Why Feeding the Mind Drowns Out Our Inner Truth

Sitting in stillness to connect to my inner self (Image courtesy of worldofmiri.com)

How Stillness Creates a Better Head Space

My mind constantly broadcasts, sending random thoughts, to-dos and memory snippets, plastering me with images, voices and whatever else it has access to.

I imagine this input swirling around my head like one infinite cloud, getting lost in itself only to eventually repeat over and over again.

I can get stuck in my head.

I feel it.

My attention springs upward and I stop connecting to my torso.

In those moments, I merely exist in my head. I vividly engage with the images, thoughts, and tasks my mind throws at me. I can feel how my life force is sucked into this convolute of overwhelm, into the cloud, into the fog. It keeps me attached to my head, making sure I cannot escape because the thoughts and images throw out their rods and I take the bait following to wherever they want to take me.

In those moments, I am not in control of what is going in in my life

I am not in control of my actions, my thoughts, or my awareness. I have given away my power.

I think I spent the first 40 years of my life in my mind.

Only after many tries at meditation did I realize I had a body and that I could feel into it. I could move my awareness around in it. There was not only my head, but much more: My heart. My belly. My feet!

Even now, having practiced meditation daily for several years I still get sucked up into my head space. I notice more easily, though. This is the cue to take a few conscious breaths and let go of whatever I attached myself to.

My head space is not only filled with “to do’s”, but with everything I feed myself mentally: news, social media, books, conversations, movies. I need to discern what to let in. If I get stuck on social media, my head feels blown up and clogged afterwards.

The same happens when I engage with the news too much. This is why I stopped watching the news on TV. I check the headlines of one or two news agencies once per day. When there is a topic, I feel I need to know more about, I read about it. Reading leaves less imprint on my mind compared to video content.

I have also reduced my number of social interactions. Most of the time, I consciously choose if I want to engage. I used to be in the center of every event, priding myself on my small talk abilities. This came with a price tag I wasn’t aware of.

Every interaction leaves a trace. Unless I am in a great space, where I am clear about my personal boundaries and what I want to let in, this can be detrimental to my energy levels. When I am caught up in my head space, engaging in any kind of “mind” content will not help me relax.  Instead it pushes my mind to spin in even higher circles, draining my energies further.

Feeding my mind was never the answer

My mind can feel like a hungry monster that wants to be fed. However, what I am feeding my mind is not the content, but, ultimately, my own energy. I am diverting it from my physical, emotional, and spiritual body, pouring it into my head space.

“Funnily” enough, I am surprised to feel depleted and drained at the end of my day, or sometimes even halfway through it.

Balancing my energies is important for me to feel vivid and energized. But this is not the only reason to make sure my mind doesn’t take over. I process tons of external data, but what I don’t connect to is my intuitive voice. This inner knowing can urge me forward telling me what step to take next. Sometimes, I get so caught up in my headspace that I forget there is a different way.

My intuition has proved to be an extraordinary guide. This does not mean I should stop engaging my mind. My mind is an extremely useful tool to help me plan, to discern, and to organize my life.

But if I allow my mind to run my life, I miss out on me. I miss out on passion, on all that warms my heart, on what drives me, on my zest for life. I miss out on connecting to what truly satisfies me on a soul level.

Why is that the case?

My inner voice resides in my heart space

When I live in my head space, there is no connection to my heart. I cannot hear the voice of my heart over the noise circulating in the whirling cloud encompassing my head.

To move forward on my path and fill my life with what makes my soul truly happy, I need to know what I crave. This is when stillness comes in.

And I mean really being still.

No music, no web content, no book, nothing to distract me from myself. This is about just sitting there, in the sun, or walking through the woods, alone.

When I first started on my inner journey, I found this part most challenging. I never used to like being alone with myself. I filled my days up with noise and action. There was always something to organize or do. I surrounded myself with people. I engaged in various clubs. When I was at home with no one around, I turned on the music or radio, anything to keep me from descending into stillness.

In hindsight, I was running from myself. The stillness scared me. I probably knew I would find a lot I did not like about myself when I seriously started looking.

Stillness with myself has been the most vital step forward

I eventually reached a point where nothing in my external world could be shifted anymore. I had worked on all the parameters. The only one I hadn’t touched was to descend into myself.

When I finally gave in, I began my inner work. This journey has very often not been pretty. I didn’t know where this was taking me. I felt scared, overwhelmed, and in pain every day. Feelings I had never allowed myself to feel rushed up.

Yes, the stillness was scary. However, I had reached a point where this was the only path left to me for true growth. For the kind of growth where miracles happen. Because eventually, I could sit with my stillness comfortably. This allowed me to connect to my inner voice. I allowed myself to hear it and follow the path that was written in my heart.

If we do not allow ourselves these moments of stillness, how shall great ideas, new thoughts, realizations come in? If we continuously fill our worlds up with outer noise, how shall we ever become aware there might be other solutions or avenues available?

Creating those moments of stillness for myself every day has been one of the greatest change agents to my life.