Thoughts

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What's the point of silence?

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What's the point of silence?

I remember my first retreat only too well.

I had announced to some of my work colleagues at the time, that I was heading to a monastery for 8 days of total silence with a bunch of monks. The look on their faces said it all. Heck..I had the same look on my face, which equated to: "Am I nuts? I'm a globe-trotting marketing executive and I'm voluntarily going to go spend my vacation with some monks in complete silence, sitting and meditating all day." 

So what's the point in silence you may be wondering...?

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Why you're more than your thoughts

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Why you're more than your thoughts

Before I started meditating years ago, I had no idea I could disentangle myself from my busy mind. Our constant thinking and wandering mind, often leaves us feeling completely exhausted, stressed, and relieved to get to the end of each day. You know that feeling? When your inner voice says: "Thank god it's almost the weekend, so I can forget about my challenging week for a while." The trouble is, it's our constant thinking which pulls our attention in a thousand different directions, in very subtle ways, that we're very rarely aware of. This is what we call continuous stress.