Unconscious
The Grasshopper dropped this gift on me the other day while out walking:
“When you are physically here and mentally there, you’re unconscious.”
I was a little bit into my walk when I noticed that I was thinking about all that I had to do that day. Then it dawned on me that the purpose of the walk was to walk and enjoy it. The list in my head couldn’t possibly be accomplished while I was out walking, so to repeatedly remind myself of the tasks ahead of me had two drawbacks:
- I wasn’t experiencing what the walk had to offer.
- I felt frustration by not being able to do the tasks from where I currently was.
When you are lost in thought, you are in a trance – unconscious. You are not present for that portion of your life. You have abdicated the present moment to consider future moments that you can’t do anything about right now.
The conversation I was having had no pluses. It just robbed me of the experience of life while I was internally blabbing away.
There are some wonderful trances – talking to yourself is not one of them.
For example, there are hypnotic trance procedures that help people escape from pain by imagining they are somewhere else involved in a very pleasurable activity. My late friend and mentor, Dr. Dave Dobson would use such methods when he worked with burn victims to alleviate their pain. Dr. Norman Cousins used comedic movies to help him escape pain and open the door to healing through laughter. When you watch a movie, you trance out. It’s not real but you react to it as if it is. Some people can instantly transform their mood by putting on a favorite piece of music. Selectively used, these are useful trances that help you escape your thoughts and the attendant feelings that go along with them.
If you are a human, you cannot control going off into an internal chit-chat trance, but you can recognize it.
The recognition of the internal conversation is the thing that brings you back to the present moment and all that it has to offer.
Becoming aware of your thoughts helps you be here when you are here and be there when you are there. When you become an observer rather than an absorber of the thought machine, you become more fully present for your life and the gifts it constantly presents.
You miss those gifts of awareness when you knock yourself unconscious.
All the best,
John
http://cdbaby.com/cd/johnmorgan
http://www.cafepress.com/grasshoppernote/3580301
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