It’s not a call to lemming-like suicide as you might think. Perhaps another C.L. maxim of a similar nature would shed some light. “Give and give until you say goodbye.” Or – as a man named Ecclesiastes once put it “To everything there is a season. And a time to every purpose under Heaven.” Meaning there is a time to run and a time to stop. When it’s appropriate to run you run flat out. When it’s appropriate to stop you stop.

I thought of this today as I was watching a Sunday morning political news show. By the time you read this ,we will either have a new President or a lot of fat cat lawyers will be very busy. I have strong opinions about whom I would like to be our next President. Whatever happens, however, I have let go of the outcome.
Letting go of an outcome is a tough concept for some people. They see it as not having faith in yourself; giving up; being negative. To admit that you may not get what you want may appear to be defeatist. In fact – nonattachment to the outcome of your actions is a strong peaceful position to take in the world. It all comes down to what is controllable and what is not.

My personal commitment to having my guy be the next President is within my control as are my actions which spring from that commitment. I can give money, time and effort. I can attempt to sway undecided voters and I can man the phones to get the vote out on November 4th. But the actual final national outcome of the election is not within my control.

So I give and give until it’s not appropriate to give anymore. I run until it would be unwise to continue running.

I see what Reality presents to me and I respond to it.

This is a dangerous myth because people expect meditation to be like slipping into a hot tub. When they experience discomfort they think it’s not working or they’re not doing it right and they give up. In fact, it’s often not relaxing, at least not initially. In the beginning meditation is like exercise; if it doesn’t hurt you’re not doing it right. This puts off a lot of people right from the start.

They’ve taken the odd Yoga class where you lie on the floor, close your eyes and let your poor body rest. Everybody loves this. You’ve been moving for an hour, your limbs are stretched every which way and you relish the opportunity to let gravity take your muscles and let them drop.

Conventional sitting meditation may become like this over time but it probably won’t be right off the bat. When you sit down and face a wall or close your eyes and there’s nothing between you and the timer but your incessantly jabbering monkey mind it’s anything but relaxing. Horrifying and sobering are two more appropriate words that come to mind. Relaxing it ain’t.

2. You need time to meditate.

You don’t need time to set aside time to meditate. You can meditate for 5 minutes, 2 minutes, in your car, walking or chopping onions. It isn’t a specialized activity which you have to do in a room with specialized equipment. Cut out 15 minutes of TV time and there’s your meditation block.

3. Bad stuff comes up.

Actually this isn’t a myth. Bad feelings or experiences may surface when you sit quietly and meditate. But, as my mother always used to say, better an empty house than a bad tenant. The bad stuff doesn’t materialize because your mind is quiet. It’s there when your mind is busy, too. You just can’t hear it. So – hear it. Listen to it. Acknowledge it and let it go.

4. It’ll slow me down. I need my edge.

Meditation actually hones your edge. If your boss is hyper, your workday is manic and your default mode is just south of Chaos you need to give your autonomic nervous system a rest every once in a while. Meditation will help with this. When you return to work mode you’ll still ramp up to speed pretty quickly but chances are you’ll be a little more focused and centered.

5. Meditation is Boring

What’s boring is back to back re-runs of “Cops” every night. Why? Because they have nothing whatsoever to do with your life. They’re pure escapism. Anything that comes up in, or because of, meditation is about you. Which means it’ll be helpful, interesting and instructive. How better to spend your time than to learn something about yourself and immediately put it to use in your life?

One Myth that is true about meditation is that it’s habit-forming. Once you let it into your life you’ll have a hard time doing without it.

I had gone to a Zen Center to learn meditation. The idea of sitting down everyday for a time in peace and stillness appealed to me. How hard could it be? I could be contemplative at times. I could sit by myself quite happily watching the sun go down. Especially if I had someone with me to share it with.

We were led into a small room and told to take off our shoes and sit on meditation cushions. Our instructor told us we were to close our eyes and breathe slowly and purposefully in and out. We should try to clear out minds of any thoughts. If a rogue thought did enter our mind we should acknowledge it but not attach ourselves to it.

As our Buddhist teacher explained. We should think;

“Oh, there’s a thought scudding across the blue sky of my mind like a little cloud. I’ll watch it go by now.”

I could immediately relate. (“Oh here’s this jerk come to talk to me but he’s not my type. I’ll just nod and pretend to listen.)”

Our Buddhist teacher explained that we should breathe slowly in and out. We should count 1 on the first exhalation; 2 on the second exhalation etc. until we reached 10. If we were distracted by a thought we had to immediately go back to number 1 and start over.

I can absolutely do this!

One. So far so good.

Two.

“Hey, check me out. I’m meditating!”

One. Two.

“Thank God I made it past two. Otherwise I’d be a complete spazz.”

Doh!

One.

“I wonder if anyone else has gotten past two yet.”

One.

Etc. etc.

When I opened my eyes it was to a new and horrible reality. I think I actually said, “Do I do this ALL THE TIME!!” and the wise Buddhist nun smiled and nodded.

This was years ago but I’ve been keeping an eye on this since. Kind of like when you’re aware of your breathing because maybe you had a slight heart irregularity and then you can’t go to sleep because you’re so aware of your breathing. You wonder how come you never noticed it before. You hear your heart in everything. You are hyper-aware of your breathing. What if you stop!!

What if, by thinking so much about your breathing, you actually forget to do it? How do you get yourself started again?

I call this my intra-cranial conversation. Reminds me of a phrase our “intelligence” experts use when bumping us up to a Code Orange. They hear snippets of intelligence in the “chatter” of Al Queda operatives across countries. Now what they really need is access to the Al Queda intra-cranial chatter. That would tell ‘em something. But, of course, it’s not only off-limits to us but it’s also off-limits to them because it’s never talked about.

Which is why it’s The Last Taboo.

Every body does this. Presidents; homeless person. (Once you accept that all politicians do this you won’t be able to vote for anybody ever again. I mean never). It’s like seeing somebody you need to hold in a position of respect with their pants off. We know that children do this because they are unself-conscious enough to verbalize their intra-cranial chatter as they play. They talk to themselves and give tea-parties for imaginary friends.

We consider it charming.

Now there are many kinds of intra-cranial chatter. There’s the informational task-oriented ;

“Hmm, I wonder if I should put more lemon in the dressing.”

“Is this where I made a left last time I came here.”

Sort of a harmless sub-verbal acknowledgment of a thought process.

Then there is the judgmental. The most damaging.

“You moron, how could you say something so stupid”. “Exactly how big does my ass look in this”.

There is the editorializing which seems to have no function whatsoever.

“Hey, what a great sunset”.

“Look at that”. “They can’t be real, they’re too perky”.

“There oughta be a permit for spandex”.

A very bad voice-over to a truly boring docudrama.

There is the firing on all neurons stream of consciousness.

“I can’t believe I’m thinking this but..” .

I always thought the great attraction of Robin Williams was that he outed his own personal intra-cranial chatter. It felt familiar because that’s how we all actually think for crying out loud. We just never knew anybody else did.

And then there are endless sub-sets of second-guessing; l’esprit de l’escalier; constructed scenarios which showcase our superhero powers; Yadda, yadda, yadda.

It’s the great equalizer.

Remember that scene in the Woody Allen film where as a punishment the guy is locked in a pit with an insurance agent?

That’s your brain on Reality. There’s no escape. You can’t get away. All day every day. It’s draining to generate to; listen to and to argue with.

That’s why people find meditation so calming. The Buddhist nun claims she could tell that we were having a difficult time of it because of the energy in the room. Well sure, brainwaves are electrical, so thoughts must have some kind of electrical component and if she was still and hyper-sensitive why couldn’t she tell? It must have felt to her like she was standing to close to a transformer on the freeway.

I have often wondered if our intra-cranial chit chat is the equivalent of a white noise which masks external stimulation and cuts off the flow of material to the brain. Seeing as the brain isn’t really required for most of this nonsense. Maybe it’s like going on Energy Saver mode so that we have enough brainpower left to respond to the important stuff.

So, anyway, I was walking along the beach when the realization hit me that I could make my life easier in one fell swoop.

How, you ask?

Just shut up. Just stem the flow of garbage. It doesn’t take a lot of creativity to generate all this garbage but it must take an awful lot of energy to process it and listen to it . So don’t. Just stop it.

But here’s the truly frightening thing about it. You can’t shut up. No sir. Try it.

One. Two.

“Is this the end of the article. That was a load of hooey. I could’ve done better……