Vajra Blue

21/10/2015
by SandySB

Mindfulness: Minding the Gap.

The guy in the bright blue ute who cut me up on my way to work this morning, did not act to make me angry and reality would say that absolutely nothing happened.

I had to brake a bit harder than I wanted and the action disturbed my reverie and highlighted my being absent from what I was supposed to be doing at the time – driving. My mind flashed onto this event bringing to bear all the other times when I have felt discounted, unvalued, taken for granted, ignored or other similar experience. This results in a flash of rage bursting out “How dare he treat me so!” “How dare he put my life in danger.” And I am even further detached from the present moment, in my car, driving, right here right now.

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12/10/2015
by SandySB

Containing consciousness: The clash between species and personal evolution.

There were crimson roses on the bench; they looked like splashes of blood.

Dorothy L. Sayers
Strong Poison (Lord Peter Wimsey Mysteries)

For human mental health, there is an unfortunate clash between the way our brains evolved to maximise our chances of survival, and the way our mind has developed and evolved to meet the demands of consciousness.

There is a dynamic tension between them and sometimes the two act at cross purposes. The content of the mind can trigger a full-blown, physical survival response, such as a panic attack, that seems to erupt almost out of nowhere. While the fight and flight response to imminent danger, involves the inhibition of conscious thought.

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09/10/2015
by SandySB

Mindfulness: a safety catch when dealing with difficult emotions.

Light the blue touch paper and retire.
Instruction on a firework box.

The human mind has only a very limited bandwidth available for the conscious processing of incoming information.

This means that much of our response to events is unconscious.

Because of this, we have developed highly effective systems for processing most of the data that reaches our brain without bringing it to full awareness.

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08/10/2015
by SandySB 2 Comments

Buddhism and washing up

To celebrate a year of posting here is my first post again.

Like many people I live far too much inside my head, and have tried to balance this tendency through the practice of mindfulness meditation.

One problem is that I value my ability to think quite highly. After all I am a westerner and a scientist and am given over to rational pursuits.

This has meant that I meet a lot of resistance to just sitting with the breath in meditation. As a result I spend far too much time on my cushions in idle reverie, putting the world to rights, rehashing ancient wrongs or designing the perfect gizmo for something.

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17/09/2015
by SandySB

Depression: Activation in action. Setting goals and training the black dog.

You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks.
Winston Spencer Churchill.

Sir Winston Churchill, the British wartime Prime Minister, used the childhood expression “Black Dog”, to describe periods of altered, gloomy mood, that plagued him throughout his life.

These dips in mood could be so severe as to render him bed bound, yet they usually recovered over a period of weeks. Despite this, he managed to lead the United Kingdom from almost certain defeat to victory.

The expression, Black Dog, has since become almost synonymous with depression.

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Gratitude

25/08/2015 by SandySB

14/08/2015
by SandySB

Mindfulness: guarding the gates to our senses.

In 122 CE, Hadrian, the Roman emperor, drew a line in the sand, and set limits to the size of the Roman Empire.

This step was necessary as the Empire had become increasingly unwieldy to administer. Instead of throwing even more money, and yet more troops at the problem, as many suggested, Hadrian determined on a different solution.

Boundaries were marked around the Empire, and although the walls and defensive works that he ordered to be built, did serve a military purpose, the main idea seems to have been to control what came in, and what went out of the Empire.

For many of us, deciding what we allow into our inner world is a major problem.

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03/08/2015
by SandySB

Mindfulness: solitude, spending time with ourself.

My parents and my lecturers could never understand
Why I gave it up for music and the Free Electric Band.
Well they used to sit and speculate upon their son’s career
A lawyer or a doctor or a civil engineer

Albert Hammond

In the modern world with its lifestyle of continuous connection and instant availability, it is not surprising that we seem to have become afraid of being alone.

As a social species, human survival has depended on being part of a group. The greater the crowd, the smaller the chance of any one person being eaten.

There is safety in numbers.

The accompanying fear of silence, presumably related to the silence that falls when a predator is close at hand, seems to go beyond a sensible degree of anxiety about our safety, to a genuine fear of being alone with our thoughts.

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