The other night, my husband was looking at something on the Internet and suddenly said, “Maybe, we should get a monkey.” He was joking, of course, but it catapulted me back to the time when my Dad was trying to bring a monkey into our house. This desire quickly faded when he went to a friend’s house who actually had a monkey. What a disaster. The house was definitely taken over by the monkey, even though they had it pretty well-trained. The monkey gets into everything and everyone! Monkeys to not make good pets.

I understand where the term monkey mind came from. We all experience monkeys of the mind or monkey mind. I experienced it this morning when I was meditating. Suddenly, without effort, my mind had drifted to some future event or into the past. I had to pull it back and start all over. Monkey mind is probably our greatest nemesis when it comes to meditation or creating the life we say we want.

It takes focus and concentration and stillness to bring good into our lives. It takes letting go of the extraneous. We can’t serve the monkey and all its wildness and receive what we want out of life at the same time.

I don’t think it’s a matter of getting rid of the monkey. I really think that’s a fight and we don’t want fights. We can’t fight monkeys with resistance. I think it is more about focusing on what we want to experience, conjuring up the experience mentally in the unseen, giving gratitude for it before it happens.

I think, in meditation, it is about not being in resistance of the monkey, but just watching it running around and taking great amusement in it, realizing it is merely playing with illusions of a future or trying to take down a past that can’t be changed.

In summary, I don’ think monkey mind is not something to be fought. It is something to be released. Just like monkeys have no business in in houses. Thoughts that negate our greatness or stop our flow or bring fear into our minds have no business in our beautiful minds. Let the monkey mind be what it is; an illusion and come home to Center where the stillness, our true identity, lies. The more we breathe into that space and just remind ourselves of our Truth, the easier it will get to see the monkey for what it is – an amusement of the mind with nothing to support it.

We are awareness, we are consciousness, we are not monkey mind. We get to decide what takes over our household.

Love and Aloha,

Rev. Rita