Imagine someone who absolutely needs to be in the moment.
For safety’s sake.
Say someone like a surfer who is out there in the ocean hanging ten.
Picture this surfer riding a huge wave.
Can you see how thoughts don’t help the surfer?
What’s the surfer doing? Paying attention to the wave!
Information about what to do comes via insights arising in the moment.
There are no predetermined, premeditated actions or thoughts that can help.
What happens if the surfer on that massive wave focuses on what coulda/woulda/shoulda been done or worries about what will happen later in the day?
That’s right. Wipeout!
I love this observation that Alex Mill shares in his book, ‘Meditation and reinventing yourself’.
We can all relate to his example of the surfer wiping out, right?
Because it is dramatic and potentially life-threatening.
But what about wiping out in much more ordinary, everyday, non-life-threatening ways?
Wiping out is living in our heads and trying to wilfully think our way through life.
Living in our heads is when we worry about the future, chew over the past, fret when things do not seem be going our way, over-analyse and many other ways of over-employing our thinking.
Why do we do it?
It is the illusion of control, fueled by insecure thinking. We think that if we do not try to control our world then something bad is going to happen.
But do you see the paradox?
The attempt to control IS the bad thing happening!
Life does not lend itself enough to control to make it a viable way to live.
The secret to a healthy mind
On an almost daily basis I see articles in the media about how to have a healthy mind.
The one I read today was called, ‘Lockdown brain; how to talk yourself out of a negative thought’.
How can you experience a quieter mind by doing more thinking?
The more thought you use to try and get rid of thought the bigger the problem will seem. The advice dished out by many so-called ‘experts’ does not work.
So, what does?
Several years ago, I was working with my coach, Annika Hurwitt, and she said to me:
‘John, you get present really easily, but I also notice that you tend to drift off sometimes and I wonder to myself, “where is he going now?”‘
When she said that I remember both laughing and feeling a little embarrassed too, but it was also incredibly helpful.
I realised that noticing when you are not here brings you back into the here.
Michael Singer wrote in his wonderful book, ‘The Untethered Soul’:
“There is nothing more important to true growth than realising you are not the voice of the mind – you are the one who hears it. If you don’t understand this, you will try to figure out which of the many things the voice says is really you.”
For our intellectual mind this is way too simple – surely there must be a process or some steps to follow?
No.
There are no techniques, no steps to follow and no talking yourself out of your thinking
Just notice.
This is enough.
As we notice and come back into the present, just as Alex points out:
‘Information about what to do comes via insights arising in the moment’.
The intelligence is built into the system.
P.S. If this resonates with you then I would love to hear from you.