Love the Monkey Mind

We all know the Monkey Mind all too well.  If you’re unfamiliar with the term, it refers to that voice in your head that chatters incessantly and its favorite topic is what is wrong, might go wrong, will go wrong eventually, etc.  Oh, it chatters all the time about all sorts of things, but it is a Master of negative future fantasizing.  What are we to do when the Monkey Mind gets itself all spun up?

Try to fight it?  Oh, thats fuel for the fire.  The more you resist, the more you give it power.  It may shut up for a little while, but as soon as you stop focusing on keeping it quiet - BOOM - it slips back in! Try to ignore it?  It lives in your head and doesn’t care if you acknowledge that you hear it or not.  It knows you do and the silent treatment won’t do a bit of good.

Many books and philosophies advocate that you KILL IT!  However, that voice is a part of you and attempting to kill it is committing violence against yourself.  So what are we to do?  Love it!

Don’t love what it does.  Don’t love the negativity is vomits all over the place.  Love it.  It is a part of you after all, so loving that aspect of yourself is an act of self-love and self-compassion.  Wait, self-compassion?  What is there to be compassionate about?  Think about it.  Why would part of you throw all this negative future fantasizing around?  It is afraid.  It is the part of you that is afraid.  When you’ve experienced fear, does being ignored help?  Does being yelled at help?  What helps?  Love.  Only love.  Society incorrectly assumes that hate is the opposite of love, but it is not.  Fear is the opposite of love and the only antidote for that fear is love.

“I hear you.  I understand you are afraid.  But its okay.  I’m okay, I always have been and I always will be - no matter what.”  Talk to that voice in this manner.  It helps.  Visualize yourself wrapping this aspect of you in your arms and flooding it with love.  This takes practice but it works.  I’ve spent days arguing with that part of myself or ignoring it or trying to force it to shut up, only to finally realize what I’m doing and in a few minutes of self-love achieve what days of resistance could not.  

Here’s a crazy idea!  If loving yourself removes fear and keeps the Monkey Mind peaceful (or at least positive), why not just love it all the time?  And by that, I mean love yourself all the time.