February 18, 2020 - 158 - "Take Ten"

I did a 'free to share' search on 'bad ideas' and
got this.  It's not Ella...but looks like it. 

Another Habit!

     So I said to myself:  How's about you add just one more teeny tiny habit to your day?

     And I answered myself:  What a great idea!!

     On the down side:  the habit requires attention every hour of the day...literally. 

     On the upside...the point of it is to bring calm and clarity to my days.

     My new habit is an hourly 'Mindful Moment'.

Peace of Mind

    This is the reasoning behind this new habit:  I've created the habit of meditating at least once per day for 15 minutes. 

     The results of this habit are hard to quantify, but I do have the sense that I do get something out of it.   There's a little more calm in my mind.  There seems to be a tiny space between my first instinct to overreact to something...and the actual act of over-reacting to something.

     So I was wondering about how I could bring this sense of peace into the rest of my day.

The Practice

    So I set timers once per hour from 8:13 in the morning until 10:13 at night.  (13 is my lucky number.  I'll explain that in another post...).

    So, anyhow, the goal is:  When the timer goes off, I turn it off, and then breathe 10 mindful breaths.  In for a count of 3...out for a count of 5.  Until I reach 10. 

    Easy, right?

  

    I timed it.  Even when I focus on breathing really slowly I rarely go over a minute.  And, when I tried it at home I felt pretty darn chilled out by all that mindfulness.

Kind of Worked

   The timer has mainly gone off when I've been home for the last 24 hours...so that's not too much of a test.  I mean...I'm home:  what's not to be happy about?  

     It did go off once while driving...and that gave me a good moment of breathing and relaxing and not having road rage at anyone.  But it was a pretty mellow traffic day, so I probably would've been fine anyhow.

    It also went off while I was at a store...which can be sort of a fun place...and sort of exhausting simultaneously.  Like if you're looking for something that you really need to take to another country...soon-like, for example.  

    So I breathed through wandering down aisles with my shopping cart hunting for the perfect things...and, well, I don't know.  Maybe it helped...a little.  I felt pretty calm.

Complete Fail

    But then, when I really needed it:  when talking to the love of my life and simultaneously feeling completely overwhelmed over my schedule for the next six days.  The breathing didn't work.  I mean - I'm sure I kept breathing...I'm still here.   So I guess you could say the actual breathing worked...but it wasn't in any kind of calming way.  

     It was more like I was hyperventilating.  I don't think the Buddha breathed like that under that Bodhi tree.  (Which makes me wonder...does a person need a Bodhi tree to meditate really well?  Maybe that's my problem!  Not only do I not have a Bodhi tree...I'm not sure I've ever seen one in my whole life.  Maybe meditation doesn't translate to a land without Bodhi trees?)

     So, in my Bodhi-tree-less space in the universe...

     I sort of went into a tail-spin of panic-meets-overwhelm-meets-oh-my-god-how'm-I-gonna-get-this-cat-to-Mexico-plus curtains-vases-paperwork-notebooks-medications-clothes-and...-oh-my-heavens-my-brain-is-melting-down...!!!

     
Give It Time

     But I don't think meditation is supposed to be a one and done sort of thing.  I've been meditating on and off for a long time and I see changes...but I don't always use what I've learned in moments when I really need to.  

     Maybe it's a process.  I think it doesn't happen overnight.

    I think, more than any specific meditation technique, or reminder practice or whatever...it would be really good if I could just chill-the-hell-out in moments of stress.

    But then it wouldn't be called stress would it?  If we could just not care about it...we'd call it, I don't know:  contentment.  Peace.

    Maybe I'm trying to ask 'mindfulness' to alchemize dross to gold?  Maybe not all that glitters (/flares up in anger) is gold?  

     Maybe it's just a crappy moment.

    Maybe the point is just to breathe through the crap-moments and then let them go. 

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"The goal of meditation is not to get rid of thoughts or emotions.  The goal is to become more aware of your thoughts and emotions and learn how to move through them without getting stuck."

-Dr. P. Goldin

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"Go within every day and find the inner strength so that the world will not blow your candle out."

-Katherine Dunham

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"Man is ignorant and blind, and he wants to remain ignorant and blind because to come inwards looks like entering a chaos. And it is so; inside you have created a chaos.  You have to encounter it and go through it.  Courage is needed - courage to be oneself, and courage to move inwards.  I have not come across a greater courage than that - the courage to be meditative."

-Osho

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