Mind Release

Counting various sheep

 Midnight, middle of my night-

need to calm my mind

blow away the angst calm the flight.

 When on the odd night I awake in the middle of  sleeping, often I'm so wide awake and I can't figure out why. The pistons of my mind take flight. Was it too much stimulus on the movie I watched, am I worried about someone or something? This used to happen much more often with that "former guy" as President, "what new horror is being delivered?" But then now it's "how long is this blasted pandemic going to keep inflicting us?"

Last year I was literally scared for my and my husband and friends lives. I knew about how truly awful Covid 19 was because I have a good friend who worked, really slaved away in the emergency room of a big city hospital. She witnessed all the trauma that the patients and their families were going through. To do my part and help, I wrote a post last year on          If They Were Filming https://susansmagicfeather.blogspot.com/2020/06/if-there-was-film-answers-you-dont-want.html. It's only when people see and believe the terribleness of Covid 19 or one of their friends or relatives dies of the virus that they will believe of its veracity. 

We've gotten our shots, a huge relief! We're awaiting a reasonable time period before we venture forth, in our fashionable masks, traveling to see our family.

So, you might ask what's keeping me up at night? What's keeping you up at night? The silliness of worrying about the daily problems or troubles does absolutely nothing to solve them. For many years I had a nifty, though not flawless solution to the racing mind in the middle of the night. I urged my clients to write down a list of what's whirling on their mind or in their conscience. Take that list and on purpose make a deal with yourself that you will worry hard on the list in the morning for twenty minutes. If you get insights, write them down and make an action list. That is the deal, twenty minutes and then put the worry list away in a drawer to be used the next day. If your brain says, "ah, yes, we're worried about --------------------" answer firmly, "let's tackle that tomorrow, we already worried about that today". As simplistic as that sounds it works 90% of the time. Nothing works 100% of the time. That's life.

Another idea for calming, releasing the thoughts and any accumulated tension in the the mind and body is to get out of bed, ugh, and do some yoga or stretching. I read somewhere years ago that just ten minutes of stretching, or doing gentle yoga poses can aid in relaxation and encourage sleep. Let each limb have their say. In my case, I probably have over done the exercise or gardening or even walking. I give thanks with a silent prayerful attitude to all the parts of my body that work so hard for me.

Then I climb back in bed and urge the relaxation of each limb and tell the mind to: let go, let go. I breathe deeply and evenly, sometimes counting the breaths, but mostly trying to think of nothing "be clear mind." I need my sleep so dreams will come and give me a clue what's on my mind keeping me awake. 

People who insist on telling their dreams are the terror of the breakfast table.                                Max Beerbohm

Dreams are marvelous and not always ridiculous and last night was no exception.  I dreamt there was a surveyor in front of our house and he was busily making mistakes on the lines for our property. I asked him his name and he said, "Susan". Doesn't take a genius to see that apparently I have the feeling I've made some mistakes but nothing that can't be corrected. After all I did catch him in the act.

susansmagicfeather 2021 Susan R. Grout  

Bathing with John O'Donohue and Michael Singer and the Dalai

 I see my body as a temple or at least a relatively well-managed Presbyterian youth center.             Emo Phillips

How do you like bathing beauties?  I don't know I never bathed one.   Anon

Every other night I take a long, leisurely bath to relax and erase the worries of the day.  Because of the pandemic this ritual is not taken lightly. This is not an idle moment but a compliment to all of my senses because I bring with me into this small, lavish, luxury a book that I want to ponder, to savor and not race through as I do the many books of fiction I read. 

Nobody cares if you're miserable, so you might as well be happy.    Cynthia Nelms

Into the bath comes the Art of Happiness which helps to educate me on the words, actions and beliefs of the great Dalai Lama. We [in my imagination] enjoy the exchange of wise words, hot water and bubbles. This gentle man has underlined the very big necessity for me [and the world] to value compassion, to always be open and loving eliminating hate and fear from my/our life. Quite a challenge today when the world is in a pandemic and I am mostly self isolating from the general public. The difficulty [as I see it] is avoiding people who choose not to wear a mask or keep a social distance.  These times call for extraordinary measures for safety. Although I do love people,  I don't want to die quite yet; especially by this dread disease. Why on earth would anyone want to potentially expose me to a virulent virus?  Truly, this makes no sense to me.

The Dalai Lama in his life has faced terrible circumstance and yet remains a calm loving presence who turns away all wrath. Immune from hostilities? No, there are the dreadful Chinese Communists who stole his land, murdered his people and caste him and all the other Buddhist monks out of their home. But does he hate them? Absolutely not. He prays for them. On every occasion the Dalai Lama is unstintingly gracious to all he meets. In these days of angry, deluded people in a mob storming our Capitol, I find this helpful as I sink lower into the warm water. Let's just say I believe I have a bit of work to do toward being completely gracious and compassionate. 

If somebody makes me laugh, I'm his slave for life.  Bette Midler

Then I've also welcomed John O'Donohue among the bubbles as he guides me through the steps to being more loving, to seeing everything in the light of love. This from his book Anam Cara : 

At the deepest level of the human heart there is no simple singular self. Deep within, there is a gallery of different selves...Frequently you see people who are sorely divided. They are in a permanent war zone and never managed to go deeper to the hearth of kinship where the two forces are not enemies but reveal themselves as different sides of the one belonging.

Doesn't that sound like something our country needs right now? The hearth of kinship sounds about right. We must stop all this thinking in black and white terms.  Even the nuttiest who believe the conspiracy theories must have a space in their hearts for some kind of love, some type of kindness. Supposedly the ones who attacked the Capitol claim vehemently that they love this country. We can agree on that! 

If love is the answer, could you please rephrase the question?                          Lily Tomlin

 A movie that I saw years ago, "A Beautiful Mind", showed this kind of nuttiness on the big screen.  The movie based on the life of John Nash portrayed his schioaffect disorder combined with his paranoia. Yet, this man, dearly loved his wife and in his heart thought all of his paranoid thoughts were facts. Sound familiar? "The lie became the truth" said George Orwell in 1984.  Especially when they have heard endless lies repeated for years by the then by the then president.

Unfortunately, there is money to be made by TV "news" agencies, podcasts, and radio programs that are promoting conspiracy theories and copious lies. This does sound rather evil, twisting the truth which is utterly self serving by the prevaricators. To know the truth is right in front of them and then to purposefully promote absurd theories is so wrong. I know in my heart of hearts this is just for the sake of selling sweatshirts, baseball caps, travel mugs and advertisement. To me this doesn't seem like the best tribute to living a good, honest life. Does it?

Love your enemy, it will drive him nuts... Emmy Gay

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Me in my unsmiling self

To thine own self be true. William Shakespeare

Years ago, coming into full adulthood, I realized while I was working with clients that I had a degree of anxiety always underneath the surface of my mind. I continually thought: would my insights be good enough, effective enough, am I good enough, etc. Often I would be worried about a situation or person and no sooner had that problem been solved then my mind would happily seize on yet another person or thing to worry about and keep me occupied and sometimes, ugh, awake at night.  

Many years ago I discovered one of the best ways to reduce anxiety was those familiar slogans from AA and Alanon: one day at a time; keep it simple; live and let live; let go and let god; easy does it; first things first; think; and listen and learn. In addition to these platitudes I added a bit of science from a wonderful book by Thomas Doige, The Brain that Heals Itself . [This book has also been subjected to water boarding as it fell in the tub one time.] The book states that the brain, when it has repetitive/obsessive  thoughts can actually create a groove, or a track in the brain matter. The brain becomes convinced it's a good idea to go over and over the thought again because, well, the groove is already there to fall into. Trust me this is an oversimplification of an actual physical occurrence. The task before us is to let it go, distance ourselves from falling into an unsuccessful way of dealing with stress and worry. Further more, obsessing about a problem rarely solves it.

Yet another book that has been a helpful reminder to find a balance, a detachment from the constant internal dialogue we all seem to have is The Untethered Soul by Michael A. Singer. His aim is to encourage all of us to find peace and tranquility by stilling the mind from the eternal, mostly silly chatter, which is the internal dialogue most of us have had since childhood. The goal is to attain a state of inner freedom and liberation. I'm all for it. Like the wise words of the Dalai Lama, change or growth occurs when you embrace your problems as opportunities, instead of hindrances.

I know that there are myriad ways available to cleansing yourself from worry, from grief, from trauma and most importantly to live a more tranquil life. A good way is to simply plunge yourself into warm water, still the rattling mind, breathe deeply and embrace one of life's grand though simple pleasures, the bath. Oh, and bring a worthy book!

susansmagicfeather copyright 2021 Susan R. Grout