Maintaining focus can be a struggle, and when I take time to be quiet all the creeping cravings start to come to mind. “It's cold outside. I want to sleep. I'm bored. Do I have any emails? What's for dinner? I'm hungry. I wonder if I look weird sitting here.” To mitigate the constant stream of thought I use a mindfulness app, and the guide says to treat thoughts like cars. I'm supposed to watch the cars pass. Not chasing the thoughts or resisting them, sitting quietly and indifferently as they go by. It's hard to watch cravings and anxieties pass without indulging them or fighting with them. But it's important if I desire to focus. My attempts to embrace the quiet and make better food choices have made my cravings glaringly obvious. My wife recently rejoined a group-based eating plan with a goal of properly prioritizing food. It works by discerning the needs of the body vs. the desires of the brain. It’s brilliant. When I attempt solidarity in this I am painfully aware of how often my eating is related to things besides sustenance or flavor. It's like I've turned on the light in a cluttered room, worked out a neglected muscle group, or received criticism I know to be true. There is a looming challenge I was happy pretending I didn't know existed. On good days, when I feel all sorts of courageous about myself, I go to work conquering these cravings. I will bend them to my will by focusing on them and fighting them. Easy enough, right? Just do it. But the more I focus on the problems themselves, the less successful I am in overcoming them. I’m chasing the car; not letting it go. And on the bad days, when I'm feeling vulnerable, I indulge the craving because my focus is misapplied, and I am tired of running. In both scenarios the problem is consuming me. Self-deprecation does not create change. I’m just standing there saying “this room is cluttered, I’m out of shape, I shouldn't feel hungry, I suck. It’s a problem, it’s a problem, I'm a problem”. Recognizing the problem is a good first step, but stepping up and down on the first step isn't climbing the stairs. After recognition of this craving or imperfection should be patience. Best-selling author Stephen Covey is well known for perpetuating the idea that effective people create a space between stimulus and response. Focusing on the stimulus eliminates the space. It sucks me into the craving and clouds my vision. So, when I get the feeling of hunger, or stress, or boredom, instead of attempting to satisfy or refute, I am working on letting it be. And what I have learned in about 1 day of doing this with moderate success is that it is ok to feel hunger. And it is ok to feel bored. And it is ok to feel anxious. What I failed to learn in the week leading up to this revelation is this: Cravings don’t change by strong arming them into submission and trying to keep them pinned. In an often quoted passage about taking captive every thought the Apostle Paul says, "The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world." In response to natural stimuli an unnatural response is patience. A natural response is to indulge, engage, or resist. By reducing the power and attention my cravings receive they become passive and submissive instead of controlling. They are cars rolling by. In the case of silence and meditation, “gently returning to the breath” becomes the focus, rather than the craving. In the case of food, or screens, I do not fixate on fighting or indulging the craving. I try to give it some space, and this may help me to identify deeper issues and create a long-term solution or more productive response. Space lets my vision grow clearer, allowing me to be more present, more discerning, and more engaged. It's a challenging thing to wrap my head around. To beat a craving I can't cater to it, and I can't ignore it. I just have to let it be. And let myself be. It's uncomfortable. But, I have faith it can be accomplished. My weapons are not the weapons of the world. Dear Reader, if you have made it this far, thank you. My encouragement to you is to recognize a craving, or an imperfection and let it go this week. Let the heaviness go and stop wearing yourself out chasing the car. Do not rush to judgement on stimulus, good or bad. Let it be. Your story is not the sum of your weaknesses and failures. It is a story of uncommon patience and unusal strength in the midst of imperfection. If you want to subscribe and get an email alert for next week you can do that here. And if you feel like this could help somebody else and want to share that would be cool too. A quick preview: In October of last year, after reading my post on minimalism and desire my brother sent me this story. “When an evil spirit leaves a person, it goes into the desert, seeking rest but finding none. Then it says, ‘I will return to the person I came from.’ So, it returns and finds its former home empty, swept, and in order. Then the spirit finds seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they all enter the person and live there. And so that person is worse off than before.” I’m realizing the importance of this a little more all the time. Releasing a craving and cleaning up doesn’t mean it won’t come back. It means it will return and if the house is not occupied it will settle in with a host of other evils. I talk and write a great deal about letting go of things like material possessions, insecurities, and cravings. Next week I am going to start writing about being filled up by letting go. It's counter-intuitive. I’m excited about it. ***A final note: I am not a fan of disclaimers, but this is vitally important. The things I’ve been talking about are cravings. And cravings come and go. Addictions are different. They don’t come and then go. They hang out. And they require different strategies from people with clinical knowledge. It’s not so cool when stigma prevents humans from having awesome lives. It’s unbelievably cool that there are humans dedicating their work to helping people with really difficult problems.
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There is an earthy moment after an early spring rain when the chilled air has a strong smell of dirt. Water is placid and thoughtful and all of nature seems to be in a deep sense of reflective growth. If I am very still the natural meditation starts to work its way over my thoughts and into my soul, drawing me out of life's roaring current and into a simple reverence. It's healing. Like a breeze, or the waves, but instead of soothing sounds it is an organic stillness. It's quiet. The minutes spent in this natural meditation are too far between. But quiet made the list of foundations for a simple reason: for the small ray of hope to flourish out of the void I must give it room to breathe. In interpersonal communication courses, after the first day rituals, the instructor points to a white board with two circles and a line between them. The circles are individual parties and the line represents a channel through which a message can be passed. Then the instructor draws a bunch of squiggly lines all around the message line and calls it "noise". Increased noise is the byproduct of breaking down barriers and growing the number of communication channels. And with the many benefits are many pitfalls. There's a reason I've grown to love simple menus, limited TV channels, and a smaller wardrobe. If I think about everything vying for my attention it doesn't make me feel special. It makes it harder to pick out what is important. When I chase the noise, or just go with the current, it blends into a blurred screen of an apathetic life. It feels hollow. And an urge or spark to fight the noise just makes me shout louder in order to be heard. And the more time I spend shouting the less time I spend listening. I become the noise. And suddenly, my pace in life and volume of my words are dictated by fear instead of courage. It is self-preservation in place of self-reliance. Noise is suffocating hope. To recover I look for quiet patience to let a moment live and breathe, to guide without controlling, instruct without patronizing and converse without overpowering. Silence creates this space for hope to flourish. Internally and externally. Somewhere along the line the idea became popular in our culture that silence is useful only in solitude, not in interactions between people. Anthropologists performed an ethnographic study of Western Apache tribe living on a reservation in Arizona. The Western Apaches believe that, "sometimes, it is right to give up on words." They take hold of silence in times when words fail them, or prove unnecessary. When a boy and a girl go on a first date they will sometimes sit without saying a word. When encountering someone who is grieving they keep silent. When someone is enraged they do not engage but take leave of the person they deem "not themselves". (Basso, K.H., 1970). The study doesn't conclude with an assertion this has provided the Western Apaches an increased quality of life. It is merely lending perspective from another culture that sometimes it might be a good idea to not say anything. When a message is communicated without saying anything then saying something because of fear or expectation can be less powerful. It's said more than 90% of communication is nonverbal. Which means the code of a message can be expressed from one person to another person via any channel and those channels do not need to include words. There are times, times when when our souls are in their purest or most vulnerable forms, when attempting words is pollution. In these moments people are raw and open; and it is best to be silent. The unspoken weight needs no encoding to be carried into the depths of our being and move like the potter’s hands, shaping the fibers of our hearts, fortifying the edges, mending the cracks, and hollowing the well. Relationships are not grown in the clamor they are shaped in this holy silence. Quietly staring in the chill night at the dancing flames, sensing the untold soul of another human, experiencing with wonder the same space at the same time deepens a shared knowledge transcending words. No mortal tongue could speak more truth in those times than the eloquent song of silence. I love words, but sometimes it is right to give up on them. Dear Reader, if you have made it to this point, thank you. Find the right time to be quiet this week. By yourself or with another person. Absorb the moment you are living in. Let hope grow. If you want to subscribe and get an email alert for next week you can do that here. And if you feel like this could help somebody else and want to share that would be cool too.
Last week's post dealt with heavy thoughts. This week I'm moving to lighter, breezier places. Like most authentically great places I'll have to do a jaunt down a rough road to arrive. Out of the void I mentioned comes the small ray of hope. And to let hope flourish, I have to come to terms with an inescapable truth (the first of the four noble truths in Buddhism, and the Genesis of Christianity and Judaism). "To be human is to know suffering." There is no one who has ever escaped it, though the suffering varies greatly between individual persons. The Apostle Paul said it like this, “Our suffering produces perseverance, perseverance, character, and character, hope." This first jump is an easy one to make. I am good with the "to be human is to know suffering thing." I learned early and continually that life is not fair. Suffering is a reality and because of this reality I have need for perseverance. Suffering generates a desire to endure. And as reward for acting on this desire Paul says I will receive character.
“Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident; the only earthly certainty is oblivion.” Mark Twain |
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I'm a Hoosier. I like the outdoors. Taxes are my job. I write for a living. This Blog
Writing my way to an adult life of minimalism, sustainability, and joy rooted in Truth. I'm learning, unlearning, and relearning.
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