Dear friends,
Welcome to this meditation,
And no,
It is not designed to encourage rudeness.
You can relax.
In fact,
Relaxing is what this meditation is about today.
Relaxing.
So can we begin by doing just that?
Set yourself up in a comfortable space and relax.
Allow yourself to just be.
Nothing to do.
Nowhere to go.
Finally,
A time to stop.
Let's give ourselves one minute.
60 seconds at this rare traffic light relaxing.
Welcome back.
And so to the subject for today's reflection.
Hang up the phone.
No goodbye.
How often do we feel that our work or our train of thought is interrupted by phone calls,
Text alerts,
Notifications and alarms of one kind or another?
Interruptions and distractions,
All of them.
But the greater part of our distraction comes from the incessant conversations or monologues that we carry on with ourselves.
Mostly we don't carry on this conversation or monologue aloud.
Although with mobile phones,
Earpods and invisible microphones,
It sometimes looks as though many people do.
No,
This is the muttering and the background murmuring that's going on in our heads most of the time.
In these moments of silent discourse,
We put a name on things and events.
We judge them as good or bad.
We put a label on our physical state.
Hot,
Cold,
Comfortable,
Uncomfortable,
That sort of thing.
In our busy minds,
We name and label and judge everything and everyone as we go through the day.
If you have ever tried to be quiet,
Really quiet,
You'll know what I mean.
No,
I'm not advocating that we try to bring ourselves to an unthinking zombie-like state.
We've all been given the gift of mind and we have to use our minds.
I'm just wondering if we can manage to quieten the chatter from time to time and allow ourselves to experience the remarkable gift of this existence non-judgmentally.
I went for a walk today along a tree-lined avenue just to try out this idea.
Or at least I began my walk and then I decided I'd try out this idea.
It wasn't easy to achieve,
But the first few moments when I managed to do this left me with a good feeling.
Boards were singing.
I'm not familiar with all bird song,
But I tried to listen to and still not name a blackboard or a wood pigeon.
I tried to let the gift of these sounds come to me without judgment.
There were other sounds too of course.
Cars passing,
Coming and going and buzzes also.
Naturally,
Despite my good intention,
I found the internal chatter going on most of the time.
The good thing was that this failure and this difficulty gave rise to the idea of this meditation,
Which I hope will help you too,
Illustrating that every cloud has a silver lining.
The lesson learned is that we need to practice if we are to become a little better at living non-judgmentally in the now.
Let's pause for one minute,
60 seconds again,
To allow the world to present itself to us in sounds or images,
This time hopefully without names or labels.
Welcome back.
Max Ehrman in his wonderful poem Desiderata speaks of how the universe is unfolding as it should.
We need to let it unfold.
Let us watch its unfolding and enjoy the wonder of each moment as each moment presents itself in sound,
Vision or feeling.
We don't need to give ourselves a running commentary in order to enjoy what we see here and what we feel here.
In fact,
The running commentary and the fixing of labels prevents us from seeing things anew as they are right now.
I think you will find that the chatter going on within is actually in your everyday language,
So if you can deliberately decide not to sub-vocalise it will help you to keep the internal phone on its receiver,
Or if it's a mobile,
To keep it on silent.
Another suggestion I've come across is the idea of considering the mind as a whiteboard or a blackboard and for a while not allowing words to form on the board.
Yet another idea is that since we cannot think of two things at the very same time,
If we concentrate on working up and down through a series of numbers,
We cannot be so vocalising about the things we see or hear.
You might try some of these techniques in the time ahead and see which of them will help you to stop the chatter so that you can better experience the gifts that the universe presents to you in each passing moment.
Don't beat yourself up if you fail along the way.
After all,
You'd hardly expect to sit down at a keyboard and play a tune without practice.
Yet somehow we think that we should be able to meditate like monks by just sitting down.
A great idea if it worked,
But what an unreasonable expectation.
So whether you're practising the keyboard or practising keeping that phone on silent for a while,
I wish you all the best and I hope you have an enjoyable journey.
I'll leave you with a thought from Rashid O'Gunlaro.
Your words,
Thoughts,
Intentions and actions today are your best hope,
Comfort,
Building blocks and insurance for tomorrow.
But it is now a loan that is guaranteed.
Tomorrow was a dream,
A maybe,
A potential gift.
It's now,
Not tomorrow,
Where happiness and fulfilment live,
Awaiting your discovery.
It's all this that will make each extra day that may arrive extra special and rich.
Namaste.
