Infinite Versions.
Habit Hack Episode 16.
What is the single most important lifestyle practice? Deepak Chopra says, WAKING UP.
In high school, I took a programming class called Pascal. I came to realize later, that this class was named for Pascal, a mathematician who made huge contributions in physics, geometry, and probability; and also journaled about psychology before psychology was even a field of study. In the mid-1500's, Pascal wrote,
“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
Pascal posited that we can’t help but run from the problems of our emotions into the false comforts of the mind. We are drawn to our stories as unconscious, habitual, patterned thoughts, keeping us from actually sitting in solitude and silence. Keeping us from waking up.
We have an instinctive aversion to simply being. This shows up as a constant responding to incoming data and external stimuli; incessantly triggered by circumstances, with very little original thought, but a recycling of our minds. We are like biological robots, very predictable in our responses, leaving us with little freedom, as a bundle of conditioned nerves and reflexes.
So, why does Deepak say waking up is the most important lifestyle practice? Why did Pascal highlight so dramatically, the value of solitude?
Perhaps to alleviate our suffering through quiet awareness of our mind and its fluctuations.
In every experience, we can wake up to what's happening right now. The sensations, the perceptions, the images. This is the totality of our experience. The rest is our story.
In contrast to the craving mind, that appeals for satisfaction through gratifying longing desires, can we ask ourselves if there are other versions of my mind's story. Are there other versions of my feelings and fears?
"You will always find the evidence for what you choose to believe"
- IN-Q (freestyle rapper, poetry as meditation)
The answer is most likely, yes; there are infinite versions.
Perhaps some of our suffering comes from all the things we go out and do in attempts to get rid of our suffering. Can we find comfort in being? Can we be in our experience?
I wonder what I would have thought in 1995, sitting in front of a desktop IBM, if I had known my future self would be quoting Pascal's philosophy. I don't think I could have crafted the story of my life as it has unfolded. I had a pretty solid idea of where I was going, back in 1995. It is most certainly not where I landed in 2020. I may have a bit more awareness and a lot more ability to sit in stillness. But I am still a work in progress.
Learning comfort in being.
Leaning in to the unfolding.
Trusting in the journey.
Waking up to the infinite versions of my story.
In all the possibilities and probabilities, I am grateful that my path has crossed yours.
Love, Jess
Do it all with Love. Nothing is promised. But everything is workable.
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