Level 3:In a high rise apartment in Auckland,within my own mind

 

I wasn't ready to publish this, and I suppose, because of that, I had stopped writing.  I've heard the call for new installments, though.  I suppose I've had the patience to wait and now is the time.

Written October 1, 2021 

_________________________

Do you have the patience to wait

till your mud settles and the water is clear?

Can you remain unmoving

till the right action arises by itself

LAO-TZU, Tao-te-Ching

I read this today in a book for one of the two book clubs I'm in at work.  Me in a book club?  I think of myself as a non-reader but I'm in two book clubs at work right now.  One of the book clubs is with my team and it is a way to bond over wfh.  The other book club is from a meditation and mindfulness group.  This quote was in "Wherever you go, there you are" by Jon Kabat-Zinn.  The quote struck me because that is how I decided I'd be living at least in the short term over 5 weeks ago.  No decisions.  I'm fine.  Don't know when I'm going back.  I have loved lockdown.  Fewer things to do, more time, fewer decisions I even can make with the strict lockdown.

I tell myself I'm not a reader and yet I guess I've read a tremendous amount of "self help" books.  I hate that term.  I normally call them productivity or meditation books instead as those are the concentrations I focus on mostly.  Though I have been reading several books by life coaches of recent.

I don't think I've mentioned my mindful lunch group at all in my blog!  I had been attending mindful lunch at work for years.  We had a standing reservation at the Indian cafe on Tuesdays (vegetarian day).  You show up, maybe chat a bit, eat silently and mindfully for 20-30 minutes and then chat a bit.  There have been different regulars over the years but right before the pandemic there was a core group of four of us.  The current leader kept us going once a month over the pandemic and I think we've all become very meaningful to each other and our life paths: all 4 of us.  We've been through the ups and downs together of the pandemic.  One of us is from India and he expressed his fear when covid was hitting India hard and how he couldn't be there with his parents.  We discuss books we read, issues at work, how to step back and observe.  I talked to them when I found out my first coworker at Google (and part of my original team of 3) had died unexpectedly and the effect that had on me and my own mortality.  That brought up the discussion of suicide as, when they don't tell you how someone has died and they died suddently:maybe it was a drug overdose, maybe it was suicide.  This guy was kind of a rock star at work so the thought that it could have been suicide made me question so many things I thought about life.  He feels like someone where that just wasn't something that could happen.  

Anyway, it has been so good to have a group where we've ended up talking about the nitty gritty of life.  Often when they share what is going on with them it ends up maybe meaning even more to me than anything I could have brought up.  Last time only two of us showed up and we talked the entire time: mostly because I had things I had to say and I don't even remember exactly what it was.  Ironic (or not?) that a group of us that have come together to be present together and not talk have had some of the most meaningful and impactful conversations.

After a 5 month respite and 6 week lockdown seems only right that I talk about meditation and mindfulness and what I've discovered about it.  I've gotten to the point where I feel I know something about it, which most likely means I'm an ameteur and can't yet see what I don't know.  Amateurs do like to tell everyone else how it is, don't they?  Seems only right for me to attempt.  I can laugh at myself and how ignorant I am in a year.

I took a course at work years ago called "Search Inside Yourself."  I don't remember which came first, the book or the course, but they are very similar.  This was the most meaningful course I've ever taken and the greatest sense of joy I've ever had was while reading one of Chade-Meng Tan's books.  I had the opportunity to go to a pilot program where you brought your partner and I brought my very good buddy with me for the two day course.  The course covered meditation, journaling, mindful walking and I don't remember what else.  I'm sure we covered some of the neuroscience behind it and had many opportunities to practice what we were learning.  I finished the course wanting to be an instructor and I enquired about it.  They said you'd need 2000 hours of meditation first.  So- I went on silent retreats to up my time in meditation.  I was also told to teach other classes, so I did that.  I haven't been as focused on that goal of teaching that course of recent, but my point in mentioning it all is how much journaling is a part of my life.  I think I think about meditation way more than I actually do it whereas I probably have put in 2000 hours of journaling since then.

My 5 month respite I was living in some ways out in the middle of nowhere, and yet, "somewhere" wasn't far away.  I stayed in except to go to ariel yoga, west coast swing dancing, my chiropractor, and some weekends socializing with friends.  I attempted to get daily mindful walks in, regular meditation and tons of journaling.

When I took the course "Search Inside Yourself" we were told we were going to learn about emotional intelligence.  Then we were told we were just going to be concentrating on ourselves.  I thought, "How do you learn to interact well with others by focusing completely on yourself?"  At the time it sounded completely backwards to me.

What I've found, for me, the purpose of mindfulness, meditation and journaling has been to be able to observe my mind at work, to clearly see what my brain is doing.  I see that the things I think aren't necessarily true and that much of my thoughts from how my brain was formed as a child, in response to what happened in my life and how I happened to respond.  And the same is true for everyone else.  I see the judgment of myself and others, I see the cognitive dissonance and distortions, I see the intuition.  I see the over reactions and crazy expectations.  I see when I'm overconfident.  I see when I'm underconfident.  From all of that, I'm able to see it in others.  Many meditation practices have you concentrate on the breath, if thoughts come up, come back to the breath.  With this, many people judge themselves that they can't keep total concentration on their breath, that they aren't "good meditators."  But I think the whole point is to be able to see the thoughts that come up for what they are, not to push them away.  The point is to not get lost in the "mind movie" as Sir John Hargrave calls it in Mind Hacking.  The "mind movie" is getting so involved in your thoughts and believing them as you would when watching a movie.  I feel the purpose of meditation, at least for me, is not to clear the mind.  It is instead to be able to see the mind for what it is.  I feel very certain at the moment that that is what it is all about so I'm very curious about what it will be like when I get past amaeteur hour and find what all else there is learn and experience.  If this is just the tip of the iceberg then I'm sure amazing things will be coming.

After 5 months fairly isolated and 6 weeks rather isolated after that, it seems appropriate that I'd turn to this topic.  I do wonder when I venture back into the world how I'll find I've changed.  What I think has changed for me:

- I've learned to see very clearly the long term cost to myself of going along with things that aren't right for me.  I've been reading a book Finding Your North Star that was recommended to me by someone from another class I took at work on being uncomfortable.  In the books she talks about the work that needs to be done when someone has repressed their true desires: that it gets to the point where people have no idea what emotions they are having or what they feel in their body.  If you shut yourself down, you shut down.  Scary.  It takes a while to repair to even get back to the state of feeling things, not to mention all the additional work after that to get to a place of thriving.  I don't think it is worth it to me to do this to myself anymore just to keep other people feeling comfortable.  I no longer think that bending a little is no big deal: the costs are now abundantly clear.

- I see myself as very human.  I see what I used to judge myself for as common amongst pretty much other humans and if I'm to judge myself I might as well be judging the entire human race.

- I see everyone else as very human.  I suppose I had seen this before, but still worth mentioning: I see projection absolutely everywhere.

- I see how much we are all completely ruled by our own perceptions of the world, how for each person, they are the center of their universe.  Everything happens to them and for them.

- I very calmly see what may be my own projections and my own flaws and can examine them without getting defensive.  Am I whatever thing it is I'm afraid I might be?  Well- let's look at the evidence.  If it turns out true, well, that was good to learn.

- I hear the self judgment go off and I treat it like an annoying fly buzzing around my head: just something that I notice and I see it there, then I go back about my business ignoring the fly for a while.

- Possibly I have a reserve of energy.  And I'd hope a reserve of creativity,

- I get plenty of sleep.

- I'm way more comfortable with being uncomfortable in uncertainty.

- I have a strengthened belief that everything will be ok in the end.  Actually it'll be great.  (And if it isn't ok, then it isn't the end.)

- I pretty much see all the time that one day I'm going to die.  I see that life may go on for years or may end at any point.  Awareness of my mortality is always present.

- I clearly see manipulative behavior based on fear.  I see it all very differently than I used to.  At one point in my life I would have felt like a victim.  Now I see people as attempting to be opportunists and see what they can get away (and often barely believing they get away with what they do.)

Something I've come to believe based on my life experience (and I just read in my journal) : "What they say of others is who they are.  What they say of themselves is what they'd have you believe."  

I have read over and over about projection (the first half of that statement) and I've really found that to be true.  Accusing someone else of cheating?  They are cheating.  Publicly decrying people being gay?  In the closet.  Overzealous about morality and censoring sexual content?  Involved in sex trafficking/pedofilia ring.  So so many news articles over the years of this with senators, congressmen, high up, powerful people.

The second half of the statement: I realized this when I had a manager who kept telling me he was so honest and a straight shooter.  I went through gaslighting with him (which took me a while to figure out what was going on) and eventually thought, "well then, why isn't that my experience of you?"  I have found this to be true and true again.  Those who exclaim how smart they are: they aren't.  Or honest.  Or kind.  Or confident.  I've seen examples of each of these being blatantly false.  Somehow humans are convinced just by someone saying that they are something that it must be true and it is amazing that works.  Well- I no longer believe it.  I have never heard someone I have thought was really intelligent exclaim how intelligent they are.  Reminds me of one of my favorite quotes, "The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent full of doubt," Bertrand Russell.  I realize now that it is actually a great thing that the intelligent are full of doubt: it is because they understand how much they don't know.  Honest/intelligent/kind people would never think to exclaim these things because they'd think it is completely obvious that they are (and would possibly assume the same of everyone around them).  It would feel so obvious, kinda liking walking around exclaiming, "I'm a member of the human race!"  Even those that I've told this idea to in depth have done the same: swear up and down that they are X only to disprove themselves over and over again.

So- I try to listen to myself for either of these for clues for if I'm lying to myself.

And here I am in my Auckland apartment, with my Level 3 latte and my "strong and classy" t-shirt.  I suppose that means that I'm neither of those things, but it is a computer programming pun.