Mindfulness

Quinoa

Smashed Avocado

Wellness

Living

a good life means…

The conversation swirls

coalesces

depresses

the person who has no idea how to

why

Wry

are their lips as they sip an ordinary coffee and ponder

the wonder

of tuning in

whilst all around them

are tuning out

Have you ever sat alone and listened

really listened

to what is going on around you

and of course it all depends on the location

A darkened Melbourne bar

the brightly muttered

tastefully wrought whispered

on dit!

A shabby chic cafe

replete

with recycled urban decay

and a misspelt menu

Because no one knows how to spell anything anymore

and it doesn’t seem to matter

except to me

And really

It is all personal

until it becomes universal

I once sat in a hospital waiting room

—-

When I commenced to sit, I was on edge

worried

distracted

within minutes of tuning into the conversations around me

I became

grateful

Gathered the cards that I had been given

close to my chest

Respected the deck

that some had been dealt instead

and was glad to be simply living

But back to mindfulness

since it is the next big thing that has always been here

as all worthy things have always been

Hippies didn’t start this in the sixties

Though their egoless egos tell them they did

No

These things were pondered by

Marcus Aurelius

Siddhartha

Karl Marx

Hittler

Mother Theresa

and the guy next door

by me

I wanted it you see

To be mindful

To me it meant that I could control it

My mind

Keep it from straying over the fence, out the window, through the door and away from me.

I thought it would finally make it mine

This great big nebulous cloudy shot through with lightning

Thing

My mind

Mine

To direct at whim

To keep

Sane

and sensible

and

I don’t know really but I did think it would be a rather good thing to have because very peaceful people seemed to have theirs

all together

Their minds

Mindfulness

I read a great many books on the subject

And arrived at conclusions

or rather confusions

Which are sometimes of course the very same thing

Wrong

So wrong!

I was wrong!

Which of course is not worthy of exclamation marks since it is quite a happenable thing

Ordinary

Pedestrian

Our minds are not quite as smart as we believe them to be

They are simple

Impersonally personal

Filtering mainly makes it relevant

pertaining just to us

Things that we can then fuss over

Go

“Oh poor us!”and other wankerish things

Make no mistake

Minds are blank

think tanks

Receivers

into which thousands of different channels feed

information

every milli second

What we feel or think happens in a blink

according to which station we twiddle

Pain

A channel

Anxiety

A channel

Grief

A channel

Happiness

A channel

Awareness

A channel

We could go on all day here obviously

But all I’m really saying is this

If you don’t like what you are experiencing in that brain of yours.

If you don’t like the sound of white noise

Loud music

Scary thoughts

If your tooth is hurting so SHOCKINGLY – pain killers won’t touch it and there is nothing left to do because it is 2 Ohmyclock in the morning and the pain is moving from your neck to your jaw

in a constant roar of jackhammer pain that stretches up to your ear – which has obviously decided to have an infection and the entire left side of your head and neck is condensed in a pain that flows and arrives in waves that vary in intensity and your eyeball (just the left one mind -the right one is fine and just sort of staring at the ceiling) may fall out from the pressure behind it.

So there you are in the dark and you have never experienced this sort of agony before in your life (no – childbirth did not touch this) and you think – if I was being tortured right now and somebody wanted the location of something I hold dear I am not sure

I

Simply wouldn’t give it to them

Lucky you.

Or rather lucky me

Because this happened to me

and

I

discovered

mindfulness

Because after awhile like a dog with its paw caught in a trap I had to knaw my own mind off

To find some release

And the way to do this

I found

Was to set my my mind to thinking about something absorbing

Like torture

Because that is what was happening to me at the time

My own mind

Was torturing me

Did you know – just as an aside

Physical pain is no different to psychical pain

The two are entwined and of the same nature and can be treated in much the same way

So I thought of the torture thing and I wondered who was actually wielding the torture instruments was it me or it or that or whatever (I can get rather deep when thinking so this took awhile…)

And I thought of the tortured – if one was being tortured by another for the sake of oh lets say gaining information…

How could one stand having a sharp hard nail driven hard into the side of ones eardrum and down into the jaw, descending into the neck – tap tap tap then grasped and wiggled for effect

and then again

and again

and again

While being asked very loudly to spill a secret

how did they do it those soldiers

Resist

and persist

and not simply become mad from the agony

Overwhelmed

Consumed by hell

And that my friend is how I discovered the channel

I thought of this “other stuff” so deeply and thoughtfully that for a moment the pain seemed to go into the background.

My mental note taker – always standing nearby in a handy corner whispered “aha!” but when I looked askance at her she shook her head and told me to keep thinking about something else.

So I did

and quickly lest that frightful pain descend again

I put a lot of effort into thinking about something else because

God knows I had a bit of inspiration to do so

So

So

I thought deeply about all the people that had suffered all these different types of pain and torture

I turned my attention away from my own pain

And thought of theirs

It didn’t work very well at first

A bit glitchy

But after an hour or so

I got it just about right

I tuned out the white noise of pain and found a buffer between us

My pain and I

Then increased that buffer’s thickness

As much as I could

And at some stage

Despite this violent relentless impersonal deeply personal pain

I fell asleep

I fell asleep thinking

of something else

In the middle of great pain

And I slept deeply

Then I woke up

And I haven’t been the same since.