Stop ruminating.

Ruminate= : to go over in the mind repeatedly and often casually or slowly
2: to chew repeatedly for an extended period

A couple of days ago I found myself in quite a funk. Dwelling on the meaninglessness of all. Found myself in a state of anhedonia. The day before this particular experience of funk I had been able to shake it off with a return to yoga (after a significant relapse into non-exercise which I don’t recommend). So I thought I would do the same and ran off to hit a yoga class, but I had the schedule all confused and I missed it. Deeper into the funk. I sat with it, I smoked with it, I complained to the bf, and there was no movement. Luckily, we had tix to hear Deepak Chopra speak that evening. The talk was good, though not mind-blowing, just a gentle reminder that yes, I am a spiritual superhero and I don’t have to over-effort to manifest spiritual qualities or to tap into omnipresent joy. Hmph.

I reflected upon my prior days. Yes, there were some external events that had the texture of minor stress, some not-so-fun insights in therapy for example, but in truth what seemed most clear to me was the excessive rumination and planning. The turning and churning of thoughts over and over in my head of what I was going to do, how to plan my life, how to best navigate X, Y, Z. It created a sickly stew of future-oriented, “fix it” thoughts that eventually made me ill. But when I was actually doing the rumination, it felt important, it felt like I was creating some master plan, it felt like I had some purpose and control. And after hearing Deepak talk, it was like I woke up for a moment from my dream. I remembered that what I was looking for, that sense of “it’s all good” was in the present moment.

I probably sound spiritually "slow" to those of you who think that once you have a realization about living in the present moment, and say study it incessantly for years, then it sticks. Well truth be told, if I were meditating, that might be the case. But I’ve been slacking on my sitting practice and this is an example of what happens when you slack. You forget important truths that sustain you on your journey towards happiness. Or you may remember the what, but you can’t remember the how.

So this morning I picked up Ajan Sumedho’s The Mind and The Way and planted the seed again: “The past is only a memory in the present moment…anything you can remember…are memories. They come and go in the mind. There is no past” (p.128) and as for the future “As long as we hang onto expectation and demand, we’re also going to be pursued by its opposite” because that is the nature of attachment. But in the present, if I really just let go and come back to this very moment of existence, there is nothing to want or to push away. “There is no suffering; there is nothing to worry about; there is nothing to be frightened of”; there is nothing to control or manage because I can’t anyway. Nothing is up to me. I can surely be a vehicle for energy, but it is the divine will that is being expressed. Regardless of how much I effort, the flow is a flowing. I can either accept and flow along, or bang my head against the passing moments. Hmph.

I guess for now all I am working with is a choice not to ruminate, not to chew what I have already chewed. Not to try to control the world through cognitive self-copulation. The next time you find yourself in a funk or headed towards one, stop thinking so much. Drop into the present moment. Just this moment here. This one here, this one here.

From here to there: the NEW SHIT!

Two years and more than half of another master’s degree later, I am at what feels like an existential crossroads or should I say that I am wondering again, really, if happiness is possible. I think this question emerges again and again throughout one’s life. I came here (to Naropa University in Boulder CO) in search of happiness. After 10 years “living the dream” in New York (fancy writing degree, great friends, super handsome and sweet boyfriend, trendy apartment in a trendy neighborhood, teaching writing, champagne for breakfast and whiskey for dessert), I wasn’t fulfilled.

For the past two years, I have gone through a subtle yet powerful shift in worldview that has certainly increased my capacity for happiness. I can recognize my thoughts as thoughts and I am less likely to identify with them (I no longer think my thoughts and feelings = who I am). I can watch how my thoughts become stories which lead to reactions which can cause me and others suffering, and sometimes I can interrupt the chain reaction. I have a greater capacity for compassion. I can sit with greater levels of discomfort. I think that at the bottom of my recurrent sense of dissatisfaction is a) a tendency to focus on the past or the future, rather than the present and b) a deeply conditioned belief that there is an “I”—a belief in the illusion that “I” have to protect “me” or make “me happy.” Two years of Contemplative education and countless hours of meditating has begun to weaken the links of my Western “me, mine” conditioning. But I still don’t feel joyful.


I still am curious about how to raise my happiness set-point.
There is a bunch of research out there (which I will discuss in the next blog) that says that we have a happiness set-point that we’ve inherited or subconsciously settled upon—it’s our baseline. And if we don’t fiddle with it, it will stay where it is, regardless of if we win the lottery or if our lover dies. We will return to this basic place. I believed I have moved my happiness set point an inch or two, but I do think I can cultivate a higher baseline. And there is bunch of research and advice on what we should do in order to raise our setpoint (which I will also talk about). But I want to know and feel it for myself. I think that perhaps this quest for happiness depends on wise discrimination-- knowing what to cultivate and what to refrain from. I guess the question is, what really makes a difference? We get so much advice on how to be happy and what really matters: it’s what we eat, how we look, how we feel, what we’re repressing, whether or not we pray, whether it’s yoga or pilates, how much we meditate what form of meditation we do, etc etc etc. I have some ideas of my own about what I need to be doing in order to find daily enjoyment in my life and I plan to document the journey. Stay tuned.