111: Thinking without words

Creating a garden bed by 'sheet mulching"

Not the usual type of “thinking”

What often passes as “thinking” is the spilling over of words in our head, the “chatter” as some call it, “monkey mind” others say, the “yap, yap.” Another way to put it, is “auditory hallucinations.”

Thinking can be very different than this sort of inner talking.

So far, each day, with a noticing of differences, we have been using our brains for real thinking. Today, we’ll notice some more differences, and get more clarity about and feel for thinking without words.

Turn your head easily right four or five times, and then left four or five times. Can you notice a difference one way and the other?

Now turn just to the left with your head, but keep your eyes focused on something in front of you. Notice a difference in how you turn, and in your neck. Go very slowly.

Rest after seven or eight times, and then turn to the left with your eyes and nose together and feel what you feel.

Now turn your nose to the left and back to the center a number of times while turning your eyes in the opposite direction. Go very slowly and clearly notice eyes and neck and breathing and spine. Rest. Turn both left and right in the “normal” way and notice what you notice.

Spend today awaring eyes and neck and right left differences. See what difference rotating your ribs might make. Go slowly, rest a lot, learn.

Day Eleven, Toward Heaven, 2, emotions without words

Emotions can crowd in and “take over” our lives. Another way toward freedom and love is to separate out the sensation of an emotion and the words/ chatter/ obsessive story that usually accompanies.

Yesterday we gave ourselves a real treat, and begin to experience and “play” with emotions as actions we can vary in length, and intensity. As actions we can perhaps even see as just one choice among many (someone gives us a hard time? Try out angry. Try out curious. Try out amused. Try out loving.)


Today, we are going to come back to the core of this book: unity with nature and with now.

As creatures on the Earth, we are always in some Now.

As emotional creatures, we sometimes have “feelings” and emotions. These feelings always have a here and now set of sensations: something happens in our breathing, something happens at various places in our body.

Almost always we have words around the motion. “He should have given my more respect.” “That was a mean thing to do.” “This isn’t fair.” “So and so is so selfish.” “How can they do this to me.”

These words distract us from the present. These words tend to be of a sort that we go over and over them, and often try to talk to/ complain to someone else and get them to agree with our words, agree that we are “right” and someone else is “wrong.” But even without complaining, we can go over and over with these words.

And today the game is to keep the sensations, get into them with as much awareness and presence as possible, and to let the words slide.

Just sense how the emotions and feelings are resonating as here and now experience. Be curious and attentive to this here and now experience. Don’t dilute it with any words.

See what happens when you do that.

79: The listening game, part 1

What did I say? What did you say? The listening game, part 1.

We talk. Other people usually don’t listen, much. Other people talk, and a bit into their talking we are busy “thinking” about what we have to say.

So, words get passed back and forth, and we don’t listen.

So, today, find someone with whom you’d like to improve communication and listen.

Get a person and a timer and set aside 30 to 50 minutes. Breathe. Relax. This is going to improve your life.

At any rate: dive in to the talking and listening as your main emotional learning component today.

Sit down in chairs facing each other, a little bit apart, but fairly close. Smile and breathe together for a bit. Close your eyes and breathe together a little more.

Good.

Now, set the timer, 2, 3 minutes. The other person talks. Listen with as much emptiness inside as you can. Can you be “without the story” as you listen? Can you have no filling up with inner words that you might/ could use to “defend” yourself?

Leave aside “your side,” while listening. Try to deeply feel what they want to say, who they are, how they are, what they want in life, what their frustrations are, how you are getting in the way. Listen, listen.

Then feedback as accurately as possible whatever they said to you. It can be exact words, or close paraphrasing. Leave all interpretation and comments out.

Just tell them as clearly as possible all they said. Then ask if you have missed anything. Then: their turn to listen. See if your speaking “your side” is changing from listening well to them.

They listen. They repeat back and “get it right.”

All day, after this, experiment with how to listen more clearly to others.

Day Seventeen: Emotions minus the inner words

DAY SEVENTEEN
Emotional choosing, sense the feeling, leaving behind the words

Into all lives some rain must fall. Good for the garden. Good for the soil. Good for the soul.

Yesterday we played with the idea of sipping through the straw of sweetness and not the one of bitterness. This was either easy or hard or a little of both.

Let’s give this a little more help.

Later in the book, we will spend lots of time, playing in the fields of Waking Up from Emotional Suffering, via the “Work of Byron Katie.” This is an amazingly simple and powerful tool / gift / offering, sprung forth for humankind’s benefit in 1986.

For now though, today, we are going to play a slightly different game. We are going to notice our emotions.

Notice and name. Unhappy. Sad. Happy. Worried. Afraid.

We are going to notice the sensations involved with whatever emotion we are feeling. Often “feelings” will bring stuff to happening in our chest and stomach and torso area.

We are going to notice those sensations, AND LET GO OF THE WORDS THAT GO ON AND ON ABOUT WHY WE ARE HAVING THE FEELING.

Usually these words are of the “So and so should be different toward me” sort. Fine. That’s the way we suffer. For today, sensing legs all day and our breathing, when emotional “feelings” come up, we are going to:

A. Name them

B. Sense what they bring about

C. Skip the words

D. Sense our legs and gravity, and our breathing and air as the anchor into being alive in the moment, no matter what feeling we are having.

E. This is hard, huge, amazing, give it a try.

Poor Me / Waking up Me: Guess whose choice????

Anyone can feel badly

Even me


All I/ you have to do
is want someone to
be kinder
or nicer
or more honest
towards us than
they are being

La,
la:

Sensing myself
and letting the "sorrow"
take place as sensation:

and....

waking to something
very
very sweet


poor me
transmuted


good.

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