how to feel better in 10 minutes a day...

Over and over, I say to the people who come to me for help: The best thing you can do to make your life better is to meditate. 
Over and over, they say back to me: My mind won't stay still long enough to meditate. 
Over and over, I say to back to them: No, it won't, will it? Not till you've practiced meditation for a while! 

So many of us think a calm mind is the normal human state of being and a mind that chatters away at us every waking moment is abnormal. Somehow we think that most other people have it together and we are the only ones whose minds are giving us grief all day every day.

I'm afraid not. It's the nature of the mind to think. That's what it's there for. The mind exists to look for problems and when it finds them, real or imaginary, to turn  possible solutions over and over until it finds one it's happy with. Stupid Mind doesn't care if it's the middle of night. It doesn't care if its solutions are actually helpful. It doesn't care that it's actually only a tool for us to use in order to have a happy life.

The Mind thinks very highly of itself. It thinks it's in charge of our lives. The Mind thinks it's in charge of us. In fact, the Mind thinks it IS us.

It isn't.

It's certainly an important part of us - but many people consider our mind, our thoughts, to be our core Self.

It's not.

Think about a time where you felt peaceful - maybe it was lying on the beach in the middle of your best holiday ever and all you were aware of was the sun on your face and the smell of the sea in your nostrils. Maybe it was climbing a tree when you were a kid and your whole concentration was tied up in where to find your next foothold.  Maybe it was lying in your lover's arms after some mind-blowing sex and all you were aware of was the after-light of the fireworks behind your eyelids.

These experiences generally do not need the words or thoughts that Mind uses to communicate with us - and yet these are the times when we are most our true selves.

The mind is important. In no way am I saying it isn't. It's fun to play with. It's interesting to explore. It's crucial to navigate successfully through life's problems. But it isn't our most essential self. If humans were computers the mind would pretty much be the operating system. Like Windows, with all its problems and glitches. Just as Windows runs the computer, but is not actually the computer, so the mind runs the self, but isn't actually the Self.

I see my job as helping people find their way in a scary world - and the number 1 way to navigate this world is by putting the mind in its place. What we think of as our mind is often more just a constant stream of worrying and negativity. What will happen if I run out of money? What will happen if my lover leaves me? What will happen to me when I'm old?

What's the point of these out of control thoughts? There is none. They don't solve anything. They just make you unhappy. Meditation will teach you to quiet your mind so that you can enjoy the beautiful things in life. It will allow you to control when you let your mind off the leash to apply its logic to actual life problems in the here and now.

There are operations you leave Windows to run automatically on your computer and things that need your direction. Your life is like that. Practising meditation allows us to quiet those unnecessary thoughts and experience what lies beneath them.

What will we find beneath the constant chatter of an out of control mind?

Peace.

In my next entry, I'll give you some pointers on how to get started on the great adventure inward that we call meditation.

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the sunny side of the street...

It's so tempting to be cynical about life - but the truth is, there are many more good things happen in a day than bad things. Over the course of your life, you will almost certainly be done more good turns than bad ones.

Love, kindness and altruism are the most amazing success story in evolution's giant bag of amazing tricks.

Not only are we programmed by our DNA to look after ourselves, we are programmed to look after each other. That's not to say we always do - of course we don't.

But evolution has also built a fail-safe into our systems. It's called guilt! If we don't look after each other - at least those we are 'meant' to look after, our parents, our children - we feel guilt, one of the most unpleasant emotions known to humankind. Once you have experienced guilt a few times, you will find it is an excellent behaviour modifier - most of us learn to behave in a way that keeps us safe from the ravages of guilt.

Guilt is so corrosive to an individual's life, that in order to escape it, the sufferer will pound their consciousness with mind-altering substances just to dull the experience of it.

Those who don't look after those they are meant to look after and also feel no guilt about it, are almost universally seen as defective. They are labelled sociopaths and shunned. This is another fail-safe - one that operates at the community level; it's called outrage. Community outrage has an amazing ability to moderate behaviour.

Not only is it seen as the norm of human behaviour to look after those you are supposed to look after, those who go further than this are seen as somehow 'super-human'. Nurses, firemen, paramedics even teachers are revered sight unseen because they take the human norm of caring one step further up the ladder and look after those they have no moral imperative to look after.

Sure, you can look out there and see all the aberrant behaviour - parents killing and molesting their kids, young people mugging the elderly, people stealing from their neighbours - but the fact that you are outraged or even just depressed about it only reinforces my point. The time to worry is when this behaviour is tolerated as normal and not commented upon at all.

The wonder is not that enough of this aberrant behaviour takes place to cause us outrage, it is that love and kindness under the normal circumstances of human society is so much the norm that we don't even notice that it is being practised far far more often than behaviour that purposely harms others.

Every day, perfectly average people get up and look after their children and parents far above the standard of care required for mere survival. Everyday, people wait and let others into queues ahead of them. They call and ask friends if they are okay. They create surprises for those they love just to make the day more enjoyable. They cook for friends. They put away money they could use now just so their children won't have to struggle after they die. They give prodigious amounts to charity and most agree that, not only should we help our immediate neighbours, but that rich countries should help people in distress in poor countries that we have never met and who will very likely never be able to return the favour.

Holy snapping milk of human kindness, Batman!

Yes, there are many many failures of care - but there are many many more daily successes. You could almost say we are on the right track!


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THE WORLD IS AWESOME!

Just watching this makes me smile. 

I'm going to spend today concentrating on what I have instead of what I don't have. Have a great day!



Thanks for visiting! Please subscribe and hit the follow button to be kept up to date with what's happening, tarot-wise, in Townsville.