When I Click My Fingers

The dots are there to be joined up. Many months ago Jojesek posted a really useful piece on Jon Kabat-Zinn’s mindfulness principles, listing the attitudinal aspects of the practice; it is well worth a read. Some months later I discovered The Four Agreements through a post by Teresa Evangeline. Again, this post is an interesting read and a good introduction to Don Miguel Ruiz’s tenants. Later still I discovered Les Floyd’s blog and was introduced to the way he was influenced by the book ‘The Power Of Now’ in his own journey.

I could feel some common silver threads were catching the light as I looked at Mindfulness, The Four Agreements, Cognitive Behaviour Therapy and Paul Gilbert's Compassion approach. All seemed to me to be suggesting that the mind was not something entirely under our control (thank goodness), but that it was also capable of quite unhealthy pursuits, and that we should protect ourselves from its less helpful behaviour.

The sorts of things my own mischievous mind can occupy itself with include: being overly self critical; judging myself and others unfairly; making unlikely assumptions about future events that I couldn’t possibly substantiate; making unhelpful assumptions about other people’s thoughts and motives; and filling my head with expectations of myself and my time. When depression has a hold over me, these are things that I think about and commentate on to the exclusion of all else. It is terribly introspective, but I am not responsible for it. I can’t be blamed for it. I am in the audience watching it all. It is a movie that makes me feel a certain way about myself, and one that makes me fear the world and everything in it. This is to be living in a dream, or rather a nightmare. All these thoughts, the past, the future, the interpretations – none of this is reality.

So I do agree; my thoughts need to be wrestled with. Or perhaps not so. Not wrestled with exactly, not fought until they are overcome…not reasoned away. Instead, my thoughts are something that should be filtered, managed, selectively rejected, at times ignored. Rather than colouring everything and even occupying their own reality, they should be tethered so that my other senses and reality itself has a chance to share the light.

So why is applying this wonderful filter so difficult? It is! It is very difficult for me! The answer would seem ‘pay more attention to my senses’, and yet I am a rabbit caught in the headlights of my own thoughts. I’m unable to move and one after the other they strike me down. I know what it is that needs to be done but I fail at it. Unsurprisingly, the commentary from within remarks that I am failing because I am not trying hard enough.

What I am trying to move towards in inhabiting the present moment. To a place where, when my thoughts wander off, I bring them back, and I am able to continually do that. So that my reality is the one I am actually inhabiting bodily, and not the warped reality I am creating inside. This is not easy. I am a complete novice at this. I am tired from all the thinking and distress, I am sleeping a lot, I am not taking care of myself. I spend a lot of time stuck in neutral. Days end before they have started. Anything unexpected is met with fear.

I am learning from Jon Kabat-Zinn and others that I will need to start my learning in the shallower waters, start small, work hard and practice often. That doesn't sound much like me, but as he says: “Your mind goes off, you bring it back, your mind goes off, and you bring in back, and this happens over and over and something inside you starts to grow that’s a little more interesting than a bicep.”