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.