Keep a Safe Distance From Your Thoughts

During the Covid pandemic, with so much uncertainty around, we are bound to speculate what the future holds for our physical health, financial problems, families and social lives.
Our brains are amazing tools, designed to solve problems, to anticipate, plan and organise. But at times of stress, we often search in vain for the off-switch, our thoughts multiplying, creating emotional turmoil and warping our sense of perspective. We can easily mistake our fearful fantasies for reality.

One of the current priorities is keeping a safe physical distance from other people. But we also need to keep a safe distance from our thoughts.

When a fearful thought pops up, it the body reacts with the stress hormone cortisol, which actually fuels more fearful thoughts. This can create a vicious spiral where we are speculating, obsessing and worrying far beyond any point which may be useful. Even if we realise this, there seems to be no way out. We try to relax or think of other things, but fighting with our worries rarely works.

How do we achieve some relief from this suffocating mental torment? Many spiritual teachers have pointed to the simple yet radical shift that can come when we dis-identify from our thinking process, when we realise that we are not our thoughts.

This shift is not always easy to make, and it may be the work of a lifetime, but this is a great time to start. We may begin by noticing our mental reactions to stimuli, whether it be conversations, news items or your own trains of thought. It may be that your insights only come after the event, for instance “I rushed to judgment”, “I was catastrophising” or “I beat myself up”, but slowly we can begin to see and understand our own mental and emotional patterns and reactive tendencies. It can help to write things down in a book, noting down your ‘triggers’, your own inner narratives and self-talk.

Gradually we learn to watch our patterns as they play out, whether it is our ‘voice in the head’ or during conversations. We become attentive to our sometimes ingrained thought processes, noticing how they interact with our emotions as they bubble up.

The aim is to become the compassionate watcher of our own minds, rather than completely falling for the stories they like to weave. Rather than trying to banish uncomfortable thoughts, we allow them to be, no longer energising them with futile attempts at resistance. Throughout all this, it is very important to treat our fretful minds with kindness, rather than judgment. As commonly advised in mindfulness, bringing some attention to the breath and/or body throughout this process is very helpful.

Of course thinking is not the enemy. The ability to speculate and hypothesize have enabled us to survive and thrive as a species, but thinking can easily become compulsive and this can only drain us of energy and limit our effectiveness.

Once you loosen your attachment to thought patterns, you may find that you become more open to new perspectives. This can lead to the unravelling of some tightly-held beliefs and opinions that no-longer seem relevant. As this happens you may experience some uncertainty and resistance. Once again, the technique is to treat any fear or uncertainty with acceptance and compassion. You are starting to taste freedom.

Just like staying physically safe, we can do ourselves a world of good by maintaining a sensible distance from our thoughts in order that we are not overwhelmed by them.

This post was inspired by a video from the spiritual teacher Mooji

 

New song

New song “What I See”. Not too specific, hopefully it channels some of the feelings that have been going around in the last few days, weeks and months.

The Trouble With Masks

The Trouble With Masks – ‘stay safe’ or stay authentic?

Calmness is Your Contribution

You make ripples all the time. In your actions, words, hopes, intentions and concerns you can send out vibrations with subtle influence. Whether you intend it or not, you have an influence. Our task today is to make ripples consciously.

In times of uncertainty it can be easy to try too hard, and send out waves that add to the general turbulence, but the greatest help we can give comes without any struggle. It comes from feeling the stillness at the core of your being, whatever you are doing.

This stillness doesn’t want to force anything, yet it is the source of a great power for your wellbeing, and that of others. It is the source of love. Connecting with the heart of your being like this will animate your movements and words with grace, compassion and wisdom.

Identify yourself with this gentle energy, trusting it to find its way outwards like the tiny ripples on a lake generated by a swan’s heartbeat.

You never know what help you may bring by being calm. You don’t need to know. This kind of helping is not about certainties. Just know that you can still help, if you make gentle ripples consciously.

 

Two Views on UK Lockdown

1. Remember how much lip service was paid to mental health in the last couple of years? It supposedly had ‘parity’ with physical health in government thinking, despite being woefully underfunded. Well,  the past month has blown all those platitudes out of the water. As long as we can keep people alive, the mental wellbeing of all is secondary. (pic:Tony Clerkson/Shutterstock)

You have to start to ask, what makes life worth living? If families can’t grieve together because of the theoretical risk, is that tolerable? Already suicides are rocketing, and as economics is a huge part of this, what about the cost of treating mental scars in the aftermath?

I am wondering about the psychological sustainability of advanced cultures where the need to preserve life trumps living life to this extent. In poorer countries today and here in previous times, people have soldiered on despite dying in large numbers in pandemics, less able to shield themselves from the blunt reality of being mortal.

These events are a unfortunately a regular reality of human history. If people will live in such huge settlements then bacteria will occasionally move in too and chow down on our insides. Perhaps the drama of WW1 was a more engaging story to tell and re-tell than the pandemic that followed it, but ‘Spanish’ flu killed many times more and could have done with some memorialising too.

In many Southern nations, where millions still die every year from malaria, life is cheap. Here, physical life has become so valuable and spiritual life so impoverished that we will go to any lengths to contain a disease that might kill 0.3% of those that get it, while our strategies for containing it could inflict mental illnesses on far more.

2. Poorer nations soldier on because they have to. They don’t enjoy being more in touch with the reality of life and death. Given the choice, they would abolish disease too. What motivates against the lockdown is the inward cry: I must not suffer. Or if I have to suffer, it must be up to a point I understand. to the extent that I feel morally uplifted by it. Any further than that, I feel victimised.

We are used to designing our lives how we want. Choice, for us, is seen not as a luxury, but a right. The right to have things the way we want. But what is demanded of us now is something our culture has almost abandoned: the idea of sacrifice; to put constraints on your own needs and wishes for the good of others: people we don’t know, people of different generations.
So far we have been trying to sacrifice and not suffer, to find ways to enjoy the lockdown. But we have reached the point where it becomes grinding and dispiriting. The question now is, can I suffer well? Sacrifice is not some blissful, holistic journey. It’s something to be endured.

Buddha said ‘life is suffering’. Things will constantly change and conflict with our priorities. Everything we value will slip through our fingers and pass away. We suffer because we constantly argue with the reality of this. The lockdown is an opportunity to observe your suffering objectively as it plays out (in this, we could not be more united).

In one way, we do have a choice between two sufferings: break the rules and maybe cause physical suffering and/or death for yourself and others. Or stay at home and accept the suffering of your limited new reality.

 

Connecting With Wisdom

TOM GEORGE ARTS

In the coming weeks and months, if you are in contact with elderly friends or relatives, ask them about times of crisis they have endured and how they dealt with the situation. Many of our living elders came through WW2, a time when entire streets were destroyed in a night, with death arriving regularly and violently. Food was strictly rationed and there was no clear picture about how long the war would last, or if the forces of Nazism would take over our country and the entire world.
We have gained amazing material comforts in recent decades, but increasingly this crisis is waking us up to what we have lost. We have lost the simple connectedness, whereby communities thrive through myriad acts of helping, which should be routine but now stand out as selfless acts of kindness. Equally tragically, we no longer treasure our elders. (photo: Gennaro Leonardi)

In…

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‘Isolate With Me’ – written and performed by Tom George

Connecting With Wisdom

In the coming weeks and months, if you are in contact with elderly friends or relatives, ask them about times of crisis they have endured and how they dealt with the situation. Many of our living elders came through WW2, a time when entire streets were destroyed in a night, with death arriving regularly and violently. Food was strictly rationed and there was no clear picture about how long the war would last, or if the forces of Nazism would take over our country and the entire world.
We have gained amazing material comforts in recent decades, but increasingly this crisis is waking us up to what we have lost. We have lost the simple connectedness, whereby communities thrive through myriad acts of helping, which should be routine but now stand out as selfless acts of kindness. Equally tragically, we no longer treasure our elders. (photo: Gennaro Leonardi)

 

In every generation of human history, the role of elders was to pass on the wisdom they had gained through a lifetime of experience. They were there to counsel and advise, putting a brake on rash decision making. But in the prosperous North of the planet, that role has all but vanished. Endlessly fascinated by the new, we lose the bonds of continuity with earlier generations that can do so much to ground us.

But it’s not just our wellbeing that is impacted. I feel that the need to pass on their stories and experience is an innate part of elderly wellbeing. To be valued and have status within society is something that has been taken away from them. The world has changed so fast and is now so technologically driven that old people often live out their final years ignored and sidelined.

In this crisis, they need to know that they have a role. Especially as many elders will be experiencing even more isolation than usual, contacts with the old can include eliciting memories and seeking advice. These people have endured privations and threats that we can’t imagine; they could hold the wisdom that will see us through. As we rekindle, through necessity, the remnants of our communities, they can show us how it was done before.

Finding Peace During this Crisis

Greetings, friends. As a follower of Eckhart Tolle I would say the best cure for anxiety is present-moment awareness. This poem came to me in response to the coronavirus crisis. Take care, Tom x

 

At this moment
The sun burns bright
A cloud glows white
The air holds light
A bird makes flight

At this moment
The new blooms sing
The church bells ring
The trees lose doubt
The leaves reach out

At this moment
An old friend dies
A spirit flies
A doctor cries
A stream runs wise

Can you see the angels…inside the colours…that lead your spirit…back to wellness…

At this moment
The shock waves grow
The wise don’t know
The cruel winds blow
The torments show

At this moment
The systems crash
The heroes dash
The tempers break
Foundations shake

At this moment
The anxious peace
The suspect breeze
Infected space
We look for grace

Can you feel the presence…in the stillness…that brings your being…back to wholeness

At this moment
A lapwing calls
A dead branch falls
The lake lies deep
The old stones sleep

At this moment
The seagulls glide
The sky looks wide
A new life wakes
An old wound aches

At this moment
A fresh bud forms
The cold earth warms
A skylark strives
And hope arrives

At this moment
The perfumes drift
The evenings lift
The seasons shift
And life’s a gift

At this moment

Tom George 26.03.2020

Tasting the fruit of Yoko Ono’s poetic wisdom.

The Museum of Liverpool recently hosted an exhibition called ‘Double Fantasy’ charting the very public relationship and life of John Lennon and Yoko Ono. In this already Beatles-saturated city it was hardly something to salivate over but as my mum was in town we paid a visit.

As a loop of the piano introduction to Imagine boomed out at the entrance to the exhibition, it was clear that we were in familiar heritage territory. Anyone with an interest in popular music/culture already knows the story and iconography of this couple well, as documenting themselves was their stock-in-trade. In fact there is something quite contemporary about the way they documented themselves constantly for the world’s media (these days it would be social media and the Bed-In would be just another selfie fighting for attention). But ultimately there was little to learn from the predictable guitars, clothing and photos on display.

The exiting thing for me was a wall devoted to Yoko’s original typed pages of her book ‘Grapefruit’. In the early 60s, before she met Lennon, Yoko was a prominent figure on New York’s conceptual art scene staging performance pieces and collaborating with other avant-garde luminaries such as musicians Lamonte Young and Terry Riley.

As part of her art practice, Yoko began writing ‘event scores’ which were instructions for performance art pieces, written as witty and playful minimalist poems. Eventually she collected these pieces of writing and published them in 1964 as ‘Grapefruit’, re-releasing the book in 1970 with an introduction by John Lennon.

 

The original typed pages in a line along one wall were a treat to read. Whether or not one would choose to act out any of these pieces, they can be taken as a guide on how to live playfully, with a child-like sense of wonder and individualistic mischief.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The influence of her Japanese background is surely key, as the pieces have a mystery and open-ended character that is characteristic of Zen sayings or ‘koans’ that are designed to open the mind.

 

Yoko’s artistic sensibility was hugely influential on John Lennon, seeding an entirely new side to his artistic character. It’s not hard to imagine that he named the Beatles own record label after the apple that she exhibited in the exhibition where they met in 1966.