“The Monkey Mind” Preached at Wollaston Congregational Church On January 28th, 2018 Scripture: Mark 1:21-28 Our story today from Mark’s gospel tells of the first public appearance of Jesus’ ministry. Jesus has been baptized by John, when the Holy Spirit descended upon him and took residence with him as he was proclaimed the Son of God. He has been tested in the wilderness by Satan. He has called his first disciples: Simon, Andrew, James and John. And now, on the Sabbath, he has come to the synagogue in Capernaum. All of this has happened in the first chapter of the gospel, and there are still more events to take place before chapter 2 begins. Mark’s gospel is pretty dense! In our story today, Jesus teaches in the synagogue, and we are told that the people are amazed at his “new” teaching, but we are not told what that teaching is. Since the content is not shared with us, we can assume that our attention is to be elsewhere. In this case our gaze is directed toward what Jesus is doing and we see him heal a possessed man. Before Jesus came onto the scene, this poor man had been trapped by what is described as an unclean spirit. The Jewish readers of this story would recognize right away that the spirit keeps the man from community in the synagogue. The synagogue is sacred space, while the spirit is profane. The two simply cannot exist together. In our story the man never speaks. Instead the talkative spirit dominates the conversation with Jesus. Here we see a common theme for the gospel of Mark. The unclean spirit clearly knows exactly who Jesus is: the holy One of God. Jesus rebukes this spirit, and commands it to be silent. When left without a voice, the spirit leaves the man, who may now be restored to the community of the synagogue. Our modern minds may tend to wonder about possession by an unclean spirit. What does this mean in today’s language? Some might imagine the story is referring to the demon of addiction. We know that there are many people in our culture today who are trapped in addictions to drugs and other substances. Johann Hari, author of the book “Chasing the Scream”, suggests that thinking of addiction as either the fault of the addict, or the fault of the substance is incorrect. He proposes a different way of thinking, arguing that addiction is an adaptation to environment. Hari says “it’s not you, it’s your cage.” [1] The cage refers to an experiment conducted on rats, who were kept alone in bare cages and given access to two water bottles. One bottle contained plain water and the other contained water laced with heroin. The rats soon became addicted to the drugged water, drinking it obsessively until they died. But Professor Bruce Alexander, of Vancouver, decided to vary this classic drug experiment by creating an environment called “Rat Park.” This was a happy place for rats, with tasty food, colorful balls and other rats to play with. The same two water bottles were offered, but in this case the most of the rats ignored the drugged water and did not become addicted. The researcher concluded that while the rats who were alone and unhappy became heavy users, none of the rats who had a happy environment did. Hari sees the Vietnam War as a human version of this experiment. Heroin was said to have been as common as chewing gum for American troops during that war and 20% of soldiers became addicted. When they returned home to their families, friends and work, though, 95% of the addicted soldier simply stopped taking the drug. They had been freed from the horrendous cage of the war to the pleasant environment of their communities. They didn’t need drugs anymore. According to Hari, addiction ought to be renamed “bonding.” When humans are in situations where they cannot bond with one another they bond with other substances. Three years ago, during that horrendous Boston winter, I spent some time talking with some of the homeless folks in the city. You may remember that was the year that bridge to the shelter and rehab center on Long Island was abruptly closed. In the city, shelters were full to overflowing, when suddenly there were 700 more unhoused men and women on the streets. Miserable conditions were made worse by overcrowding and awful weather. I met many people who lived on the street day and night, and I began to understand why many homeless people become drug addicted just to survive. Imagine the man that Jesus healed of the unclean spirit, being freed from his cage … like the isolated rat, or the US soldier in Vietnam, or the person living on the streets in the dead of winter. We can guess that the man was restored to his true, God-centered self. Then perhaps he was welcomed into the community of the synagogue and found connection there. We don’t know, the story doesn’t tell us. A second way we could think of the unclean spirit is more common, even, than drug addiction. It is the “internal narrator,” the ego, or what the Buddha called “the monkey mind.” Dan Harris, correspondent for ABC News, writes about becoming hijacked by the voice inside his head, until he discovered the practice of meditation. Harris doesn’t have schizophrenia. He’s talking about the “internal narrator” inside all of us. This is the voice that tells us that our relationships are not enough, that what we have is not enough, and that who we are is not enough. Harris says he was an ambitious and idealistic young reporter covering war zones for ABC News in the early 2000’s. He went to Pakistan in 2001 and soon became ABC’s “man in Afghanistan.” For three years, he shuttled between New York and war torn Middle-East locations, like the West Bank, Gaza and Iraq. He witnessed scenes of violence and despair, suicide bombings and other horrors of war. When he returned to life in the United States, he developed an undiagnosed depression that he self-medicated with drugs. The drugs raised his level of adrenaline, which in turn raised his anxiety levels and led to him having a panic attack, while on the air for ABC. Harris describes this as a melt-down and the “direct result of an extended period of mindlessness, during which [he] was focused on advancement and adventure, to the detriment of pretty much everything else in [his] life.” [2] Harris’s books describe his quest to silence his internal narrator. Although he would never have entertained the idea before, he began meditation. The practice of meditation helped to return him to the present moment, to delight in his work, his wife and his child. Now he is a proponent of meditation, his books “10% Happier…” are written to convince other skeptics to try it too. Harris tells readers that the monkey mind fixates on the past and future, it will not let us live peacefully in the “now.” The monkey mind is insatiable, pushing us to eat a whole batch of cookies, or make the humorous but hurtful remark about our partner. At night, it is the monkey mind that repeats, on continuous loop, the sequence of anxieties that refuse to let you sleep. The monkey mind is always up for a fight, and, as Harris says, it is unrelievedly self-involved. [3] Perhaps the monkey mind sounds familiar to you. I know it does to me. I recognize it as the thing that takes over when I am reacting to a situation rather than responding. I think of this as “seeing red”, or being triggered. Back in the summer, I went to the grocery store a friend from England who was visiting. My friend and her daughter, who has learning disabilities, lingered by the row of carts, asking whether they should take one. Suddenly an angry looking woman barged between them, pushing them out of the way, to pull out a cart for herself. I reacted. “Excuse me!” I exclaimed with sarcasm, “please be respectful to my guests!” “I said excuse me,” she replied … and then “don’t do this to me today!” Apparently she had reason to be angry, although it had nothing to do with me or my guests. I felt despondent. I had just met the woman’s reaction with my own. I’d escalated the situation. Neither of us walked away from that interaction with any peace. On another more centered day, I hope I will respond differently. I have a feeling that almost all the problems of our world today are caused by humans interacting one monkey mind to another. This kind of communication escalates conflict. Social media, like Twitter, provide the perfect forum for monkey mind communication, as one searing tweet reacts to another. The monkey mind is the mind of reaction and anger, self-aggrandizement and never good enough. The monkey mind would rather dwell on the hurts of the past, and the fears of the future, than rest peacefully in the “now.” We can only guess that the man Jesus healed was in some kind of cage of separation and isolation from the community of the synagogue. We don’t know whether that separation was addiction, or perhaps his internal narrator gone rogue. But we do know that Jesus healed the unclean spirit, and freed the man from his cage by commanding the spirit to “be silent.” With the spirit silenced, the man was free to participate in the community as his whole, God-centered self. For us today, the way to quiet the internal narrator may be meditation, or it may be some other spiritual practice. In a few weeks we will begin the season of Lent. This Lent we will begin to learn about various spiritual practices that will enable us to listen, listen to what Jesus has to say to our God centered selves. For now, I invite you to be on the look out for the things that pull you away from community, away from family, away from neighborliness, toward unhealthy bonding. And I invite you to pay attention to the places from which you speak or act. Is your monkey mind getting too much air time? And know, that God’s desire for us, expressed by Jesus, especially today in our Annual meeting. God’s desire for us is to communicate from a place of community and our God-centered selves. May our monkey minds be silenced. Let all God’s people say, Amen [1]https://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/the-real-cause-of-addicti_b_6506936.html [2] Dan Harris, “10% Happier, How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Loosing My Edge and Found Self-Help that Actually Works”, (New York, HarperCollins, 20014) [3] Dan Harris, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A 10% Happier How-To Book, (New York, Penguin Random House, 2017)
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