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Avoiding the perils of a puppy-dog mind
A mind run amok — mine, a week ago last Sunday
Curled up on the couch I was. Crying again.
Lord, when will it all end?
The day had started well enough. A day without structure. A day just for me.
No events booked. No people to see. No pressure, no fuss, no muss…
I crave days like that, as life becomes busier. I love time to myself. To be free.
But, sure as mustard, my day took a nose-dive. It ditched me right into the sea. The ocean of misery swallowed me whole.
Again.
Seriously. Enough already. What’s with all this sobbing?
Maybe you’re grieving, as I am, the loss of your soulmate, your reason-to-be.
Perhaps you are struggling to find light to live by in times that seem unbearably sad.
Or you could just be noticing you’ve not smiled so much lately, your forehead creased into slight frowning...
Whatever ‘amok’ your mind may be running, I hope the following helps — my journaled reflections as I took on the perils of my puppy-dog mind.
The perils of the puppy-dog mind…
What kind of perils are these?
The drown-you kind. The kill-you kind. The swallow-you-whole and destroy you kind.
The kind that come up out of nowhere. They take you down in reptilian roll. Like an alligator stocking its larder, the undertow takes you with teeth of ice, filling your lungs with splinters and salt water.
It’s a bloody battle. It can’t be won. But it’s never over either. The monster retreats and then returns, teasing its victim once more.
The perils hide themselves well. They cuddle themselves into soft, downy duvet-thoughts of ease and wellbeing… Then sneak into the mind-flow with the slightest of treads… subtly steering you downwards…
All of a sudden, you’re facing misery, tsunami-scale. Waves of monstrous dimension…
There I was, having an easy day of it, a — getting stuff done but in my own time and way of it — but before very long I was in bits on the bottom of the ocean of my own drowning.
Again.
Thanks to my puppy-dog mind…
What kind of puppy-dog mind?
The ‘puppy-dog mind’ sounds so sweet and appealing, to the dog-lovers among us at least. But even such fans are more than aware of the mess one puppy can make…
A puppy run amok is madness and mayhem. A puppy run amok is crap on your couch. It is shredded shoes and pee-stained clothes and tidiness in tatters. It is barking and yelping and whelping gone wrong.
A puppy run amok is exhaustion and overwhelm and failure to sleep. It is fearful and tearful and frenetic. There is nothing sweet about it. It’s distress on four paws, each covered in crap and padding all over your living room…
Taking care of a puppy-dog mind…
The point of its being a puppy, my friend, is the fact that it’s still young and still trainable. Your mind, I mean. And mine.
Despite the lure of despair, there is hope. More than hope.
There is air to be breathed and sleep to be gained and smiles to be smiled once more.
My clients love the analogy of a puppy-dog mind.
I feel them relax when I offer it. Tense shoulders melt into puzzled relief. They smile with surprise at the thought that it might be a puppy they’re facing. A puppy in need of some serious training — a puppy that’s been running amok.
Up until then, they’ve been wrestling an alligator — getting pretty mashed up in the process.
They tell me how they try to talk sense to it — the monster, their mind. Try to persuade it and logic it down. Down from its high-pitched hysteria as it swings from life’s chandeliers… They’ve come to fear it, near loathe it, this creature from the deep. They’ve been battered and branded by defeat.
The defeat that comes from trying to tackle the puppy-dog mind with algebra. You know, the ‘evidence-will-persuade-you-that-your-mind’s-telling-lies’ kind of ‘challenge your thinking’ calculation.
There’s a time and a place for all things, my friend. If the algebra’s working, don’t knock it.
But if it’s not, if your puppy-dog mind’s doing cartwheels on the couch, a mantra just might be worth trying…
What kind of mantra?
‘Mantra’ sounds tantric and cultish and strange to those who’ve not dabbled in meditation.
Mantra — a word or a sound repeated in meditation to aid focus
To those that have dabbled with mantras and meditation, frustration may be your foremost awareness. Unless you’re sold already on the benefits it can bring.
I tried meditation off and on for YEARS. Failure after failure paved the way. Now it’s my go-to and live-by and I wouldn’t be without it — but that’s a story for another blog…
But even with daily meditation in place, my puppy-dog mind was clearly getting the better of me. Last Sunday was not my first day of unstructured sobbing, ‘No siree…’
My ‘curled up and crying’ on the couch that day had a gift deep inside it. Naturally.
“There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands.” — Richard Bach, Illusions
What gift could there possibly be in that great waste of a day, that-complete-mess-I-made of a day?
Why did I find myself craving those downtime days, anyway? They invariably ended in tears…
Well, the mantra emerged in the midst of the sadness… as, it had done, often, before. This time, however, its value came through to me too… Now it’s become a new mainstay.
I have found in these months since Michael’s dying, when I’m crying, quiet thoughts creep in to soothe me.
Always I think them on the left side of my head — a simple sentence or two come through. Part of my thought stream, really. Completely ordinary. Undramatic in the extreme.
Two thoughts come.
The first:
“It’s okay, it’s okay, I’m right here, Amanda.”
It’s lovely to imagine, That’s Michael…
And the second:
“Love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love..”
On and on forever it goes — a gentle pulse that beats my heart onwards…
As I say, this I’d experienced many times before last Sunday.
It’s always so gentle, so subtle, I’ve not given it much sway.
But as I relaxed into the sadness that particular day, I said kind soothings about it. I resisted it not. I loved it. I beheld its beauty as the Step 1 of creation.
The next day, I awoke with a simple awareness.
No wonder your day ditched you Darling, no wonder!
It was so obvious. Looking back at the day just gone, I could see exactly what had happened. Clarity came from the contrast of the unstructured day. Clarity masked in days of more ‘doing’. Clarity made bold in a day left un-tasked.
When my puppy-mind wasn’t focused on directed ‘doing’, what would it get up to, left to its own devices?
My best attempts to watch over it were never going to work. Not all day long. Not no-how.
My puppy-dog mind’s a natural rip-and-tearer, stripping the furniture bare. I don’t even notice at first…
My puppy’s been picking up thought-trains from others, pressing ‘Play’ on recordings from the past…
“What are you going to do with this day, then? You’re not going to do that are you? What makes you think that’s a good idea? You’re not very good at this freewheeling thing are you? Honestly, I’d expect better by now…”
I think I’m safe if I start the day smiling. I don’t notice the direction I’m taking. Not til I’m wiped out and wondering why… and then the weeping begins…
The fact is, the number of thoughts we think in a day is outrageous when you’re trying to control them.
When not focused on a mind-training task, the puppy-mind will start to play. An idling mind is a worrisome one. At best.
Pulling at the corners of your rug is where it starts. It isn’t long before it takes the rug clean out from underneath you.
If your puppy knows you have a worry it can play with, it will find it — no matter where you’ve stuffed it.
Enter the beauty of the mantra.
If you use a mantra as simple as this one, it beats like the blood in your veins. All day and every day, it’s padding out its rhythm. Gently reassuring as you go about your day.
Direct your puppy-mind to a mantra. Give it a calm word focus.
Love, for me is the perfect word mantra. It doesn’t evoke emotion, but it is core to who I am. It makes sense of my beating heart to be quietly focused on love.
What a difference I’ve noticed!
Even in this one week of using it, keeping my puppy-mind happily engaged has brought ease to every day.
More than that, I’ve found, filling my mind-gaps with mantra means I’m not spending time thinking thoughts about tasks to be done.
When I come to do the tasks, they’re joyous. There’s none of the, ‘I really don’t feel like doing this right now,’ kind of nonsense I’m used to wading through, daily. There’s no procrastination. No judgement. No dithering. No complaining.
There’s just love.
And plenty of it.
Love. Love. Love. Love. Love. Love. Love. Love.
Love. Love. Love. Love. Love. Love. Love. Love.
Love. Love. Love. Love. Love. Love. Love. Love.
The mantra that swells into the spaces of my day. It soothes me so kindly now.
The mantra that spares me from a mind run amok.
The mantra that tunes me to love’s sweet nothings, when I’m idling between the doings of my day.
“What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.” — Richard Bach, Illusions
Here’s to the training of your puppy-dog mind.
Yes, it can create mayhem, but it’s infinitely loveable.
Infinitely redeemable.
Trainable.
For sure.