that sit-around-and-do-nothing-thing

How many times have you caught yourself immersed in thoughts? What you did yesterday, what went on a year ago, what will happen tomorrow, your next assignment, your financial expectations, blah, blah, blah.
And what good did thinking about any of this do to you? I mean, some planning in life certainly is useful, but really.
What good are you doing to yourself when you worry about, say, that job interview next week? Come on. Reason with me here. Have you done all you can do today? Have you rehearsed and prepared for the interview? If you have, that’s pretty much all you can do. That’s pretty much all you want to do. Worrying about the future is the troubling bit you want to avoid altogether. Think about it. Worrying has never done anybody any good. And won’t do you any good now. So before you let it set in, it is time for that sit-around-and-do-nothing thing.
This ancient practice has some fancy foreign name, but if you’re like me, and want to avoid the new age terms altogether, you can call it the practice of sitting around and doing nothing. Simple enough to understand, right?
Okay, so now you are ready to sit around and do nothing. Hmm. What the hell for? Well, like everything else here, as a means to feel good, to relax. And how will you relax by just sitting around while one thousand things you have to tend to are going on in your busy little world? Aren’t you going to worry even more that you’re wasting precious time?
Not at all! Remember: the problem is not your chores. The problem is not even your worries. The problem is the attention you give them. Your attention feeds and maintains the never-ending cycle of troubling thoughts and feelings in your mind.
Sit around and do nothing. Easier said than done. Your uncontrollable thoughts race through your mind and won’t leave you alone. They make you dream of other places. They make you dream of other times. They scatter you all over the place. You dream yourself to be sometime in the past or somewhere in the future. Check it out. Isn’t it true? So how can you make it all stop and sit quietly in the here and now?
Let’s first explore the sitting quietly in the here and now. As far as your body is concerned, you are always, always here and now, right? I mean, wherever and whenever else could you be? The mental part is the hardest. To be mentally in the here and now means to be aware of the here and now, and not lost in some Never-Never Mindland, and not identified with some thought or feeling.
So you see, unlike what many of us might think, you really don’t have to stop your mind’s processes in order to arrive here and now. In fact, you can’t make your mind stop. The more you try to do it, the more you fight against your thoughts and feelings, the more they haunt you. Try it and see for yourself. I must reinforce time and time again that it’s ultimately a question of disidentification. All you have to do is disidentify.

And this means not paying attention to those thoughts and feelings. This means shifting the focus of your attention to the here and now. But how to do that? Again, easier said than done.
Don’t despair, though. Fortunately, we humans have powerful built-in aids that constantly remind us we are here and now—whenever we remember to use them.
We can practice body awareness. Our body is certainly here and now. Sit still. Close your eyes for a moment. Check your body. All over. Any tension? Wait. Don’t do anything about it. Just observe your body for a few minutes. That’s enough for now. You’ll see that this simple exercise will help you relax more and more.
Feel tense after work? Sit in your car and observe your physical tension. Feel tense after that quarrel with your wife/husband/partner/father/mother, etc.? Go to your room, to the bathroom, someplace where you will not be disturbed, and do this simple exercise. Feel tense during that uncomfortable airplane ride? Close your eyes for a few moments and pay attention to your body. Check out the tension areas. You’ve got nothing better to do anyway….
After a while you won’t even have to close your eyes or go anywhere to do this. Wherever you are, become aware of your body. Become aware of your physical presence. Feel your body’s temperature. Is it warm or cold? Feel gravity pulling your body towards the Earth. Is your weight dragging you down, or do you feel light as a feather? Feel your body in contact with your clothes, or with the wind. Do you feel comfortable in your own skin? Feel your breath. Ah, the breath….
Another thing you can do is simply observe your breath. Like your body, your breath is here; it’s happening now. Close your eyes and check your breathing pattern. Shallow or deep? Slow or quick? Just observe. Don’t try to control it. That might be difficult in the beginning. I know it was for me. When told to pay attention to my breath I was actually controlling it at first. But after some insistence, I gave up and let it do its own thing. After some practice you might even start to notice a connection between your breath and your feelings. How’s your breath when you are angry? Sad? Relaxed?
The key here—and in all these exercises and practices—is perseverance. Most are very subtle. But they are cumulative. Do them once, and you won’t notice a difference. Do them for three months, every day, and you will notice a big difference. And you will wonder how you ever lived with so much tension before.
Finally, after you have practiced observing the physical realm for some time, you will see it is much easier to do the same thing with your thoughts and feelings. Observe. Be aloof. As if you were sitting in front of a busy highway watching the cars go by. At first, you will dive back into your stories, into your worries, into your thoughts, many times. Use your body. Use your breath. Be patient. Persevere. You will see that as your practice develops, you’ll become calmer and calmer. And that’s it. Nothing really special. Just relax and feel good. Just sit around and do nothing.

Copyright © 2011 Ron Wyn All rights reserved