Our Wonder Caps are Melting
When I sit down to meditate—as I do--let’s say reasonably often, what I notice is that my mind is buzzy…really buzzy. Not busy. Buzzy. There is a charged electrical sensation, definitely ungrounded. The cause is not a mystery; my own undisciplined online habits and the resulting overabundance of other people's thoughts and lives and pictures surrounding me on a moment by moment basis. You know what I’m talking about: texts, emails, Facebook. I don’t even Tweet or Instagram or all the other things about which, being a woman of a certain age, I am blissfully ignorant, but it’s still plenty. More than my mind can comfortably process. While many of these people are dear friends, and to all I genuinely wish happiness, I can't help but feel that somehow my healthy desire for connection has gone awry.
It's no surprise that all kinds of people are writing and talking about this phenomenon all the time. Often online. Hmm. Someone on Facebook recently posted this terrific rant by Louis C.K. about why he is not giving his kids cell phones, and I actually thought that what he had to say was pretty profound. You should watch it if it hasn't already popped up on your newsfeed. But in case you too are trying to limit random hopping around the internet, what it comes down to is that constantly engaging with these gadgets and all the many planets that they are gateways to, can stand between us and our potential to open up to the deepest well of our own human experience and, as Louis C.K. describes it, potentially pulling over on the highway and sobbing our hearts out. Since I live in New York City, and there is no highway, I would just have to pull my feet over to the edge of the sidewalk so I don’t get hit by the army of walking texters. There on that two inch precipice I could certainly sob in peace as the walking texters seem to rarely look up.
But I haven't only been busy with Louis C.K. Last week I attended a thought provoking panel of yoga teachers (part of YogaCity NYC's Deeper Learning Series) talking about the relationship between physical and subtle anatomy. More than one of these brilliant beings suggested that we have become so focused on the material world; what we can see, measure and touch, that it is undermining our ability to engage with the subtle practices of yoga that occur on the spiritual or energetic plane. Essentially, our over-stimulated minds have become like plants that may visibly appear intact, but have lost the ability to root down deeply into the richer, quieter, more fertile layers of the earth.
Personally, whenever I can settle my mind enough to read in a more extended way I tend to turn to books on paper and, often, literature that is more than one hundred years old. This month it is Madame Bovary, (whew, that's a whole other topic). But anyway, what I am noticing lately in this reading is the deep juicy roots of lived experience, the achingly beautiful sense of time and nature that is evoked in the language. How the world has changed! Or has it? Hmm.
Which reminds me of something else that happened this month. A friend brought me to Mike Daisey's performance at the Public Theater-- All the phases of the Moon. He was presenting a different monologue every night for 29 days ( I attended just once) in which he basically explored the world and New York, according to Mike Daisy. Among the topics that he skated across that night was the idea that the 20th century had been about the excavation and containment of "Wonder" in our lives, and insuring somehow that we didn’t bump up against "Mystery" unprotected. As a result, Daisey proposed, our "wonder caps are melting." You have to listen to it all to possibly understand what he is saying, but what struck a chord for me was the truth that we have created a world with so much DIStraction, that we often lose the real Attraction, which is life itself, the deepest mystery of all.
Which brings me back to why I meditate, the problem of buzzing, and my determination to try to unplug my mind, at least a little bit. After a recent freak out on this topic, a friend kindly sent me this: 7 tools to curb your worst online habits. Seems like a start. Even better, in a couple of weeks I am heading off to Spirit Rock to study with one of my Buddhist heroes, Jack Kornfield; ten days of silence, all electronic devices banned. I am hoping to refresh my mind’s very own ability to filter, sift, settle, take root, and drink deeply of this beautiful life I am living, right here, right now.
As my teacher Cyndi Lee likes to say, “Good luck with that!”Wishing you a peaceful practice,
Susan
If you haven't wept deeply, you haven't begun to meditate.
- Ajhan Chah
*Photo by Diane Greene Lent