There’s no wrong way to do stillness.
It’s impossible.
You either do it or don’t do it.
But you can’t do it wrong
Because it’s not about right and wrong.
It’s not about sitting still,
It’s about letting something inside get still.
So go ahead and walk, move, do something,
Something that doesn’t need thinking.
And don’t be fooled.
Don’t think you don’t think when you do stillness.
You’ll think.
You’re a human and humans think.
That’s why we do stillness.
To notice that we are such great, grand, relentless thinkers.
It goes like this: you’re following your breath, just like you’re supposed to.
And next thing you know, you’re thinking.
It happens. A lot.
Don’t get on your case.
Just notice.
As a noticer, you notice that you can always notice your thoughts instead of engaging with them.
{Except, of course, when you can’t. Or don’t.}
Sometimes you notice a tiny clear voice inside.
It sounds different from the usual voice, the one that’s there distracting you.
It’s different because it’s the voice of Truth, and it has no agenda.
It simply whispers in your ear and something inside you goes Ping! and that’s really cool.
But then there’s that other voice. Be gentle with it.
When a thought about a problem comes up, gently tell yourself you can decide whether to ground your kid later.
When a thought about something interesting comes up, promise yourself that you can daydream about the new shoes you want later.
{Be sure to keep your promise. Daydreams are important.}
When a thought about something ordinary comes up, remind yourself that you can make the grocery list later.
Remind yourself that you are a noticer, an observer,
A scientist in a white lab coat observing microorganisms dance on a slide.
You are the Scientist of You.
You with the urgent, interesting, enticing, dancing thoughts.
When those thoughts get harsh,
Remind yourself that you are not your thoughts.
You are flesh and blood and hair and guts and spirit and energy,
And heart.
That’s what you are.
You are not your thoughts. Listen again.
You are not your thoughts.
And if you notice you don’t want to go back to stillness,
Notice your resistance.
Observe it with the curiosity of a child watching a bug crawl on a leaf.
Notice what color your resistance is and how it speaks to you.
Is it scratchy or smooth, fast or slow, high or low?
Does your resistance come in words, images, feelings?
Notice that your resistance, too, is just a thought.
And an I-don’t-want-to temper tantrum of a thought is still a thought, just like the other ones.
The ones that tempt you with visions of dinner.
The ones that rerun crappy conversations a million times and tell you that you have to do something about this RIGHT THIS MINUTE.
{Isn’t that funny? What’s the big hurry?}
So go ahead and resist with your wholehearted approval.
Because there’s no wrong way do stillness
Sometimes I forget that I’m a joy dieter and have total responsibility for my thoughts and feelings. In fact, sometimes I hear stressful voices in my head, and I don’t go to Truth, I don’t become my own Compassionate Witness, I don’t find the painful story I am telling myself and substitute a story that allows me to feel better. Nope, sometimes I have imaginary conversations, even entire debates, with people who aren’t there. And sucker myself into believing every scary, mean, outrageous, guilt-producing thing they tell me. Oh, I do it way less than I used to, but sometimes, something will just creep right under my skin, lodge itself like a fat splinter, and I forget I’m on the joy diet. And, I’ll justify, defend, argue, wheedle, hedge, barter, bandy, and split hairs with a figment of my imagination. And feel awful.
It helps to realize I’m not the only one who does this. In Bird by Bird, Ann Lamott outlines a method of quieting her mind when she converses with imaginary foes:
“Close your eyes and get quiet for a minute, until the chatter starts up. Then isolate one of the voices and imagine the person speaking as a mouse. Pick it up by the tail and drop into a mason jar. Then isolate another voice, pick it up by the tail, drop it in the jar. And so on. Drop in any high-maintenance parental units, drop in any contractors, lawyers, colleagues, children, anyone who is whining in your head. Then put the lid on, and watch all these mouse people clawing at the glass, jabbering away, trying to make you feel like shit because you won’t do what they want—won’t give them more money, won’t be more successful, won’t see them more often. Then imagine that there is a volume-control button on the bottle. Turn it all the way up for a minute, and listen to the stream of angry, neglected, guilt-mongering voices. Then turn it all the way down and watch the frantic mice lunge at the glass, trying to get to you. Leave it down, and get back to your [work].
A writer friend of mine suggests opening the jar and shooting them all in the head. But I think he’s a little angry, and I’m sure nothing like this would ever occur to you.”
I suppose we should add this method to our stillness reportoire.
Some further thoughts about stillness, culled from my personal experience as a failed meditator:
You can put your attention on your breath, and notice how the breath comes in and out, without your doing anything. Just leave your attention on the breath, and without trying to change it, simply follow it in and out.
During a walking meditation, notice the people and objects you pass and give them simple names—dog, flower, bench, airplane, bus. Don’t go to descriptive names, like beautiful flower or stinky bus. Just simple one-word names. I suppose this would work if you were sitting, as well, and looking around your room.
Sometimes, I will repeat a line from a poem to myself over and over, my homegrown, English language version of a “mantra.” Here are couple of examples I use:
From Rumi: “When the ocean comes to you as a lover, marry it!” From the Tao te Ching: “Do you have the patience to wait till your mud settles and the water is clear?” When I’m walking, I might repeat, “wait till the water is clear,” over and over. From Leonard Cohen’s “Anthem”: “Forget your perfect offering, there is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”
Some days, I simply can’t do any of it, no matter what technique I use. I daydream, over and over. I bring myself back, only to daydream again, within nanoseconds. But I find that just the 15 minutes or so away from busyness, phones, emails, other people, is refreshing, even if I’m not achieving much in the way of “doing Nothing.”
On those days, I remind myself of a profound piece of advice given to me by a number of brilliant mentors—“I am willing to suck at this.” That’s how the light gets in.
A full week of doing nothing every single day. I look forward to it now–a respite from a busy life. Today, after hours of talking and listening, silence was delicious. I’ve discovered that I like doing nothing best when walking.
Yesterday, I referred to the John Lennon song, “Across the Universe.” Today, I realized the main line of the song, repeated a dozen times, is this: “Nothing’s gonna change my world.”
Last night, to leave my thoughts behind, I took a small walk, but not so far that I worried about becoming bear food. Away from the lights of the cabins, I flipped my flashlight off. Overhead, billions of stars peeked through scattered clouds. The only sounds were those of intermittent specks of rain falling on nearby leaves.
Thoughts let go almost effortlessly, perhaps for the first time ever. As I left to return to our cabin, words from “the most poetic lyric” John Lennon said he ever wrote, popped into my head: “Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup they slither while pass, they slip their way across the universe.”
I also love this line: thoughts “meander like a restless wind inside a letter box.”
This year, for its fiftieth anniversary, NASA beamed this song into deep space, towards the star Polaris, 431 light years from earth. This was the very first time a song has ever been transmitted into deep space. Was I hearing those words last night from way up there, across the universe?
Yesterday, I chose The Ticker Tape method of Doing Nothing. As my thoughts arose I visualized them moving across a mental screen, and named them.
Since they were tame, I nick-named them instead of naming the emotion. I had the I’m-hungry thought, some to-do-tomorrow thoughts, the I-want-chocolate-instead-of-dinner thought, the whoops-I’m-in-someone-else’s-business thought, and the whoops-I’m-thinking-again-thought.
Then, I had the my-son-didn’t-call-me-like-he-was-supposed-to-so-I-could-fax-him-the-information-to-pay-his-traffic-ticket-and-I-forgot-about-it-until-now thought. I laughed as I named it the I-forgot-to-worry-about-this-until-now thought. And was hilarious to realize how worrying is so optional.
By bestowing each thought cluster with a name, I easily wiggled free from them, especially from the one about my son not calling, which had the potential to get me going. But by naming it, it floated by, just another thought in a marching thought parade.
When my 15 minutes of doing nothing was up, I chose not to react to my son’s inaction. His ticket. His business. The best way to handle it, of course.
The name-that-thought process was fun, like a game. As I said in class, creativity is one of my signature strengths on the Values in Action Inventory, and here I had an opportunity to be creative, right in the middle of doing nothing. How cool is that!
So what do you think? Is it okay to be creative and have fun as we are on our way?
The Joy Diet class for Martha Beck is starting Tuesday, and I’m thinking a lot about the joy practices we’ll explore. Truthfully, what I’m thinking most about is the stillness practice we’ll do. Lots of us are challenged by the notion of doing nothing. I’ve never quite gotten the hang of it. Or, the why bother of it.
Last night, after watching the presidential debates, I caught an ad for Microsoft Windows. The ad, a flashing series of testimonials by celebs and ordinary mortals, glamorizes Microsoft as modern and hip, like iPhones and Macs. You can see it here.
The superstar of the commercial is Deepak Chopra, who sits in a handsome office lined with rich woods, books, objets d’art, and of course, his PC. In a seriously sly voice, he deliciously intones, “I am a PC and I am a human being. Not a human doing. Not a human thinking. A human being.”
With that, I think I began to get it. Right there, in the most ludicrously unlikely place, a silly, flashy TV commercial, I began to understand stillness.
I am not a human thinking. Byron Katie and Eckhart Tolle have taught me that I am not my thoughts. I’m most certainly not those funny and frequently pesky things. I’m way more than my thoughts.
I’m not a human doing, either. I am not my roles or my activities—coach, mother, writer, yoga class attendee, former lawyer, procrastinator. I’m way more than those things too.
A human “BEing.” Is that what the mystery of stillness is all about? The me apart from my thinking or doing? Not a human thinking, feeling, doing, buying, eating, suffering, talking on the phone, or playing sudoko. I am a human being, a wondrous be-ing, who has that simple truth to come back to, over and over, especially when the going gets tough.
Thanks, Deepak. I’m getting it. But I’m still sticking with my Mac.
