Real Joe

In the movie The Last Samurai, Tom Cruise’s character learns from his Samurai captors how the state of “no-mind” helps him be a better fighter.

In Eckhart Tolle’s book Practicing the Power of Now, he puts no-mind to use for more mundane stuff:

Instead of “watching the thinker,” you can also create a gap in the mindstream simply by directing the focus of your attention into the Now. Just become intensely conscious of the present moment. This is a deeply satisfying thing to do. In this way, you draw the consciousness away from mind activity and create a gap of no-mind in which you are highly alert and aware but not thinking. This is the essence of meditation. In everyday life, you can practice this by taking any routine activity that normally is only a means to an end and giving it your fullest attention, so that it becomes an end in itself. For example, every time you walk up and down the stairs… wash your hands…”

Here’s Part I of a snapshot of how this went for me this morning. I wasn’t quite ready to take on a gang of Nazi skinheads by the time I was done, but Tolle’s right, it’s a satisfying thing to do.

I’m sitting in the rocking chair in our living room, the place I like to sit in the wee hours of the morning, drinking my first cup of coffee, reading my favorite daily quotes, reviewing my compass, doing a little spiritual reading, and planning my day.

I close my eyes and focus on my breathing.

I’m breathing in, I know I’m breathing in. I’m breathing out, I know I’m breathing out.

5 seconds later

I hear the furnace making that noise again. I wonder if the service guy is coming back this morning?

WATCH THE THINKER
Ah, I don’t need to think about that now. Just focus on breathing.

I’m breathing in, I know I’m breathing in. I’m breathing out, I know I’m breathing out.

5 seconds later

I hear a car. Sounds like a hot rod. Last night I was talking with Gilly about American Graffiti. I need to plan our weekly date night. I should meet with my sons this week when I’m in the cities. Next week I’ll meet with my own sibs. My brother and I are going to have an argument…

WATCH THE THINKER
Hmmm. I notice FEAR kicking in now. I better take some time later to figure out what that’s about. But I don’t need to bother about that now, I just want to sit here with no-mind, breathing.

I’m breathing in, I know I’m breathing in. I’m breathing out, I know I’m breathing out.

5 seconds later

Shit, my shoulder aches. I’m planning for my knee to be ready to play a racquetball tourney in 6 weeks but what if my shoulder isn’t ready? It’d be cool if I came back after a 6 month layoff and wowed a lot of guys on how well I’m playing.

WATCH THE THINKER
I notice DESIRE kicking in. I’m planning for a racquetball ego orgasm. Mistaken idea. But I don’t need to bother about that now, I just want to sit here with no-mind, breathing.

I’m breathing in, I know I’m breathing in. I’m breathing out, I know I’m breathing out.

5 seconds later

I gotta get going. Lots of work to do. Need more new weblog clients this month, as I’m behind on monthly income goals and Robbie’s getting more worried.

WATCH THE THINKER
I notice FEAR kicking in. What’s that about? Must have some mistaken ideas about money. But I don’t need to bother about that now, I just want to sit here with no-mind, breathing. And this time, I’m going to focus on physical sensations to see if I can stick with no-mind a little longer.

I’m breathing in, I know I’m breathing in. I’m breathing out, I know I’m breathing out. I feel my stomache expanding and contracting, feeling my breath puffing out my lips as I exhale. I hear my breath. Sounds like I’m wearing scuba gear. I can feel it in the back of my throat.

30 seconds later

Ahhhhh

(More to come in Part II of no-mind.)

I got this email from a regular reader.

Howdy Griff. I’m wondering if you would do me a favor. I’ve written a little script of a bedtime story that I would like to record and have my oldest, anxious son listen to whenever he feels like it – but primarily for when I am traveling away from home. It’s focus is affirmation. I know you like them, so you are a bit biased, but I’d like a second opinion on my intent and method.

He gave me his permission to post it here (word doc) to see if anyone else has some helpful feedback for him.

I’ll attach my comments to this blog post. Others can do likewise or use the Contact form.

Time’s cover story this week: The Power of Love.

I’ve not yet read it, but I notice that they use the word “sex” in the URL, not love. Shocking!

It’s been another unplanned hiatus from Real Joe and Ego Orgasms. It seems to happen every few months, usually a combination of things that take priority over blogging. The details will emerge over several posts.

I’ve been intrigued with trying to get better at watching my thinking. It’s been triggered by two of Eckhart Tolle’s books, Practicing the Power of Now and Stillness Speaks.

His stuff can be a little hard to read if new-agey lingo drives you apeshit. But I’ve found that some of the ways he describes some timeless spiritual principles to be helpful. Like this:

The beginning of freedom is the realization that you are not “the thinker.” The moment you start watching the thinker, a higher level of consciousness becomes activated. You then begin to realize that there is a vast realm of intelligence beyond thought, that thought is only a tiny aspect of that intelligence.

Nothing new under the sun there, but it’s caught my attention. A simple technique: I sit down someplace quiet, close my eyes, focus on my breathing or some other body sensation (my forearms on the arm of the chair), and then say to myself, I wonder what my next thought is going to be? And then I watch for whatever my mind serves up, notice it, and then do it again.

A little harder, but more interesting: doing the same thing when going about my daily routine. While putting my pants on: I wonder what my next thought is going to be? Walking down the stairs. Making coffee. Filling the humidifier. I wonder what my next thought is going to be?

Hardest of all: when talking and listening to someone. “Hey, Sweetie, good morning.” I wonder what my next thought is going to be?

I’ve done this before in my feeble attempts at meditation. I’ve focused on the now (eg, the 5-5-5 technique) in routine as well as anxiety-producing situations. And I use journal writing to examine my mistaken ideas whenever I’m troubled about something.

But I’ve never really made an attempt to watch the thinker while staying present, also while — and this is significant, methinks — keeping a small part of my mind aware that there’s a higher (deeper?) level of consciousness to the whole scene. “Aware of being aware,” is how many have described it. It’s cool. And somewhat strange, because it’s a way of reliably activating a sense of peace that I don’t normally experience.

When you recognize that there is a voice in your head that pretends to be you and never stops speaking, you are awakening out of your unconscious identification with the stream of thinking. When you notice that voice, you realize that who you are is not the voice — the thinker — but the one who is aware of it. Knowing yourself as the awareness behind the voice is freedom.

I part company with Tolle a bit when he says it’s enough to recognize the thought non-judgmentally and then go back to the now. It works better for me to examine it for mistaken thinking. More on that later.

New Year’s Eve was our thirtieth wedding anniversary. Since the last ten have increasingly been blissful — in part because we’ve worked at it — I’m kind of proud of us.

Our kids took us out to dinner and then shocked us with a surprise visit from our oldest son Collin and his girlfriend who drove non-stop from Dallas to get there. For me, the whole night represented the kids’ appreciation of what our marriage has meant to them.

They still remember a fight we had when they were little… they ran from the room crying “because you might get divorced.” They equally remember some of the times when they walked in on our romantic escapades. I like that they laugh about that.

I do feel grateful, too. We had enough trouble on and off in the first twenty years of our marriage that we could have easily ended up divorced. Why didn’t we? Fate? God’s grace? I don’t know, but dumb luck was clearly part of it.

We’re planning a little getaway but haven’t decided on where yet. I want to head north to Lake Superior and some snowshoeing. She wants to head south to Chicago and some museum-hopping. Oh oh.

In the Jan. issue of The Rake: Sex & the Married Man: Lady Remington. By Stuart Greene.

Ladies, how do you like your men? I realize variety is the spice of life. Some women like burly football-players, some like ‘em hairy, some like ‘em boyishly bald. My precious and I like a clean work area. Recently, I’ve enjoyed taking it all off down there, and she seems to like it too. Razor burn is always a problem, but we’ve got our secret formula. Three words: Magic Shave Powder. This stuff is a chemical depilatory supposedly designed for the beards of black men, but women have been on to it for years. What the hell, guys, give it a try. Like the barber always told you, it’ll grow back. You’ve got nothing to lose but your inhibitions.

Hmmm. It never occurred to me.

Like a few million others, I’m reading The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown.

US News & World Report did a cover story a couple of weeks ago titled Jesus in America that details the phenomenon around the book. (Full text no longer available for free there but it can be found on Dick Staub’s site.) Staub’s site has plenty of quotes and links that trash the book, and one source that’s frequently quoted is Dismantling The Da Vinci Code by Sandra Miesel.

I’m enjoying the book as a thriller and it does make me curious about the historical research that Brown used.

My initial reaction: those who are screaming that Brown’s theory is preposterous — that Mary Magdalene was Jesus’s wife and chosen successor; that the Holy Grail was Mary Magdalene; that she bore him a child who went on to found France’s Merovingian dynasty — should consider that the story of Jesus as we’ve been taught could be considered preposterous, too. If you’d never heard of Christianity and someone told you there was this guy, born of a virgin, who walked on water and rose from the dead, what would you think?