Hitting snooze on the alarm clock of the mind. (Trust me.)

Doing intermittent fasting means I feel hungry quite a lot of the time. But after doing it for 6 months, my mind is slowly getting used to it. The feeling of hunger is still there, but most days it isn’t quite as sharp or panic-inducing as it was at the beginning. I’m able to recognize that I have an empty stomach, and then go about my day.

That also has a lot to do with the power of mindfulness practice. I’ve realized two things about feeling hungry:

Firstly: There’s a difference between being hungry and feeling hungry, as I alluded to in a previous post. Being hungry is just a state of the body, but feeling hungry is a state of mind, and it comes with a lot of extra baggage: stress (“What if I die??”), temptation (“Man, a pizza just sounds soooo good right now…”), doubt (“Maybe this is a bad idea.”), and others.

And secondly: The feeling of hunger is–like all feelings–just a reminder that something is going on in the body or the brain. It’s like getting an automatic email in your inbox, or having your alarm clock go off in the morning. You (hopefully) don’t fly into a panic every morning when the beeping starts. You just acknowledge the alarm for what it’s telling you, and then decide what to do about it. Get up, or not? If you’ve set good habits for yourself, the answer is obvious.

Same thing with my hunger. I’ve set a habit for myself that says “I’m not eating.” Therefore I hear the alarm go off, gently hit the snooze button, and go about my day.

Now, not everyone is fasting. That particular example may not resonate with you, but it can be applied to other feelings as well. Desire, one of the most common emotions many people experience, is just an alarm clock letting you know that you want something.

I know that sounds circular. “Desire is an alarm letting you know you desire something?” I don’t claim to have found a perfect metaphor here, so try not to get caught up in the details. My point is simply that you don’t have to take those cues any more seriously than you take that alarm clock in the morning. The feeling isn’t the thing itself.

The alarm clock isn’t “getting up,” it’s just a reminder to think about whether you are getting up or not. The notification from Twitter on your lockscreen isn’t “checking Twitter,” it’s just a reminder that Twitter is there for the checking.

For that matter, all of your experiences–everything that appears in consciousness–are just a notification calling your attention to themselves. Thoughts, emotions, sounds, speech, sights. They’re all saying “Hey, there’s a thing going on over here.” We don’t need to give all of them equal focus. We don’t have to give any of them our focus, in fact.

It’s not up to us when the notifications go off, but it’s up to us what we do about it–if anything.

Meditation #71: It sounds good. So what?

It sounds good? So what?

Lots of things sound good. Are you such a slave to the outside world that the you can’t resist something that triggers this automatic response in you?

No, you’re not. You’re able to hold two thoughts in your head at the same time: ‘That sounds good,’ and ‘I don’t want it.’

Often times we get ‘desire’ confused with ‘awareness.’ By that I mean we are like a greedy materialist, who must own anything desirable the moment he becomes aware that it exists. Maybe we aren’t thinking about food but then we drive past a McDonald’s, or we aren’t thinking about buying a book but then we happen to see one on the store shelf. Our mind turns quickly from being totally unaware of the thing in the previous moment, to suddenly needing to have the thing in the next.

Instead of rewarding yourself for the amazing feat of accidentally becoming aware of something, pay attention to the thought of desire, give it a nod and a pat on the head, and then move on.

Meditation #61: What’s the weather inside your empire?

If your body is your empire, then think of your emotions as nothing more than weather patterns. Some days the empire wakes up in the morning to find storms rolling in. “Why are there storms?” Nobody would bother asking that question, at least not with more than idle curiosity.

Likewise you can think of the emotions of others the same way, and then why do you care what the weather is like in another person’s empire? It might effect their dealings with you, but it’s not as if either of you can do anything about it.

Meditation #57: The only difference between you and them is…

Remember: the next time that someone angers you or frustrates you, or you just find yourself looking at how they behave and thinking, “Why? Why?“, the biggest difference between you and that person is that you aren’t that person…and if you were, their motivations would make exactly as much sense to you as they do to them.

Put another way, if you found yourself behaving the way they do, you wouldn’t think it strange or irritating. It would be perfectly normal to you, and you’d have (to your mind) a valid explanation.

So keep that in mind the next time you don’t understand someone else. The only thing keeping you from understanding them is that you aren’t them!

You Are Ruining Your Own Damn Day

Some days you are just irritated for no reason.

We have feelings and then we justify them. We tell ourselves stories to make sense of our feelings.

“You said that thing that I hate and now I’m just really on edge.”

“I didn’t get any sleep last night because my neighbors were up moving furniture all night long, so I’m sorry if I’m a bit snippy today.”

“Traffic was horrendous this morning. It just totally ruined my day.”

“Mars is in retrograde.”

These are all fictions. Stories. Myths that we tell ourselves to explain things that are otherwise beyond our explanation.

Each of them might be factually true, but blaming them for our mood is senseless. Have you ever had a good day? Of course you have. Have you ever been in traffic on a good day? Possibly. If not that, then I’m sure there was something else that happened to you on your good day that, were it to happen on a bad day, would become the object of your blame.

What I’m trying to say is, there are times we are sad or angry or irritable, and there are times we are happy or calm or easy-going. The difference isn’t because this or that thing happens to us; the difference is us.

When you have another day where you feel like you “woke up on the wrong side of the bed,” try to be cognizant of the fact that you had utterly no control over which proverbial side of the bed you woke up on, and neither did anyone else.

Your spouse didn’t set you off; you were set off the moment you became conscious in the morning. 

The traffic didn’t ruin your day; your day was “ruined” because of chemicals in your head–fermions and bosons, when you get right down to it–that mixed and mingled in such a way as to cause you to think negative thoughts rather than positive ones.

Mars is too far away to have anything to do with you. Stop talking like that.

The trick is to simply recognize the truth about your feelings–that they are random and outside of your control–and remember your Vulcan Buddha training. Recall that you don’t want to let your emotions guide your speech and actions, let alone whether or not your day is “ruined,” and remain strong in the face of perceived headwinds.

 

 

Meditation #1: Don’t trust your emotions.

Don’t trust your emotions. Many people seem to think of their emotions as guides to their behavior, the proverbial “gut feeling” or “heart” that one must follow. In reality, they are byproducts of a complex and often arbitrary series of processes in the brain that may have little relationship with the outside world. (Certainly less than we give them credit for.)

One might as well use one’s digestive system as a guide, or one’s skin condition. Better yet, one could just as effectively use a houseplant, or a pet, or the phases of the moon, for all it has to do with your situation.

Emotions are the enemy of rationality, and rationality is the only way to a peaceful mind. The only thing emotions are good for is indicating that you are probably being irrational.