The secret to a quiet(er) mind in meditation

The Spiritual Perspective

Light Watkins

Education, Religion & Spirituality, Society & Culture, Self-improvement

4.9 • 981 Ratings

🗓️ 12 January 2026

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The “monkey mind” is one of the biggest reasons people think they can’t meditate. The mind feels loud, restless, and impossible to shut off—so they assume something is wrong with them. In reality, nothing is wrong. What’s off is the way meditation is usually explained. In this episode, I unpack why the mind becomes especially noisy during meditation and why trying to control or silence it often makes things worse. We’ll look at what the mind is actually designed to do, how certain well-inten...

Transcript

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0:00.0	After being in the meditation space for nearly 30 years as a practitioner, as a teacher,
0:04.9	by far, the biggest complaint that I've heard new meditators say is, I have a monkey mind,
0:11.5	which is a description of a mind that just won't shut off, that's erratic, and that seems to be
0:17.0	on autopilot. And in fact, I would say that having a monkey mind is one of the top two reasons
0:22.6	why people disqualify themselves from thinking that they can meditate. And I'm going to loop back to
0:27.5	the other reason later on in the episode because it actually ties to that monkey mind experience.
0:32.8	But that's what this episode is about. We're going to take a look at how to get rid of the monkey
0:37.1	mind in meditation once and for look at how to get rid of the monkey mind in meditation
0:38.5	once and for all and how to optimize meditation for that quiet mind experience, which is
0:44.3	ultimately what everybody wants, but most people don't think that it's possible for them.
0:48.6	We're going to take a look at the nature of the mind in order to understand why we even
0:52.2	have a monkey mind. And I'm probably going to piss off a lot of
0:55.1	meditation teachers and guides by revealing how one of the most common instructions that they give
1:00.5	is actually increasing the probability of somebody having the monkey mind feeling. And most importantly,
1:06.7	we're going to talk about a much more effective way to quiet the monkey mind in meditation.
1:11.9	So by the end of this episode, you're going to have a much better understanding of how to
1:15.8	quiet your mind in meditation and how that will lead to increased enjoyment, not only in
1:20.4	meditation, but also in life, especially when it comes to not taking things personally in
1:26.1	day-to-day life. But first, my name is Light Watkins, and I started this channel to help spiritually curious folks
1:32.5	understand how to use their inner practices in a way that optimizes the other important areas
1:38.5	of life, including relationships, business, home life, and of course, how we treat ourselves.
1:45.3	And one of the worst things we can do is take what somebody else says or does personally.
	...

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