Imagine living the rest of your life in a small cell. No windows, no direct communication with the outside world; your only company an insane person who never shuts-up: bickering, criticizing, judging, narrating, talking, and making stuff up. Waking you at all hours, stopping you from falling asleep. Now imagine the “roommate” has power to influence you and convince you to do whatever they want. They can make you hurt yourself, hurt those around you, and fear things that don’t even exist.
You fight for control everyday but never seem to win for long. Sooner or later you just give in and run up the white flag. What he says goes; do your time. The rub is, you both have the same life sentences and it will only get worse. Welcome to your mind!
Volumes have been written on mind-fullness, meditation and enlightenment, it doesn’t have to be rocket science though, all any of us really want is to shut down the cellmate for a bit. Strip away the gurus, the mantras, the yoga poses and the breathing; all we’re after is a little inner zen, a chance to look at the world before us and experience it live rather than filtered. A moment’s silence.
There’s only one way to get there, some people are naturally closer than others, but for the better part most of us share the same craziness. Your mind is just a part of your machine; unfortunately, it’s the part with the loudest voice.
You’re on a single lane road with nowhere to pass, in front of you is a car – it’s going half the speed limit and the right turn signal’s been on for the past 5 miles. You start to get really pissed, maybe thinking about how stupid they are, how inferior they must be to you. You hate their car, you hate the way they drive, and you now hate them! You pull up at the light next to them in the turning lane, and as you drive by your hand subconsciously forms the bird all by itself. In that split second before you express yourself fully you turn to look and realize it’s a sweet grandma with her grandchild buckled in a car seat in the back.
Poof, the air goes out of your sails, the anger dissipates and you quickly reassemble the bird into a Queen’s wave and a big smile spreads on your face. That’s your mind, bending in the wind like a sapling poplar tree, doing whatever it wants, regardless of what you think.
The solution? Meditate; sit down for a few minutes everyday focusing on whatever you want to focus on: your breath, a poem, a mantra or sound (think Om), the lyrics to Yellow Ledbetter. It doesn’t matter, it just matters that you keep bringing your intention back to whatever it is your focusing on whenever it wanders away. That’s it. The only thing beyond that is practice. Do it everyday for a few months and you’ll start to see things loosen. You’ll have more control, less volatility and just maybe you’ll shut the voice up for a few seconds, it’s an amazing thing.
A Great place to start is an app called Headspace. Put together by a former Buddhist monk, Andy Puddicombe, it includes 360 or so guided meditations that take you on a journey to re-claiming yourself and your sanity. He’s an English boy, so listening to him speak is a pleasure. He’s also done a TED talk if you need to do a little due diligence. I’ve spent 20 minutes a day with Andy at Headspace, a set of headphones and my iPhone for the past 240 days or so (with occasional breaks and misses) and you know what, it works! Not straight line, and it doesn’t work everyday, but slowly I’m returning my attention to the world in front of me, and taking some of the control back from my mind.
Once you’re on your way, you might want to dispense with the guided mediation and try it solo; Headspace has unguided meditations as well but there’s a great app if you prefer to be pure solo called Equanimity… singing bowls and all. If you prefer the written word, Jon Kabat-Zinn’s book: Wherever You Go, There You Are, is the primer. David Caine posts some great pieces about mindfulness on his site Raptitude, and sells his ebook: You Are Here – a solid guide to getting on the road to mindfulness.
These are a few of the hacks I’ve used to get a little internal peace and quite. Happy Sitting.
-Billy
