When the Mind Stops: How Mental Quietness Leads to Wellbeing

How often is your mind quiet? If you’re a typical human being, the answer is probably very rarely. For most of our days, our attention is immersed in external things—the tasks of our jobs, our hobbies and chores, or TV programs, magazines, or blogs or social media interactions. In the moments when our attention isn’t immersed externally, we’re usually immersed in what I call “thought-chatter’—a stream of mental associations consisting of anticipations of the future, memories, daydreams, replayed fragments of conversations and songs, and so on.

Being immersed in thought-chatter usually isn’t very pleasant. It creates a sense of disturbance inside us, and often gives rise to negative emotions such as anxiety (when we think about the future), guilt or bitterness (when we think about the past) and frustration (when we daydream about alternate realities in which our lives are better). In fact, the reason we are so keen to immerse our attention in tasks and distractions is because of an impulse to escape from our thought-chatter. We like to focus our attention outside so that it isn’t focused inside our minds.

But from time to time, we all experience moments when our thought-chatter quiets down, or even disappears altogether. In these moments, we experience a sense of great well-being. We feel a sense of inner spaciousness and harmony. Our inner energy seems to be intensified, as if we are glowing inside. We feel as if we’re free of problems, and feel satisfied with our lives as they are.

The strange thing is, though, that most of the time this happens unconsciously. There are many activities that have the effect of quieting our minds, and so produce a state of well-being. But we usually don’t associate this well-being with a quiet mind. And we usually don’t think of a quiet mind as the aim or result of these activities....<<<Read More>>>....