St. Monica Hijacked My Meditation!
When the mind mistakes distraction for divine intervention
This week, I’ve been spending time with a book that quite literally found me — Being Nobody, Going Nowhere by Ayya Khema, discovered in a quiet bookstore on an ashram.
I went looking for something to deepen my understanding of the Buddhist roots beneath the more secular mindfulness I practice and teach. What I found was a gentle but bracing reminder: The mind needs training and rest just as much as the body does.
Ayya Khema writes that meditation is how we learn to care for the mind — to clean it, strengthen it, and give it a chance to rest. Without that training, the mind does what minds do best: react. Constantly. Automatically. Often very creatively… and not always helpfully.
I’ve been noticing this in my own practice, especially as I work with habits — both personally and with the Habit Swap circle I’m facilitating.
Here’s a small, true example:
An email arrives reminding me to schedule a tax appointment. Simple enough. Except my mind — whose default stress response is Fix — springs into action!
Fixer Mode is a well-honed rapid response system (all in fantasy of course), starting with an assessment of the immediate problem – I need to put my expenses together. Well, to do that leads to my mind telling me that I need a better expense tracking system.
- Which leads to wondering if any of those systems could support my publication plan
- Which leads to realizing I need to do more work on St. Augustine, a case in my book
- Which leads to my thinking about his mother St. Monica.
- Which leads to remembering there’s a statue of her at a church in Ossining.
- Which leads to planning how to get to the 6 pm Mass to see it.
- Which leads to deciding my husband must walk the dog so I can do that.
Suddenly, my Insight Timer goes off. And I have a new plan. Notice it has nothing to do with the tax appointment or putting my expenses together in the simple spreadsheet that worked perfectly last year.
Nothing here is wrong. Some of it is even meaningful. But it’s also a perfect example of an untrained mind reacting, mistaking momentum for necessity and urgency for truth.
What meditation is giving me — slowly, imperfectly — is the pause before reaction.
- The ability to notice a thought without obeying it.
- To meet worry, urgency, or fear with curiosity instead of command.
- To say, “Ah. Fixer is here. Thank you. I don’t need you right now.”
That pause doesn’t make life less inspired. It makes it clearer.
Here’s to resting our minds with kind, regular practice—so they don’t hijack what’s meaningful for what’s dramatic.
