Brandon Bays talks about the mind always needing to work on something, “Give it a job” she says… Michael Neill tells me that The Three Principles explain how our entire experience is constructed of thought – and thus, “The worst thing that can ever happen to you is a thought”…

Yesterday, whilst trying to sow grass seed I seem to have had an epiphany… I haven’t found anything new – this is just what various teachers have told me over and over again – but I may have finally got it this time…

I have been exhausted for at least a year – my brother died 16 months ago and it must pre-date that, my mother broke her hip 18 months ago – it probably pre-dates that too…

On one level I absolutely knew that it was my thinking that was exhausting me – but yesterday I finally worked out how to stop it.

And the amazing thing is that it was so simple – a moment of clarity when I saw – as I feel I have seen countless times – that my thinking goes round and round in circles – and sorts and resolves nothing.  There’s a wonderful quote which is something like: “You can’t solve a problem from the level of thinking that created it” – there’s another quote, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and hoping to get a different result”.

There is also a sense in which you can’t take a risk and do something different until you really don’t care what happens as a result – when something hurts so much that you have to do something – because you feel that nothing can be worse than continuing as you are.

I didn’t think I was feeling that desperate yesterday – but maybe I was. So I said, “Stop it!” to my mind – and I suppose the difference was that no bit of me felt any curiosity to keep listening to it, any hope that, if I just kept following its meanderings, that it would give me what I was searching for … My mind might care, my mind might want to endlessly revisit things, mull things over – but I don’t.

So many people have said to me that they tried giving up smoking many, many times and then one day – they just stopped. Just like that, effortless.

That’s how it was with me yesterday. “Stop it”. I didn’t stop my mind – but I did take a step to the side – I stopped listening to it. It is still going – it tried to beguile me a couple of times  – but “Stop it” worked a treat – I just stepped away.

And the relief!!  The difference in lying in bed and waiting for sleep; the difference while doing various chores today; whilst driving; when I found I’d driven to Norwich to buy something and all the shops were shut – my mind was riveted! Had it always been like this? Had things always been shut on Easter Sunday? Was this a new thing from Mr Cameron? From the church?

My mind was having a whale of a time! But I realised that I didn’t need to know or care – and that when I didn’t – I felt better – and so I didn’t and don’t.

Happy Easter!