Lightsource,

I’m sorry for your spinning thoughts, and know how exhausting it can be when we are unable to find restful mind. There are many approaches to helping silence the mind, and its really more about letting the spin happen without grabbing on or getting sucked in. Consider, as you lay in bed, there’s no point to your thoughts. Like a little bird,chirping and chirping, the mind just runs. But like a whirlpool, they suck you in, generating painful feelings. Very normal, very usual.

Consider for a moment the mental stuff as a maze. Corners, dead ends, twists and turns, your creativity imagining what ifs and if onlys. We keep looking for an exit, a thought that will free us from the maze, but golly, there seems to be no exit! The lesson of the maze isn’t to find an exit,rather, its to drop the maze. We sit down,right in the center of the maze, and start intentionally thinking happy thoughts.

Specifically, we can start cultivating loving kindness, or the emotion of warm friendship. This helps erode the walls of the maze, helps lessen the gravity of the whirlpool. The spinning isn’t really an issue, its that the mind isn’t peaceful. The spinning is just your creativity, but its painful creativity because its being fueled by your lamentation, or cyclical grief over the loss.

So as we cultivate loving friendship, that loss is left behind, accepted, moved past. We start simple,such as imagining giving tender care to a kitten, helping it feel safe,warm,loved. Slowly, we can work toward the bigger challenges, such as wishing the ex to be happy and peaceful in his life. This brings us authentic healing, uproots the ick that pulls at us, the gravity of the whirlpool.

Then, our mind doesn’t fixate on the negative, rather it dances across a wide open field smelling flowers, maybe nibbling some grass. “What did I like about the ex, what would I like in a new partner? Oh, that one man smiled at me sweetly, that’s nice. Maybe I’d like to go on a hike tomorrow.” Etc. Easy, simple, warm, tender.

To grow that loving space within us starts with metta cultivation. Metta is just a word that means that energy of loving friendship. When we sit and intentionally think happy thoughts, first it is a struggle, the mind falling again into painful cycles. Over time, those happy thoughts sink deep into our subconscious, and we begin to feel loving and warm feelings. That’s when the maze becomes past, dropped. The walls just sustained by grief, by “poor me”,by “dammit”. Consider “Sharon Salzburg guided metta meditation” on YouTube if interested.

Namaste, dear sister, may your fields open and blossom.

With warmth,
Matt