Friday, May 14, 2010

The Quiet mind

#30 Days of Content 12

This is a hard one.... Some of you, do what I like to call "Spinning". You have no idea what to do.... so you just spin around and around and around..... How do I know this? Because I can do it.

Why? Because you are confused. Your mind fights you at every moment, it wants to be organized, and it wants to be focused.....

But what do you do? You fill it with Garbage. Stimulus! Stimulus! Stimulus!.... Like if all the T.V.s and radios and Chatty Kathys in your life, Turned off. The world would stop.



Your mind is like a library, at one point all the people need to leave, and the books need to get back on the shelves.
Sure, that is done throughout the day, but there is a sort of entropy at work. What your mind needs, is some quiet time, to just "SORT". Even on the bike, one can have the music going, and the cars driving by... and still the mind has a hard time doing a "Sort". Sometimes, I turn off the Music, and just ride... and the things that go through my head... as my brain gets a chance to just "Be Alone with It's Self" and just Catalog, are frighting, and yet refreshing.

You are giving your Brain a chance to realize "Oh! this book is about Science, that is where that goes. This one is about Love. This is part of Biology. And Wow! I'd like to read this one again. Many people, set aside an hour or so of quite time every day for this. One can listen to music... or just sit in the garden and think. The reason your mind isn't "Quite" is because you aren't giving yourself that time. Sure, my mind runs at a thousand miles per hour.... But you spin, when it runs at a thousand miles per hour, and you can't keep up.... it turns into a spiral... and you can't get out of it.

One thing that will happen is that, unless you are super tired. As you go to bed, your mind will run... run with all those thoughts, and it won't allow you to sleep. Many people turn the TV on, to stay distracted, and hope to fall Asleep. This is the exact wrong thing to do. You need to go through these thoughts, you need to suffer with them.....


Again, it's your mind trying to organized. A thousand years ago, or even one hundred. You and I would have to walk or ride places, even spend hours chopping wood. These were times when our minds would "Catalog" or "Quite It's Self". Now with our Car Radios and our MP3 and the Commercials, and all the TV...

It's like we can't catch a breath.....

and some of us suffocate under the weight of it.

It sounds like "Being Lazy" and yet a small period of time to just walk, or think and just Sort through, what is on your mind... Is Imperative.... in the true sense of the word "something that is unavoidable and necessary"

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Some non roadies ask about the appeal of the road. There are many but one of my favorites is hopping on my bike after work and solving the world's, i.e, my problems.

Sometimes I consciously focus on things and other times it's a free flow. I'm continually amazed at how often I figure out something that's been confounding me. I've been known to leave myself voice mails w/my a ha's..... Of course, sometimes they're not so good on second listening.

The Mop said...

Truth is, once you get in the flow of Road cycling, it's a mediation.

with or without music.

but a long road, and no music... and whatever is troubling you will bubble up.

I figure, if I don't remember it when I get back, it probably wasn't worth remembering.