jimmy jamesSit down and shut up!
May 7th 2008 05:38
Hardly anyone likes to be alone with their thoughts.Thats why we always have the radio on in the car.Driving down the highway listening to a great song that comes on the radio,we get lost in the music and our thoughts.Our unconscious mind is really the one doing the driving because we are so lost in our thoughts.
We are suddenly where we were the first time we heard the song,maybe twenty years or more removed from driving 70MPH down the interstate.Then as we come to, we realize the song ended a long time ago and we are listening to commercials at a high volume.We turn it down and start to realize that we have driven way past our exit.
There are so many benefits from meditation and just about as many techniques.One technique that most folks might find helpful is very simple.Just sit down and shut up!
Most folks may have tried meditation and found it wanting or fleeting.The whole point of meditation is not to make all the bad thoughts go away, but to let them just drop away,drift off
and when they are intense to kind of feel them,and let them go.Pema Chodron writes in her book "Start Where You Are", that we need to make friends with those thoughts,lean into them,becuase they are always there,even when we are sleeping they are moving.The point of meditation is to realize when we are drifting into anger,rage,depression and to feel what it feels like.We are so used to having "white noise" in the background all the time that we become uncomfortable in silence.There are actually days when I am very much aware of where my feet are.We like to increase the speed of life to the point where we are doing 11,567 different things during the course of a day, and after a month of this we are asking our doctor for a scrip of Xanax.
Just spending 5 minutes alone in the silence can help even the most active mind calm down.
Sitting and paying attention to your breathing is the best way to start.When your thoughts start to drift off,if you can catch it,just get back to the breathing.
This can also bring us to a mindfulness state where we are in the moment.It just takes a little practice.A funny thing about mindfulness:
You have one foot in yesterday.And you have one foot in tomorrow.That means you are peeing all over today!!
Most folks may have tried meditation and found it wanting or fleeting.The whole point of meditation is not to make all the bad thoughts go away, but to let them just drop away,drift off
and when they are intense to kind of feel them,and let them go.Pema Chodron writes in her book "Start Where You Are", that we need to make friends with those thoughts,lean into them,becuase they are always there,even when we are sleeping they are moving.The point of meditation is to realize when we are drifting into anger,rage,depression and to feel what it feels like.We are so used to having "white noise" in the background all the time that we become uncomfortable in silence.There are actually days when I am very much aware of where my feet are.We like to increase the speed of life to the point where we are doing 11,567 different things during the course of a day, and after a month of this we are asking our doctor for a scrip of Xanax.
Sitting and paying attention to your breathing is the best way to start.When your thoughts start to drift off,if you can catch it,just get back to the breathing.
This can also bring us to a mindfulness state where we are in the moment.It just takes a little practice.A funny thing about mindfulness:
You have one foot in yesterday.And you have one foot in tomorrow.That means you are peeing all over today!!
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