Living in your mind is like living in a sand castle. When the wind blows or the ocean roars, you become homeless - Grasshopper

Talking to yourself inside your head is a major part of the human condition. Some call it thinking. We come out from this seemingly private fortress to interact with others or to give our attention to something like the material in a book, the music being played, or to the content of a movie or TV show. Then we go right back inside to this noisy nest.

When someone claims you are not paying attention, most likely you are retreating back into your mind for some more internal chit-chat.

When you push the “talk” button on a walkie-talkie, you cannot receive. Someone on the other end may be attempting to give you some essential information but you are too engrossed in what you have to say to let up on the button.

Your mind works in much the same way. Brain research tells us that 200 million bits of awareness go back and forth every second between the left and right hemispheres of our brain. We can only hold on to 7 of those bits at any one moment in time. If you are busy occupying your available bits with internal conversation, you are not leaving any room for something new to enter your mind. It’s like the famous philosopher; Alan Watts said in his lectures, “If I think all the time, I won’t have anything to think about except my own thoughts. Now, that would leave me high and dry, and I would become like a library to which the only books being added were books about the books that were already in it.”

This mind is something you have identified as you but it is not you - it’s a cheap imitation - a cardboard cutout of the real you. You call it home but it’s really a grass shack that is subject to the whimsy of the elements.

When reality presents you with a challenge, you go into the flimsy facade called a mind and try to “figure it out.” The result is that you get pelted by this internal storm fueled by the fierce roar of an out of control, ranting ego. Your mind is not a safe port but more like a leaky lifeboat on the high seas.

The calm before, during, and after the storm is always the same peaceful place - the space that shows up between your thoughts. This is where insight happens. This is where all the solutions come from. This is your peaceful place of transformation where the real you lives and where the ego rarely visits.