9 Shut up and Shut down!

I've been thinking a lot this week about the value of meditation for my physical, psychological, emotional and spiritual health. For some reason I've started myself on a five-a-day regimen not of vegetables, but of brief episodes of prayer, reflection, meditation. Call it what you like but first thing in the morning and last thing at night with three times squeezed in between [usually around mid-day, 4pm and 8pm], I'm taking some mental time out to reflect for a few minutes over what's happening. I'm taking the emotional temperature of the situation and I'm taking a break from the perpetual mental chatter that is an unfortunate feature of my daily life. I'm endeavoring to find a few seconds or minutes in which the plans, ambitions, reflections, regrets, loves and hates of the moment I'm in can be turned down and switched off, so all I'm doing is breathing and being aware of my breathing.

I'm finding with practice [and of course, what's happening at the time], it's getting easier and easier to just switch off! Once I'm on down time I can move my awareness to myself and spend a few seconds appreciating myself as a valid and lovable somebody. Then I can shift my attention to a friend and spend a few seconds loving my friend. Then as calmly and as empty of thoughts and feelings I turn my awareness to an image of the face of the person who is annoying or threatening me most and this is often when the thoughts and plans and emotions get all activated again. Takes a bit of time to shut down again but then, focusing on that person's eyes, their soul; it's possible to appreciate them also as a valid and lovable somebody. And finally the attention moves to someone I hardly know at all- someone I've seen in a shop or someone I had a second's worth of eye contact with, and I spend some time appreciating them as I appreciate myself, my friend and my enemy. Just having those few minutes trying to even out the tone of feeling towards myself, my friend, my enemy and a practical stranger is beautifully releasing! By this stage I'm ready to zone out and to focus on just breathing in and then breathing out. See if I can spend just 2 or 3 inhalation-exhalation cycles without wandering off mentally and thinking about something. Once I've done that I'm ready to get started again. Sometimes it's so peaceful that I want to just stay there just breathing and being! But then the outside world beckons and I need to get back to doing whatever I was doing before but I'm now calmer and more centered and less driven by the insecurities of my ego or the petty rivalries between myself and others. And I can see more clearly what my priorities need to be to ensure that I get a balance in my life.

So I suppose my advice for the day would be to take some time to learn the skill of of shutting yourself down whilst remaining fully aware.

There's a bit of a knack to it but with time, patience and practice it'll probably be the most valuable thing you ever learn to do!