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.