Wandering mind could mean unhappiness
Dr. Jeffrey Janata, University Hospitals Case Medical Center
I thought about this, and the personal quandary I've been in about the possibility that I've been accessing my emotions a bit too freely, possibly as a sub-component of my adictive genes. It has increased my enjoyment of movies ten fold! I can cry through half of Grey's Anatomy. Part of that is of course the meanings that I attach to, or reflect upon, the situations and characters backgrounds.
When I would sit outside smoking a cigarette, I would hear a jumble of bits and pieces - not simply un-focused, but drifting "with meaning." I felt like Alia Atreide's in the Dune trilogy, being stuck with the voices of her ancesters in her head all the time, except mine weren't distinct voices, but side thoughts and meanings and bits of musicals (of course there has to be music, songs would repeat for hours, usually AM top40 from my childhood.
perhaps in 1980 I read Shunryu Suzuki's, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, and it taught me that in Zen they "Practice" in one form of meditation I think by clearing the mind, and as thoughts or concerns pop up we should examine each, and cherish it's contribution, and then gently let it pass from our field of thought until only a blank screen is left. Of course that cannot be a steady state, thoughts are bound to come up, so maybe that's why they call it practice. I did it a couple of weeks, twenty minutes a day, in front of a blank wall, sitting full lotus (ouch). So, I knew in a rudimentary sense what Zen Practice was about, but that was when I was a teenager, more concerned about enlightenment than anything concrete (but reading books, and thinking about stuff was as far as I went...thought about the Monestary, but since I grew up identifying with Quai Chang on Kung Fu, I thought that was really a part of my make-up, crazy I know).
I also remember reading an article, perhaps in Pop Psychology in the eighties, about how a skier doesn't dwell upon all of their experiences while speeding down a mountain, they draw from but are like a train being towed by a locomotive, pulling from the cars as needed, but with a clear mind.
I have been, or had been, looking for some form of mental excercise that would lead to better focus, to quiet the voices (not that they were really voices). In reflection upon the study in the news, I started to think of my un-focused quasi-emotional state I would drift in, and started to think it was like rocking a jukebox, playing just the tunes I liked, letting this web of meanings and thoughts flow over me...kind of like a juke box. So, anyway, now I have a discipline to stop rocking the jukebox (all of the time).
I thought the thing on the News might be right, give it a chance, and so my mantra now is simply, stop rocking the jukebox, and the thought that comes right after it is, 'be in the present,' and it sharpens me right up, the jukebox is quietened right down.
I have a lot of studying to do, i'll report back on my success or failure, but this new found mental quiet is so cool. I still rock the emotional scale, at a moment's notice, but it's just puncuation mostly.
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