Several years ago I took a mindfulness course, on which one of the exercises was to eat a raison – and take 15 minutes to do it. A visual examination revealed a wrinkled surface after which an oral examination explored that surface in greater detail. Of equal interest was the sensation of salivation and the willpower required not to munch it down. We finally got to begin eating it after about ten minutes. It surprises me today that this exercise didn’t find its way into the UN backed RSE initiative as ‘Foreplay 101’.
Apart from the importance of living fully in the moment, another useful aspect of mindfulness practice is to explore situations in greater detail rather than being railroaded along a given narrative. As we have seen in recent years, we are increasingly being told what to think by a media that doesn’t have the time to deal with mindfulness practitioners. Most people will be satisfied to know they’re being told the truth when they hear broadly similar accounts from ITV, RTE and the BBC.
Like the relationship between an expanding diameter and the circle’s circumference, the ‘Beginner’s Mind’, sought by practitioners, realises that the more you know, the more you know you don’t know. Ultimately one reaches the state of blissful ignorance. One is neither happy nor sad; one simply observes and is fully present to life in the moment. Well, that’s the theory as I understood it. If it sounds difficult that’s because it is. I never got to the point where I could control the release of hormones that influence one’s emotions; I’m a work in progress.
What I did learn is that I alone am fully responsible for what I think. I frequently recall the ‘Smith Chart’ tool I used early in my career, where the ‘Real Axis’ was very limited and the tool only became useful when one used the ‘Imaginary Axes’. Today the Smith Chart is a powerful metaphor for life; we cannot know what others think; we live solely in our imaginations. Whether Real or Imaginary one can always appreciate the smile one’s thoughts / hormones put on the face – especially Oxytocin! As the Irish comedian Dave Allen used to say – ‘He who smiles alone has a dirty mind’.
It’s now ‘Stupid o’clock’ in the morning and I’ll resolve my insomnia by posting my ramblings and having a nice cup of peppermint tea. U2 is one of the world’s superbands and one of my favourites. Their concerts are second to none. Even if the Globalist Bono has now fallen below Bill Gates in my estimation, his lyrics have been powerful – ‘…but in this ole raincloud, ours is a dry kinda love’ – Sweetest Thing 1987.
