BUCKET OF MUD

August 1st, 2019

Most people carry around a bucket of mud in their heads.  Without some sort of filter, or drain, there’s little or no ability for all the negative unhelpful stuff that pops up in the course of mental life to get out of the head.

The image of the prospector comes in useful here: how far would a prospector get if he tried to sift for gold with a solid bucket?  Well a solid bucket allows for no sifting at all.  There’s no way to drain out the useless stuff.

Imagine for a moment, someone who thinks a useless, unhelpful thought regularly for years and years.  Perhaps there was an embarrassing episode that no one else remembers that is a constant source of re-embarrassment.  It’s like a wild animal trapped inside the cage of the skull, wreaking havoc, allowing no space for any other potentially useful thoughts.

Only by letting that whack-thought of an animal out of the brain can we make space for another thought or idea that has any hope of being helpful, pleasurable or beneficial.

But instead, many people carry around a bucket of useless mud in terms of the thoughts and concepts that inhabit their mind.

What’s in your bucket?

WHAT MEDITATION DOES

July 31st, 2019

The basic foundational ingredient of a meditation practice is awareness. It’s the opposite of having a head in the clouds.

To be lost in thoughts. 

Day-dreaming.

A meditative practice simply makes it more likely that you will take a step back and look at what’s going on.  Not just situationally but mentally.  For example, anxiety often emerges from some thought that we can’t stop thinking.  The thought might be about some impending event, or something embarrassing that happened.  In comparison, anxiety is rarely about what is actually going on in the moment.  A meditative practice equips someone with the ability to step back and recognize the anxiety, and the thought for what it is.  With enough practice, these detrimental feelings fade in their power and ability to consume our minds.  But even in the short term, merely being able to take a step back and recognize the intoxicating process that is occurring has huge benefits.

Ultimately, meditation poses a question to one’s self:

is this where I want my attention to be?

If the answer is yes, then great.

Otherwise, meditative practice allows one’s self to let go of the current mental concept or state.

What comes next is some what up to chance.  We can’t really predict what our next thought will be once the current thought is out of the way.

In this sense it’s a bit like sifting for gold.  We can constantly let go of the useless dirt and when a shiny nugget of gold comes along, we can hold on to it for a little bit.

Without this ability, we can get stuck thinking about some useless and potentially harmful object of mind for ridiculous amounts of time.

Our head is, essentially a static bucket of mud without the ability to sift. 

Meditation, at the end of the day, is a simple ability to sift out all the unhelpful mental….

stuff.

This episode references Episode 347: Predicting Thoughts and Episode 473: Bucket of Mud

SICK OF BEING SICK OF

July 30th, 2019

Using the phrase “I’m sick of” indicates what exactly?

Is our body ill in the way it would be if we had the flu?

No.  Not really.

Usually it references an unpleasant experience that occurs regularly.

Notice how strange it would be to say you are sick of something that has only happened once and probably will only happen once.

Regularity is key here.

The regular and unpleasant experience is one thing to deal with.  But what about the instances when we report it to other people?  Hence saying “I’m so sick of…”

Generally, we aren’t in the midst of the experience while we harp about it to some friend.  We are reporting the experience some time after it has happened.

But in so doing, we are activating the unpleasantness again.

With awareness focused again on the unpleasant experience, we experience it again.  At least in its effect of producing unpleasantness.

It’s likely that we are eager to report the experience because we’ve been thinking about it nonstop since it happened, and talking about it is a way to expunge it.

In this case, what we are really sick ofis… thinking about it.  And this is generally the case for all things that we can be sick of.

Rarely is the experience of such things all that bad, otherwise we’d take definitive actions to make sure it doesn’t happen again. What we really suffer from is the way such experiences continue to inhabit our thoughts and awareness.  It’s our sense of the moment, our awareness which is polluted and sick.

However, our mental world is one that we can edit on the fly.  The ability to choose what to think about is a skill that can be practiced and honed, and meditation is the biggest, clearest doorway to this gymnasium of exercise.

Thoughts and beliefs have a parasitic nature.  Our minds become hosts to these thoughts and beliefs.  Like the common cold, or the flu, or the seasonal ‘bug’ that wreaks havoc in our body, thoughts and beliefs can similarly wreak havoc in the mind.  The ability to choose what to think about requires a foundation of awareness about what’s really going on in the mind.  Most of the time we are like a soldier in the midst of a battle.  Awareness of one’s thoughts is like becoming a general who can see the whole battle. 

Meditation builds an immune system for the mind.

We cease to be sick ofthis or that when we develop the ability to choose what to think about. 

TO HURT A BELIEF

July 29th, 2019

Ideas do not care about you.  Not even an idea like love.  Though it might seem built into the concept, its not.  We need only look at the long tradition of heartbreak and heartbreaking to see just how hurtful this loving concept can be.  In fact, few things cause more acute emotional pain then this concept and the way it can renege on the tempting lure of its advertisements.

The same follows for most all other beliefs, and this fact is compounded by a very imbalanced fact:

Belief can hurt you, but You cannot hurt a belief.

Beliefs can only be used to help guide and direct our behavior.  Whether this cascade of influence results in our environment becoming better - whether that be from a financial point of view, or in terms of relationships, or even our physical natural environment - depends solely on the quality of the belief and how well it accords to reality. 

In spite of this ruthless one-way street, it’s a wonder why we aren’t more discerning and rigorous with the beliefs that we choose to adopt and nurture. There is a sort of Stockholm Syndrome at play when a person holds on to a belief that is clearly doing them some harm. The most extreme example of this is the religious suicide bomber who quite literally does the most self-detrimental thing possible. . . because of a belief.

There’s an analogy here to be drawn with a parasite. The definition of a parasite is ‘an organism that lives in or on another organism and benefits by deriving nutrients at the host’s expense.’

This certainly seems to fit snuggly with the example of the religious suicide bomber whose belief benefits from the ultimate expense.

But other beliefs can be used to great personal benefit.  A rigorous study of physics and mathematics is grounded in the belief that the theorems and systems within physics and mathematics can be applied to reality to great manipulative effect.  Watching a rocket fall from space and land itself on a launch pad is one of the most awe-inspiring recent examples of much yield we can get from beliefs that have a tight relationship with the physical reality in which we find ourselves.

While it would be immensely beneficial and efficient to toss out beliefs that don’t have a tight accord with reality, doing so often comes with heavy social consequences.  We hinder one another by expecting each other to be consistent, and this consistency manifests itself primarily as holding on to the same beliefs.

We are stubborn to change, not so much because of who we are as individuals but because of how we are tied to one another in communities. 

This episode references Episode 33: Rose-Coloured Cuffs

A LUCILIUS PARABLE: TAILED BY GHOSTS

July 28th, 2019

Lucilius was hiking along a trail he’d heard lead to a high and beautiful view.  He stopped to drink some water and as he began to continue again, a woman who seemed in quite a hurry came up along the trail towards Lucilius.  She matched his pace pretty quickly, and Lucilius made a friendly observation.

“My my, you’re in a hurry.”

It was as though the woman hadn’t even noticed Lucilius until he’d spoken, so concentrated as she was on the ground in front of her.

“Oh,” she said, “yea, I like to get up there as fast as I can.”

“Why’s that?” Lucilius asked.

The woman slowed a little to Lucilius’ pace, and a somewhat confused look came over her.

“Well, I find that I’m happiest up there, and so the faster I get up to the top, the sooner I can be happy.”

Lucilius puzzled over this logic for a moment. “What’s so special about the top that makes you happy?”

The woman looked once more confused, as though the question had never occurred to her.  “I guess maybe the view?  It’s a good one, and it’s usually so quiet, and everything is so still.”

She said this as Lucilius struggled to keep up with her furious pace.  “Well,” Lucilius said.  “Don’t let me hold you back.”

The woman gave a limp sort of smile.  “Maybe I’ll see you at the top?”

“Maybe,” Lucilius said.

He watched the woman move up through the woods at her restless speed and once she was out of sight, he became aware of himself again.  The good labor of his breath, the squeeze and burn of muscles working, and always the living landscape around him, enclosed by the canopy of trees, moving past him. The moment, as it moved, as it bloomed forward in time seemed so lovely to Lucilius.  Thoughts of projects, about the future and memories came and went, but always Lucilius was able to somehow pause and see the details and design of the moment and somehow breath it all in, feeling a wide sense of gratitude.

As Lucilius reflected on the moment between his other wandering thoughts, there came the hurried footfalls of someone else coming down the trail.  He looked to see a young man, practically running down the trail.  As he came close to Lucilius, he was startled by Lucilius’ presence and tripped, falling harmlessly to the ground.

“Are you ok?” Lucilius asked, himself startled by the sight.

“Yea, I think so,” the young man said as he took hold of Lucilius’ proffered hand.  Lucilius hauled the young man up.

“Going pretty fast there,” Lucilius commented.

“I dunno, just gotta keep moving, I guess.”

“What do you mean?” Lucilius asked.

The young man sighed, looking back up the path, as though there were something there.  “It seems if I stay in one place for too long, I just start feeling this dread and panic. I went for this hike because I thought it would feel good, and I thought maybe I could get some rest at the top, with a good view, far away from everyone.  But just sitting up there for a minute or two and suddenly, I’m just filled with dread and panic again, and I just want to leave.  It’s like it catches up with me again, and I just have to keep moving to feel ok.”

“Maybe these feelings are trying to catch up in order to tell you something important?” Lucilius offered.

The young man sneered.  “Yea right.”

Lucilius could see the young man was starting to feel uneasy again.

“Well, I’ll let you get a move on, so that you can feel better.”

“Thanks,” the young man said as he move on down the trail.

Lucilius paused for a moment as the young man drifted out of sight.  The leaves of the high canopy swayed in a high breeze, flashes of sun blinked in the wobbling gaps.  Lucilius felt the fresh air fill his lungs.  He could feel even his heartbeat, radiating pulses out through his body and limps.  It was a beautiful, simply perfect day, Lucilius thought, as he started up the trail once more.