my mind

 I found myself at a crisis point, which i guess led me here...

in many ways I don't know how i ended up here, but in many ways it all makes sense. 

I had exhausted every avenue 

after years of struggling with my mental health, little interest in being alive with suicidal thoughts emerging before my 11th birthday, chronic feelings of emptiness and loneliness, morphing into an eating disorder that reared its ugly head in primary school and never really went away,  six years of drug abuse beginning at the age of 15 with a string of abusive relationships sprinkled in, multiple overdoses excruciating bouts of depression and anxiety culminating in various personality disorder diagnosis'’, and other mood disorders flung at me haphazardly by various health professionals trying to piece together a a broken string of medical records and a girl who often proclaimed she had no idea what was going on. 

at the age of 25, i guess i felt a little lost. 

It's hard to navigate the world when your ability to build self-soothing methods and ways of naviagting the adult world never really came to fruition in your developmental years

it took me 25 years of indulging in the hamster wheel of the mind to realise that the nature of the mind is completely blank 

whereas a person is like a map, baring the scars of their past, wearing them on their exterior 

the power of the mind to overcome past experiences means you can start again from scratch and that is incredibly liberating.

On Thursday I head to a three day silent meditation retreat in Portugal, returning the day before my 26th Birthday. I want to share three learnings about my mind which almost a year of hour long Saturday group zen meditation sessions at Ambitha gardens taught me. 

1. All life is forward. 

The Self is tied to memories. But the mind is still flowing water, constantly advancing forward. You want to grasp onto the present, memories float to the surface as the stream of experience flows on, but they’re gone. You grab onto the present but it’s already gone. I will never be the same person I was a second ago. Human experience is forwards. All life is forward. 

2. It’s in your hands, it always was. 

We don’t have the power to choose our thoughts, but we have the power to choose what we pay attention to. You are responsible for how you feel, not external stimuli. Feelings change. Thoughts come and go. You are responsible for your feelings, you choose which thoughts you give power to. Happiness is a series of choices and we wire our brains by what we consistently do. 

3. Keep it simple 

Body breath mind. Come back to the breath, come back to the body. All it takes is one second. It really is that simple.