Wallowing

September 25, 2023

When I think about all this I get riled up. When I write about it, I'm not sure why I care.

I wrote this after a few lines of writing about how unfair it was that I was no longer at my former company and how frustrated I was about how people there acted. Here's the point. When I was ruminating about it, it felt all-consuming. I couldn't think about anything else. I couldn't move on. Then, when I wrote it down, it looked petty, stupid, and old. What's the difference? When my mind was in full control of the idea, it wouldn't let go. This was a huge problem and my mind wanted to wallow in it for as long as I would let it.  Writing it down disengaged it from wallowing. Other senses became engaged, taking power away from my mind. I didn't understand how writing things down helped me at the time, but I've since learned that you can't think your way out of thinking, as I wrote about in "Be Happy." However, you can engage your other senses. Writing, vocally naming objects around you, and going on a rainbow walk are effective ways to redirect your focus from your mind to your surroundings. A rainbow walk is simply naming each color of the rainbow as you see it during a walk outside.

I have used an analogy from the book "Faith: Trusting Your Own Deepest Experience" by Sharon Salzberg to focus less on my mind and expand my attention to other senses. "Buddhism uses an analogy to describe what happens when we allow fixed beliefs to contour reality for us. [...] The sky is the unobstructed truth of who we are and what our lives are about. When a received belief system circumscribes that for us, it is as if we are looking at the truth through a narrow tube [such as a drinking straw], seeing only a very small part of it while convinced we are seeing the whole. [...] Especially in the face of fear, we tend to hold on to our straws with a death grip." I picture my mind holding the straw, when I focus there I see only a small part of reality. When I concentrate on my other senses, the world broadens, many issues fade away, and the vast sky becomes clearer.

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