that the mind is causing discord.

As you go about your day, when the mind starts to ‘take over’ in a not so wonderful way, I invite you to talk to your Divine…whatever that may be for you…and ask for assistance in quieting the mind.  Then feel the difference as peace takes over.

Sheila Unique