How to Train a Wild Elephant_ And Other Adventures in Mindfulness - Jan Chozen Bays [16]
DEEPER LESSONS
Our mind seems to be magnetically attracted to the negative. It drags up difficult memories and chews on them, over and over. It keeps trying to change the outcome. “If only I had done that, then he would have . . .” The past is gone. We cannot change its outcome, except by changing ourselves, and that can only be done in the present. The mind thinks up dreadful things that might occur in the future. “What if the economy collapses and there isn’t enough food, and people come to our door with guns . . . ?” The mind thinks that it is doing its job, protecting us from danger, but it is actually making us more fearful and tense.
The mind says, “Who cares about the positive things that have happened or will happen? Positive things can’t hurt you. My job is to think of all the possible bad outcomes.” The news media know this. That is why most news stories have a negative content: “Watch out for this new danger!” “This terrible thing is happening right now, or could happen at any minute!” These are the kinds of stories that the modern mind wants to read, and it makes us buy, read, or listen to them. However, this obsession with the negative can become pervasive, creating an anxious and depressed state of mind. What we expect, namely suffering, becomes what we actually get, a sad self-fulfilling and self-created prophecy.
The practice of gratitude at the end of the day is one antidote to this mental habit of disaster-mongering. This exercise helps us bring to light the many positive and supportive occurrences of the day. It turns the mind-stream in a positive direction. People who practice gratitude at the end of the day regularly find that they become able to see the upside of almost every event in their lives.
Final Words: Turn the unhappy mind toward discovering even one thing it can be grateful for.
9
Listen to Sounds
The Exercise: Several times a day, stop and just listen. Open your hearing 360 degrees, as if your ears were giant radar dishes. Listen to the obvious sounds, and the subtle sounds—in your body, in the room, in the building, and outside. Listen as if you had just landed from a foreign planet and didn’t know what was making these sounds. See if you can hear all sounds as music being played just for you.
REMINDING YOURSELF
Post a simple drawing of an ear in various places in your home and workplace.
DISCOVERIES
We are continuously bathed in sound, even in places we would call quiet, such as libraries or forests. Our ears register all these sounds, but our brain blocks most of them out so that we can concentrate on the important ones—the conversation, the lecture, the radio program, the airplane engine, and is that the baby crying?
Research indicates that babies can hear things adults cannot. Their hearing is acute enough to detect the subtle echoes that occur after most sounds. We learn early in life to block these confusing sounds out. Interestingly, African Bushmen retain this ability, probably because they live in the very quiet environment of the desert. Babies also recognize music and the melodic qualities of the voices they heard before birth.
When we begin listening carefully, a new world opens up. Sounds that were annoying become interesting and even amusing when we hear them as some kind of alien music. Background noise moves into the foreground. We discover a lot of noise in our mouth when we eat, especially crunchy food. The neighbor’s leaf blower becomes part of the ongoing symphony of sounds. A jackhammer is the percussion section. The hum of the refrigerator unfolds into a tapestry of many subtle high and low notes.
DEEPER LESSONS
Listening practice is a potent way to quiet the mind. When we become intrigued by sounds, we want to listen more closely. To listen intently, we