I Think, Therefore I Weed

A Case for Maintaining a Clear Mind-Garden

Photo by Vince Fleming on Unsplash

I was always an overthinker—a worrier. I knew not otherwise. I thought that’s just how I was, and lucky for being capable of putting things in perspective or seeing when I’m making a fool of myself. I thought, I can’t help it, but I won’t either: it’s simply a price to pay for being better stuff than the average person.

I overthought relationships, questioned my talents, and insisted I was being “rational” when worrying about the future. You have to plan, don’t you, and foresee and, if possible, forestall adverse developments.

You don’t want to grow old alone? Then get yourself a partner and some friends to laugh over dinner with.

You don’t want to be kicked out of your lovely flat when you’re old, can’t work, and can’t afford it any longer? Well… do… hmmm — you need to work something out.

And when are you going to do that? You’re not getting any younger, you know? But, astonishingly, that thing called getting old is happening to you, too, right now, see? Can you count the years? When did all those young decades fly by? How much time is left to secure what you need to grow old in peace?

You’re running out of time, girl; you’d better hurry!

I started coming across spiritual gurus preaching things like mastering your monkey mind, but that was just bogus initially. I dismissed it off-handedly: who wants to be a saint? I thought. My mind is sound; it’s just life that’s tricky. No need to start training the mind to become impassive; this is overdoing rationality. The best rationality is sticking with the facts of life: time, growing old, being lonely, doubting my skills, and wondering what the hell I’m doing in that job except for making a living…

It took two or three brutal winters (winters tended to get particularly nasty back in those days) to come to a breakdown.

I would wake up and instantly feel a huge weight and a bleaching pressure, like a plant under a burning oppressive sun, losing its sap, withering, and turning to ashes.

One day I woke up, went to wash my face, and glancing in the mirror, I was frightened. My face was slightly swollen and crimson. I rolled up my pajamas, and I almost shrieked. My chest and belly looked as if they’d got a bowl of boiling water splashed at them. Large, crimson stains that looked like third-degree burns were sprawling all over. There was, thankfully, no itch and no pain, but it was unbelievable that there was no pain, the way it looked.

I thought this couldn’t be any food poisoning immediately, but what is it then? The skin didn’t hurt but felt dry, like a shell that would come off, which it did after a few days.

I remembered how I saw myself in my mind’s eyes, every day waking up, and the whole time at the back of my mind: like a plant bleached out of existence.

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My dog died during those weeks too. It took her only one day. In the morning, she could only budge with great strain, and in the afternoon, I left her behind at the vet.

A week later, I went to a clearing in the woods where I’d been with her several times. Farther away from home. I felt I just needed to walk far, far away.

I sat down there and tried to feel like she was there too. Watching her nibble on a stick she’d found lying on the woods trail or frolicking with the kids walking by.

When I felt it was to time to go, I said to her in my mind:

“I’m going to leave now. But you will stay here. Just as I taught you to sit tight and let me walk away. Now you do the same.”

I stood up and started walking, with her behind me watching intently, ready to spring off at my call. Instead, I walked across the clearing and entered the woods without looking back.

It felt like a relief. Like closure.

I got home, sat on the couch, and suddenly, the old heaviness was almost upon me as if it had caught up with me again.

But instantly, some part of me spoke: Oh no, Zoe, how long will you keep carrying that weight?

And then, with no thoughts in between, I felt how I dropped the rope I was dragging that gross weight behind me.

In the following weeks and months, I returned to the readings about the monkey mind. The burns on my skin and the way I was picturing myself as a withering flower — that almost made me shudder.

Gradually I saw how my mind was not my self. It could do wonders when solving problems, at work, for example. But it could also work against me.

My meditation practice got steady. I experimented with various techniques, searching for one that didn’t feel like a technique but something I could take up as my nature. My matrix.

Photo by Mor Shani on Unsplash

I’ve been meditating for four years every day, except when travelling. My daily practice is nothing I’m trying to be “disciplined” about; it’s like brushing my teeth or showering, a daily measure of primary care. So when I haven’t been able to meditate for a while, I can’t wait to return home and sit on the cushion the following day—getting rid of the static buzzing in my head, enveloping me like grime.

I sit for forty minutes with my eyes closed. I just let myself sink, implode as it were. Then, feeling how my body doesn’t need to strain to keep the balance, I can plunge inwards to the gravitational center that holds everything for me. Like any physical object in this universe supported by its center, so is my body. I can allow myself to be weightless. Let go of whatever my arms think they’re holding on to, let my bottom and spine drop the weight, and turn soft.

I do have thoughts, too, during this time. And I allow them, with moderation, because often they are a creative process. They may yield a solution, a clever idea, or an impulse.

But I consciously say, “enough, please, now back to the thoughtlessness,” and sink in again—that feeling of releasing the weight. The burden — the thoughts — is something out there, and I can drop it if I choose.

My thoughts are no longer who I am, and certainly not the token of my being superior to others. Instead, they are like clouds in the sky of my mind, coming and going.

I have stopped being “rational” and trying to forestall disasters. There’s a fearful little monkey in all of us spinning thoughts and projections, which I used to allow to grow like rank weeds. I’m no longer a worrier.

Permanently watching and weeding is not overdoing rationality. It IS rationality. It means acknowledging that the harsh life often does not warrant what crosses our minds. It means reconnecting to the power plug that returns us to healthy functioning.

I reconnect by dropping the ropes and treating thoughts like overgrowth.

The mind needs cleansing, just like our gardens.

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This post was first published in Promptly Written, on Medium.

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Tell me about you

Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash

Do you have a way of managing overthinking?

What is “overthinking” to you? Where do you draw the line between “of course I need to think about that carefully” and “this is getting out of hand here”?

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