Training Your Mind; As Easy as Training a Dog
Thoughts of mail is to the mind, what the mail carrier is to the dog . . . a perceived, but fictitious, threat.
Mailman = our loyal dog perceives him/her to be a threat, but in fact, it’s not a real threat (at least most of the time ;); triggers barking to alert and protect us.
Thoughts of the Mail = our loyal monkey mind perceives that to be a threat, but, in fact, it’s not a real threat; triggers feelings of fear and anxiety to alert and protect us.
When presented with these threats, both the dog and the monkey mind go into survival mode. They attempt to protect their host from threats that they perceive to be real, but are in fact not real threats.
Our mind can be like a dog that barks at the mail carrier. Regardless of whether the mail carrier is an actual threat or not, dogs will often bark incessantly, when the mail carrier approaches its family or its home. The monkey mind is similar.
Instead of the mail carrier being the trigger, it’s our thoughts of the past or fearful expectations of the future (for example, what we may or may not find in our mailbox), that triggers the monkey mind to pull our internal alarm. While the dog uses its bark to get our attention and to alert us, the monkey mind causes feelings of fear and anxiety to arise inside of us, in pursuit of getting our attention and to alert us of the perceived threat, regardless of the fact that there is no real threat at that moment (instead it’s just thoughts and mere thoughts do not threaten our survival, generally).
We train our dogs to alert us only in the event of real threats and to not alert us with their bark, in situations where there is no real threat. Like the dog, our monkey mind can be trained to pull the internal alarm, only in the event of threats that are real at the time and to stop sending us false alarms, that drain us energy, etc.
This article “begs” the question, do dogs have monkey minds too? When we train our dogs, are we training their monkey mind?
For more about the Monkey Mind, see our articles:
