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I was born in the 50's and raised in the 50's and 60's. The Atomic Age. Our generation was taught, perhaps more than any other in history, that any problem we had could be solved with our mind. Through the use of logic and thinking. This in spite of the fact that Einstein, the hero of 20th Century thinkers, is quoted as saying: "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them."
What has been extremely disconcerting to me at various times in my life is not that my mind has been not helpful to me in trying to negotiate, but rather that it has seemed to be completely against me. I am not a scientist, and I can't begin to understand the intricacies of the way our thoughts and our emotions work together, but what I know from long observation is that there is a feedback effect between the two. I will have a feeling in my body, a sensation that somehow is interpreted as fear or shame, guilt or anger, any of the "negative" emotions, and some part of my mind will then explain to me why I am having that feeling. As in, "Of course you feel ashamed. You're a _______________." You can fill in the blank with whatever names your ego mind has on reserve for you; perhaps things your father said about you, or Randy Schmoogel from seventh grade. Then, listening to that voice, I will feel worse, more like I was feeling already, or I will react to the whole process that's happening and get angry at whomever's voice I think I'm listening to in my head, i.e. mother, father, society at large, the Church or whatever group I think is judging me. In any case, it's a system that, the more I indulge in it, the worse I feel.
The attempt to change the basic pattern outlined above (and all its myriad permutations) has taken many forms: long-term therapy, many, many different kinds; medication (doctor-prescribed as well as self-prescribed); positive thinking books/techniques/seminars; ritual and self-sacrifice (don't ask); five trips to India and all the experiences you could imagine during those trips; yoga and prayer and a lifetime of study. In other words, if it were fixable by me or science or metaphysics, I would have fixed it.
Then, along comes Vedic meditation. I start to meditate, these thoughts come up: "Of course you feel ______________, you're a _____________!" and a teacher tells me, "Ah, stress release. Good." How do you know it's stress release? It sounds just like it always did. "But now we know ourselves as nature, as well as individuality, and nature doesn't speak to itself that way." No? "No. There has never been a lion in the history of lions that has berated itself for eating too many bunnies. For having too many mates. For lying around and wasting time." No, I don't suppose so.
It's stress release. Our mind making sense of the sensation that is moving through our body. We let it go. We get present. We step away from the system that makes sense of things at our own expense, at the expense of our serenity, at the expense of our capacity to be fully alive.
Today I will notice when the thoughts I am having are telling me only the negative, and I will remind myself that nature doesn't speak this way to itself, that God doesn't speak this way to his Creation, that I would never speak this way to my child, and I will stop and find the way to get present to the moment and the world around me.
Bison, Crow Indian Reservation, Montana
All material copyright Jeff Kober
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