Brainstorming works wonders. When
we let loose a flood of ideas, freely associating and playfully combining
anything and everything that comes along, we often see past old boundaries and
discover solutions to vexing problems. The stream of consciousness becomes a torrent
that blasts through every snag.
If brainstorming opens formerly
clogged channels, then what is braincalming?
Braincalming shifts us into a
state of ease and placidity, trading frenetic energy for generative stillness. As
the stream of consciousness settles and gathers in pools, real reflection
becomes possible. When you’re talking, it’s hard to hear. When storms are
raging, it’s hard to see straight.
When faced with an intractable
problem, a stalled creative endeavor, a relationship snag, or any other kind of
challenge, try one or more of these braincalming techniques and see if
solutions arise on their own out of the depths of stillness.
Go Outside
Get away from your desk, your
device, your office, your car, and step out under the sky. Leave the world of
human machinations behind and return to the natural realm. For hundreds of
thousands of years we lived outside. Rooms with ceilings are a recent invention
on the long-term scale of human evolution. Electric light was invented
yesterday. So many of us have lost touch with the elemental world that gave
birth to us. Somehow, when we walk in the wind and stand under the sky,
something shifts in us and we lean a little more willingly into the unknown. Held
in the embrace of a wide, unobstructed horizon with the infinite space above,
the impossible begins to seem possible.
Watch a hawk spiraling on an
updraft. See how she chooses her flight line – a perfect synthesis of effort
and effortlessness, assertion and submission. See a green leafed cottonwood
tree in a dry creek bed, and know the sustenance running just beneath the
surface of all things. Find a crow feather in a field of boulders and feel with
your own hands the harmonious union of rigidity and delicacy. Such is the range
of the manifest world. In the face of these apparent contradictions we come to
peace with our own paradoxical nature.
Sleep
Most Americans suffer from
significant sleep deprivation. The results of this easily-remedied deficit are well
documented – moodiness, irritability, diminished cognitive function, weakened
immunity, relationship problems, stress, anxiety, depression, increased drug
and alcohol dependency, just to name a few. And it gets worse – some estimates
claim that 5,000-6,000 traffic fatalities a year are caused by drivers asleep
at the wheel. Sleep deprivation endangers us all and unnecessarily complicates
our lives. If you think that sleep is cutting into your productivity, you’re
wrong. It’s the other way around. Sleep deficit chokes your output and steals
your happiness. Depriving yourself of the enormous health benefits of sleep is
a sure way to drastically reduce your quality of life across the board. It’s a
perfect example of how stillness feeds us in ways activity never can.
Spiritual Practice
In longevity studies, researchers
have identified a rather small number of factors that most contribute to long,
healthy, happy lives. One of the most consistent is religion. And it doesn’t
matter which one, or how traditional. It’s simple really – when people believe
in God or some kind of higher power, they move into a more peaceful
relationship with the conditions and circumstances of their lives. In spiritual
or religious consciousness, you know that your ego doesn’t run the world. You
relax. You do your part and let go of the rest. I know this is not what
atheists like to hear. They gravitate toward the claim that religion is what’s
destroying the world on an individual and global basis. Negatively judging the
legitimacy of a metaphysical claim by the idiotic actions of a tiny minority of
zealots is not only short-sighted, it’s demonstrably, logically unsupportable.
The vast majority of people living within the guidance of any particular
religion live lives of community, compassion, pluralism, and tolerance. We’re
not arguing about the definition or existence of God – we’re simply noticing
that an extremely beneficial shift in consciousness occurs when we surrender to
the grace of the universe and allow it to do what it does so well – support us.
Nor does any of this have anything to do with the tiresome arguments about
which religion is the right one. Most of us have moved way past that. We’re
simply recognizing that spiritual practice in all its forms moves us from the
agitation of self-will and into the wide-open willingness of serenity.
Got Art?
Nothing calms, emboldens, and
enlarges the soul like beauty. Art, in all its forms, celebrates the mystery of
existence and calls us to our higher sensibilities. Some media like literature
and poetry use words while other media like painting and sculpture uses color,
line, form, shape, and composition. Film uses both, and more. But the real thrill
of art is its inherently seditious nature. It defies the very forms it employs
by making us see past the surface and feel the depth of our own lives –
something we have been desperately longing to feel. Art brings us home to
ourselves and leaves us awash in the stillness of our own infinite value. We
know more now, we feel more. We see a little farther. And we take this
empowerment into our moral action, our loving-kindness, and our willingness to
talk less about the problems and move more into the embodiment of solutions.
In his poem The Great Wagon, 12th century Persian poet Hafiz wrote,
“Today, like every other day, we wake up empty/and frightened. Don’t open the
door to the study/and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument./Let the
beauty we love be what we do./There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the
ground.” Whether we play a musical instrument or not, music has the capacity to
break us out of the captivity of our own thought-cage. Listen to music that has power and meaning
for you. Let it lift you like wind lifts a wing. Let it carry you over your
worries and endless mind-puzzles. As Beethoven reminds us, “Music is a
revelation higher than all wisdom and philosophy.”
Braincalming
There’s more. But you know the
rest. Eat better. Move your body. Get out of your isolation. Trust community. Travel.
Take risks. Trade safety for love. Give away whatever it is you want to
receive. Learn, again and again, the art of letting go. In these ways and
others we move out of the maelstrom of thought-addiction and into the serenity
of the eye of the hurricane – a place of calm and stillness where we finally
see and feel our authenticity rising up through the cracks of the chaos of our
former lives.
