15. The power of meditation
I used to think I was my mind. I identified with my thoughts and assumed if I was thinking them, they must be true. I believed my mind was my only worth.
That mind, however, perhaps not unlike yours, was always running amok. It was filled with cravings, resentments and regrets about the past, wishful ideas about the future, the detritus of popular culture, and the pain of memory. That mind was preoccupied with ego. My friend and colleague Cynthia McKay has written, “Ego’s function, according to Tibetan Buddhism, is to defend the self you have come to believe in.”
Thus, if my thoughts were telling me I was great, I believed that must be true. If my thoughts were telling me I was a piece of shit, I believed that must be true. My thoughts seemed to come unbidden, as if I was not in charge of them. Rather than being in control of the mind and using it as a tool to lead me to my destiny, my mind was controlling me. That’s like giving a four-year-old the car keys and saying, “Here, you drive.”
It was helpful when I heard Gurumukh, one of my Kundalini Yoga teachers say, “The mind is a monkey. It runs around here and there, always clamoring for peanuts, searching for the next banana.” On a visit to Rishikesh in India with Gurmukh, I had the chance to see monkeys in the wild, and this is exactly what they’re like. Their energy is pretty frenetic, and…
