Lauren pointed Jamie to the Joy Diet Journal
so I will put it here for everyone else to find as well--even though it is on TNC site too.
I actually did more than nothing for 15 minutes a day.
I tend to chuck my morning pages of late. So that hasn't been helping.
The whole, brew yourself a cup of tea and ruminate exercise a la Eric Maisel--hasn't really happened in awhile either.
I haven't really been doing much of anything at all recently. I've been stuck in one of my strange quasi-immobile choked up and stagnant places.
I can blame the time of year. I can blame the Equinox. I can blame the weather. I can blame lots of things.
But I won't.
I've just not been super motivated about things.
Plus, my bf hasn't been sleeping well--and if he doesn't sleep well--I don't sleep well. Thirty minutes apart and if he can't sleep, I can't sleep. Only my can't sleep is worse, I think. BUT--my can't sleep can also be very productive, if I let it.
I have the remnants of a dream scribbled out here that needs to be written out more fully.
I have a story written last night that needs to be typed out.
I have other ideas scrawled out as well.
How does all this stuff tie into my Nothingness?
Do you know what I think of when I think of the Great Nothing?
The movie the Never Ending Story...and the great black Wolf-thing that sought Atreyu to devour him.
Nothingness is sort of like that for me--a huge irrationally rational predator waiting to snap me up in its jaws and swallow me whole.
I love Martha's book--she says things I have thought and things I have tried to impart to others without really coming right out and saying it as boldly and as bluntly as did she.
It's her "squirrel brain"--where I have the 'monkey mind'....that got me. Dead center.
My first fifteen minutes starts the day, more like twenty or thirty minutes. When the dog hears the school bus gearing up outside my bedroom window and wants to go outside to bark at the little children--which she knows she is not allowed to do. So I have sixty pounds of panting fur that literally throws herself across my body, literally laying on top of me, her head against my chin, her hip against mine, and I have to pet the goofy thing, rub her belly, until all the buses have gone (that's about three different buses for three different schools, from 8a to 9a) -- not that I will pet her that long....just long enough to fall back to sleep... plus my first client of the day usually calls within that time and I get to talk to him....before i go back to sleep.....
BUT--that is not the only 'nothing' I do. I gave up years ago trying to sit and observe--observe my breath, a candle flame, a roly poly crawling...I became a meditation teacher--because I was not able to find a seated meditation that I could do -- UNTIL I read an article somewhere along the line (after I had taken the meditation certification course....of course) about a Buddhist retreat that incorporated knitting (or crocheting -- or any sort of handwork) for roughly 15-20 minutes before seated meditation. The report was that by focusing mind and body on the hands, on the handwork, the meditation experience was deeper for everyone involved. The fight to quiet the mind less. So on. SO forth. I read the article about five, maybe six years ago. The basics stuck with me. I still don't do seated meditation--unless zoning out is a form of meditation. All of my meditations are moving meditations. Yoga. Walking. Knitting.
With all the current knitting and crocheting requests awaiting me, it was an easy thing for me to pick up the needles and yarn and say--this is my fifteen minutes of nothing...in between client calls. In between fielding questions from an overly annoying child. In between interruptions from the dog (who is worse than the kid most days). Knitting became a good excuse NOT to go online, not to check email, not to read headlines, not to do anything at all, but feel the ebb and flow of the fiber moving between my fingers....
That's a good thing. That has really helped me. Here is the peace I have been seeking. I still have a long way to go with things, but that little space, between petting the dog and knitting something simple and mindless, those little pieces of Nothing, have kept me from being eaten by the Great Nothing.
I am looking forward to next week's path along The Joy Diet trail...Truth....
