Ruminating is the act of reliving stressful events uncontrollably in your consciousness. It is a form of destructive contemplation where you hold on to things that make you frightened or angry. Why does your mind do this? Well, part of its natural instinct for survival is to take apart stressful experiences so that you can prepare for them in future, notwithstanding the total improbability that you will be exposed to the same set of experiential factors again. The mind is constantly trying to ward off feelings of guilt, anger, and loneliness and is ever-vigilant to the experiences that may trigger them. Ironically, it is this heightened state of awareness that leaves you more vulnerable to pain as the mind gradually increases the radius of known threats to your ego. Soon you can have any number of fearful memories that play off each other in succession. Since there is no way to suppress memories, you can learn to stay with them instead of running away from them. In meditation, you create a safe place to leisurely explore the dormant and underlying thoughts surrounding these fears without a pressing need to resolve them or get to their roots. In time, you will learn to simply let them go when they are found to be baseless or to gently take them apart when they point to something more meaningful.

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