Quiet the Mind

8/22/2011 clues , meditation , mind 1 Comments

How do you quiet the mind?

Last night, we were watching that movie Eat, Pray, Love. Liz, played by Julia Roberts was having a hell of a time quieting her mind in meditation class. I’m totally like that. I’ll sit and try to quiet my mind, but thoughts just keep racing. Liz’s friend Richard had told her that she needed to clear the space in her mind. He then went on and said that once she did that she’d have a vacuum with a doorway and at that doorway the Universe would rush in and fill her with more love than she could dream of. I was like, wow, that would be totally cool if that were to happen.

When Liz was in Rome, she went to this place where Augustus had his remains housed. Years later the barbarians had trashed it, and Liz wondered if Augustus had ever imagined that Rome would one day be in ruins. While she was pondering over this, she looked at the chaos it had endured, but yet it had found a way to build itself up again. And then she was reassured, and in her own words she had said that maybe her life hadn’t been so chaotic, it was just the world that was, and the only real trap was getting attached to any of it. Ruin is a gift. Ruin is a road to transformation. We must always be prepared for endless waves of transformation. We all want things to stay the same, and are willing to settle for living in misery because we’re afraid of change and things crumbling to ruins. But ruin is a road to transformation. If you’re afraid of taking risks or going after what you truly want, then what’s the point of being here?

At the end of the movie Liz explained what she called the Physics of the Quest, and this was what she said: It’s a force of nature govern by law as real as the laws of gravity. The rule of quest physics goes something like this. . . . If you’re brave enough to leave behind everything that is familiar and comforting, which could be anything, from your house to bitter old resentments. And you set out on a truth seeking journey either externally or internally, and if you’re truly willing to regard everything that happens to you on that journey as a clue, and if you except everyone you meet along the way as a teacher, and if you’re prepared most of all to face and forgive some difficult realities about yourself, then the truth will not be withheld from you.

For years I’ve been working on getting the shit out of my water. Okay, let me explain what I mean. When we’re born, we’re like a pure glass of water, but as we get older, shit gets thrown into it. Basically, negative, unhealthy, hurtful things that affect us on some level. Well, I have a lot of it, considering how I grew up, but I made progressed and got a lot of that shit out of my water. However, there’s still a part of me that yearns for something and sometimes I feel restless. I don’t know what that is or why I get restless, but there are times when I feel like I’m so close to breaking through this barrier, or whatever it is, crossover, and that yearning and restlessness will vanish.

I don’t know. It’s weird.

All I know is that this is all temporal and to take something that is permanent is madness. Nothing is permanent. I believe when we die we take two things with us, and that’s love and knowledge. I’d say experience, but knowledge comes from experience.

Last night Kevin said that we’re always waiting for something, and he’s absolutely right. I’m always waiting for something. Why is that? Why can’t I just quiet the mind and just ‘be’? I wonder if it’s because I want something more out of life, and I’ve been working my ass off to get what I want. Maybe that’s why I get restless and feel like I’m constantly waiting. But then I wonder, what if it never happens? What if the life I’m working toward never comes into fruition? What if I’m just kidding myself? Then what?

After the disturbing ‘what if’ thoughts, I thought about clues. We’re given clues from the ‘source’ as I call it. I don’t know what it is, but it’s there, and if we just relax and become aware of the clues and follow it, everything flows together.
　
More than five years ago, Kevin and I had moved to North Dakota. We didn’t know a soul, never been to the state, and had bought a house sight unseen. People told us we were crazy to sell our nice house and move to a state we’d never been to. But ya know what? It felt right, and so we did it anyway. Also, we were given clues to do it, and guess what. Moving here was the best thing (besides marrying each other) that we had ever done. Yeah our house is old, needs some work, and is too small for my liking, but so what. Nothing is permanent anyway, right? I can always get the house I want in the future. The point is we were brave enough to leave everything that was familiar, and ignored the negative comments that were thrown at us about moving here to North Dakota. I’m proud of us for that, and because we did it, we now know we can do it again. It’s actually liberating to know that we have it in us to do something like that.


Now if I can only quiet my mind and just ‘be’ then maybe all this brain chattering will stop and I’ll be able to master my thoughts. Wouldn’t that be cool?