Chatter and peace

Of late there’s been a marked reduction in the ‘ol mental chatter. I don’t know from where the chatter originates. Sometimes I notice there is chatter; sometimes I notice there is not. When there is chatter, I find it’s usually impossible to stop it in the moment, or even with hours of concerted effort.

If you’re ever able to step back from your own mental chatter, and listen to it with some critical distance, perhaps after a long meditation, or in one of those tired but insightful moments near the end of the day, you might find it indeed exhibits many of the characteristics of an extremely boring and self-absorbed person. It’s not that you yourself are this way — surely you don’t say everything that comes to mind. But the mind does.

~ David Cain from, https://www.raptitude.com/2022/11/how-to-stop-thinking-too-much/

The only thing that works for me, to keep the chatter at bay, is to bite off far less than I think I can chew. Then spit half of it out the moment I realize I didn’t actually want it in the first place. My chatter is [I think?] always about something (or some things) specific. The only way to stop the chatter is to realize the thing is not worth doing, or to just do it. With finite time and energy there’s a limit to the “just do it” solution. In recent months I’ve been spending huge amounts of time talking myself into realizing many things are not worth doing. This too is a Sisyphean task, but I think it’s been working— at least if I judge by my perception of recent chatter.

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Gone

This practice is one form of what Shinzen Young would call “Noting Gone.” (He uses gone as a noun here, a certain kind of sensation, rather than an adjective.) What you’re noting is the moment where a thing goes from being here in your awareness to being gone from it, and the feeling of that moment. It doesn’t matter what the thing is –- a fish, an LED light, a musical note, a shape formed by drooping power lines. It also doesn’t matter how it vanishes — by slipping beneath the surface, by turning off, by going silent, by exiting your field of vision. In all cases the this gone quality has the same feel. It is the unmistakable, mildly surreal sensation of a thing having vanished.

~ David Cain from, https://www.raptitude.com/2022/06/the-vanishing-point/

This piece is a real splinter in my mind. I feel certain I’ve seen the “noting gone” concept before… but I can’t definitely find it. Perhaps I’m recalling that I read this very article, 6 months ago, AND marked it for reading later. So now I’m actually reading it a second time . . . It is definitely an unmistakable, mildly surreal sensation of a thing having vanished.

Also, in my quest to dig out the splinter, I searched for “gone” and got an interesting in itself set of posts.

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A rare repeat

Because sometimes I experience small periods of blissful serenity. I’d particularly like to be able to go there on a more regular basis. It seems to me that spending about 10 days doing nothing but meditating in silence would be a delightfully mind-altering experience.

~ Me from, https://constantine.name/2019/08/30/waiting-for-the-next-one/

I’m a process maniac. I have automation that feeds me links to my historical blog posts. This one from three years ago was something I really needed to reread (and was therefore very glad I was given the nudge to do so.)

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The great ability

Depending on how willing a person is to take this experiment seriously, they will at some point discover why human beings have made such a big deal of the Great Ability. To the degree you can meet experience exactly as it is, without resentment, it ceases to cause you suffering and drive your behavior.

~ David Cain from, https://www.raptitude.com/2020/09/the-inner-superpower-that-makes-us-human/

Unless you live under a rock—or “lived” under a rock since you’re not now under a rock; Welcome to the Internet! :)

Unless you live under a rock you’ve heard about “mindfulness practice” and “meditation” and probably “Metta” and maybe “one-point” and “zen” for sure. Cain hits it right out of the part, without even swinging, just by setting it out clearly. Every single time I realize I’m not currently exercising the great ability, I immediately pull myself back to it.

Now if only I could realize it more frequently.

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Convenience

I’m not a full-on coffee snob; I’m more like a middling, level 14, coffee-snob-poser. I’ve had world-class pour-overs—beans weighed to the gram, water temperature to a specific degrees, controlled pour-over rate, beans roasted by the person brewing, one 8oz cup at a time—and I’ve made instant coffee from freeze-dried crystals… “Any port in a storm,” as they say. But most of my coffee is upper-middle: A local roaster’s beans, but ground incorrectly using a Krups bladed grinder, then electric-drip brewed, using filtered water. It’s fast, it’s reproducible, it’s a solid middle-ground “good.”

Recently I’ve been percolating coffee over a Whisper Lite gas camping stove. This is super fiddly. Set up the gas stove, connect gas canister, hand bur-grind beans, set up the percolator, (picture old-timey cowboys around a campfire,) set up the wind-screen around the stove, light stove with match, balance the percolator on the stove’s spindly, (but super-strong stainless steel,) legs, crank up the gas, (audible, I’m-not-kinding-around-over-here roar,) then about 5 minutes to boil the water, dial the gas down to a whisper, check the time and get a nice perc going—but not a rolling boil—then hover close-by for ten minutes… turn off gas, wrap stainless steel pot in a tea-towel cozy…

There are a million things in life that we do every day, quickly. Selecting one or three and intentionally doing them the less-convenient way is the absolute-best salve for the hustle-bustle busy and mental noise we create for ourselves.

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Waiting for the next one

What, I can experience an entire trip to the mall without sighing, grimacing or silently cursing? I can sit through an entire red light without fidgeting? I can make (or miss) my connecting flight without losing my shit even once? Can I live my whole life this way?

We can, if we’re willing to give time, as a habit. Nothing else makes sense really—it’s just experimenting with a willingness to live in reality as though there’s nowhere else to be. (Not that there ever was.)

~ David Cain, from http://www.raptitude.com/2016/07/how-to-be-patient/

Occassionally I get the urge to attend a week-long, silent meditation retreat. (For example, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vipassanā retreats.)

Why?

Because sometimes I experience small periods of blissful serenity. I’d particularly like to be able to go there on a more regular basis. It seems to me that spending about 10 days doing nothing but meditating in silence would be a delightfully mind-altering experience.

Rarely, but with increasing frequency, I find myself enjoying sitting pefectly still. Doing perfectly nothing. Paying attention to the moment instead of being completely obliterated by an endless torrent of thoughts. Eventually a thought which I deem worthy enough arises urging me to go do this, or check on that, and I rise from my glimpse of serenity.

I always wonder what would happen if I just kept thinking: That’s not quite worth getting up for just now, I’ll wait for the next thought.

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When is the last time you did nothing?

Blaise Pascal famously said that all human miseries arise from our inability to do this. But I think it’s really just an unwillingness. He’s right about the arising miseries though—not knowing how to deliberately do nothing is a crippling disease that leads to bizarre, self-defeating phenomena like workaholism, cigarette smoking, rude smartphone behavior (see below) and eventually war and pestilence.

~ David Cain from, http://www.raptitude.com/2016/03/4-absurdly-easy-things/

Not to be confused with, “doing something that doesn’t advance you towards a goal.” That’s still doing something. A lot of people spend a lot time doing all sorts of that busy-nothing; I see you on the street, in your car, at the cafe, the glow of the TV in your homes, and I can tell by the words that I overhear that all that stuff is important to you. There’s a good book, What Makes Your Brain Happy: And Why You Should Do the Opposite, which I offer for your consideration.

No, I’m asking about “doing nothing” as in sitting, or perhaps lying down, and being fully aware of the reality around you. For many years, I ran in terror from doing nothing. I ran to my todo lists or my goals or my habits designed to improve my life or my TV or my fiction books…

I started by intentionally setting out—if even for a few minutes—to do nothing. I’ve gotten pretty darn good at it these days. What I’m currently practicing is learning that doing nothing is the good stuff I should not feel guilty about.

Why not go do nothing right now?

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The absurdity

We usually (though not always) recognize the absurdity in blaming animals, inanimate objects, or the weather for the annoyances they cause us. Shit happens, and most reasonable people can accept that. But somehow, if we can in any way pin the inconveniences in our lives on a failing of another human being, we are quick to do it.

~ David Cain from, http://www.raptitude.com/2010/09/do-you-make-a-moral-issue-out-of-being-inconvenienced/

Replace every instance of we with I in the above quote and it once fit me perfectly. I sometime mention the fundamental attribution error and that is a significant part of what he’s talking about. But there’s more to it than just that error.

This is something I’ve managed to transform into a snide condescnesion; for example, when driving, I often think, “…aaaaaand, cut me off,” just before drivers do so. I recall how I used to get angry in such situations. Really angry. Fortunately, more than a decade ago, after a lot of meditation, I learned to first witness the anger, then to know when to expect it, and finally to not bother creating it.

Current project: Witness the condescention. Learn to expect the condescension.

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How to be mindful

Slowly add mindfulness bells. A mindfulness bell can be anything in your environment. Thich Nhat Hanh suggested using traffic lights as a mindfulness bell — when you see one, instead of getting caught up in the stress of driving, allow yourself to become present. You can slowly find other mindfulness bells — your daughter’s face, opening your computer, having your first cup of coffee, hearing a train going by.

~ Leo Babauta from, https://zenhabits.net/always/

Finding ways to trigger making conscious decisions is the key to increasing the amount of time you are mindful. The possibilities are endless!

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Meditation

People who haven’t tried to meditate have very little sense that their minds are noisy at all. And when you tell them that they’re thinking every second of the day, it generally doesn’t mean anything to them. It certainly doesn’t strike most of them as pathological. When these people try to meditate, they have one of two reactions: Some are so restless and besieged by doubts that they can hardly attempt the exercise. “What am I doing sitting here with my eyes closed? What is the point of paying attention to the breath?” And, strangely, their resistance isn’t remotely interesting to them. They come away, after only a few minutes, thinking that the act of paying close attention to their experience is pointless.

~ Sam Harris from, https://samharris.org/taming-the-mind/

I don’t consider myself “very good” at meditating. Beginning in ’98, through 15 years of Aikido practice and beyond, I have spent “some” time sitting in seiza, meditating and breathing. It was only after many years that I realized how wonderful the sitting, meditation, and breathing was for me personally.

There’re approximately 10 gazillion intros and primers on meditation and breathing on the Internet, so I’m not even going to give a hand-waving explanation. I’ll just say: Yes! Do! You can mail me a Thank-you card later!

…and I suppose also: If we meet in person, strike up a conversation and I’d love to talk shop.

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The end of solitude: Overtaken by technology

How, then, can we find and embrace emptiness in the sea of digital activity we swim through every day? The possibility of constant communication and information can make us allergic to absence. It’s not just that the technology is ubiquitous, invasive, and addicting. Its presence in our lives belies the deeper issue that the Wilson study touched upon: the ability to sit still with ourselves.

~ Susan Cain from, http://www.quietrev.com/the-end-of-solitude-overtaken-by-technology/

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