Your mind is like a River.

Think of your thoughts and the general noise of the mind as the water flowing.

Sometimes it’s still,

but most of the time it’s raging.

Right?

Now I want you to imagine that you are sitting on the bank, watching the water flow by.

You’re sitting on a patch of grass, you can see trees on either side of the river, create that picture in your mind, imagine the water, imagine the flow, imagine the bank, imagine the surrounding environment.

Now sometimes we have these little logs, that float into our view.

These are the thoughts we become conscious of.

We can pick them up out of the water, inspect them, hold onto them for as long as we like, then we can put it back in the water and off it goes.

Now I want you to imagine a floating ball coming into view.

These are your emotions.

They pop up out of the water and float into our awareness, into our view.

Now emotions are exactly like this floating ball — when we try to suppress them, it’s like we’re pushing the ball under the water, trying to hold it down and hold it down.

But what happens?

It keeps coming to the surface.

The harder we try to suppress it, the faster it comes back at us.

We grab it, we try to suppress it, we try to tell it to go away, but sometimes it just stays there, on the surface.

So how do you attain a calm mind?

How do you calm the waters?

You can’t force water to be still, can you?

In fact, the more you try, the more splash you make.

The more turbulent the water becomes.

The only way to get the water to calm,

is to leave it alone.

To sit back on the bank,

and watch.

Realise this: you are the watcher.

At any and every moment, you can choose to sit back and witness the river.

To witness your mind.

You can sit back and watch the logs come in and out of view,

and watch the balls of emotion bob up and down and eventually be on their way again,

even if it is uncomfortable.

The whole point of peace, and contentment, and joy, is not to have no negative thoughts or emotions at all.

It’s not that the logs and balls disappear altogether.

It’s to relax.

It’s to be at peace, even when there are thoughts, and emotions, and raging waters.

To sit back on the bank, and be the conscious witness of the natural flow of your mind.

The more you are able to do this, the more you will find the waters are calm.

But if you are experiencing raging waters, it can be extremely difficult to just sit back and watch.

I completely understand.

In these instances, the answer is journaling.

Don’t sit back and watch.

Channel the raging river that is your mind, onto the page.

There is an infinite amount of space in journals for your raging thoughts to find their place.

But you must be patient. Don’t journal for 5 minutes, or 10 minutes.

Journal until you are DONE.

Until you have completely channeled all of the raging thoughts out of your mind and onto the page.

Once you have truly journaled everything out of your mind,

that is the time to sit back and watch. To return to the bank of the river.

If you do this properly.

If you have the patience with yourself to journal until you are done,

until all the raging logs and balls have been cleared and the waters have calmed.

Then you will experience a sense of peace like never before.

A journal is a bottomless bucket for the raging waters.

Your mind is like a river.

Learn to channel the flow through journaling.

Learn to watch the flow by sitting back on the bank and becoming a conscious witness.

The conscious witness is always available to you. In every moment, in everything you do.

Stop swimming against the raging waters.

Learn to channel them, to calm them, to watch them, and experience a sense of peace that is rare among modern humans.