Starry Night Sky

I can hear the leaves on the trees rustle as the cool breeze hits my skin and the hair on my arms slowly rise. I let myself sink deeper into the moment and feel the damp ground fill the grooves of my back as my fingertips graze over the edges of grass. I think to myself that there’s no where I need to be, no, there’s no where I want to be. It’s dark but I know that I’m not afraid, yet weirdly content. As I push my eyelids apart, the sky scape comes into focus, there are behemoth mountains across my view tucked at the bottom of a starry night sky. “What’s that?”, I think to myself. “Oh, it’s gone”, a shooting star scurrying across the dusty residue of the Milky Way Galaxy.

I imagine my mind scape is something like a starry night sky. It’s been a recent visualization practice that I started a few months ago and it helps me venture past my conscious thoughts and build a deeper perspective.  Of course, it’s not as jaw-dropping as staring at the actual night sky on a mountain but I’ve found that it’s quite special in its own way. Each star representing a thought within the larger mind scape and every mountain a manifestation of my grounding values. I’m not able to visualize perfectly every time though so I know I must practice consistently. I guess I’m not a finished article and I am okay with that.

There are moments that I must still remind myself to set time aside to do this because if I don’t, I’ve found my brain is good at talking shit. Not only that, but this mind is also extremely well-versed in throwing curveballs of punishing thoughts at me. And for an embarrassing amount of time, I’ve accepted every pitch as my own. I realize that I had been in a race with myself, either chasing something or running away. It was always one task after the other whether at work or at home. Ironically, my perception was that this is how one functions at a high level but now I know this was the furthest thing from the truth.

I consistently rebuked myself upon any perceived negativity from external sources but accepted almost every negative thought as my truth. Initially, it cloaked itself as “radical responsibility”, but not before long the negativity creeped into everyday life. This pattern sneakily dropped into the crux of every interaction, at work, on the street and worst of all, at home. There were times that I would distract myself by looking for external validation from other people, experiences or material items. In other moments and in classic avoidant fashion, convincing myself that certain coping mechanisms were the only way I could feel better because I had “researched” the effects of such mechanisms. I had become a self-proclaimed scientist. It was a con job while I was the perpetrator and the victim.

Unbeknownst to me, the mind had become an inhospitable environment, and I was spacing out constantly. It was exhausting, either being in your head all the time or out of it. The fascinating aspect of believing every thought is that it manifested in a shallow lifestyle with reactionary behaviors. I was functioning on an autopilot of epic proportions; dare I say willingly at the time. Being the super pseudo self-aware dude that I am, my rationalization was to attempt to control external outcomes or avoid feeling like a failure by blaming external factors. Both strategies, however, are utterly impossible to achieve in the real world for very simple reasons. Neither has there been a human being thats existed throughout history who hasn’t experienced some form of failure and nor is any outcome in life guaranteed despite all the valiant efforts.

It wasn’t until I was reading “Solve For Happy” written by the brilliant Mo Gawdat that I realized the faults in my rationalization. Better to realize it at some point than never, right? He wonderfully described what he calls, “The Suffering Cycle” and within this concept are six grand illusions we unconsciously believe in that cause us to continuously suffer. Of those illusions, one of them is that we tend to identify with the voice in our head, so we believe it as our ultimate truth. The second is the illusion of time where he provides insight that most negative thoughts are either rooted in the past or future. And the third of the six is our illusion of control.

Put simply, I was choosing to extend my suffering by believing in at least three of these illusions. It was manifesting as neurotic behavior, episodes of depression or constant anxiety. Of course, I didn’t see it that way at the time. And yes, I had a degree of awareness to it but with my limited perspective, I would be thrown back into the loop of judging or punishing myself and the vicious cycle would begin again. By the time I came across Gawdat’s book, I was desperate to ease the pain and invest significant time in addressing my unconscious patterns even if I didn’t exactly know what they all were. Feel like I’ll always be on that journey of discovery but that’s cool with me.  

Interestingly, I found many meditation practices, religious scripture and psychological approaches to instigate a shift in mindset from accepting or acting on each thought to helping them flow. Reading vigorously and watching as many videos as I could was certainly helpful yet there was a gap in my ability to connect and realize this flow. In Solve For Happy, Mo talks about the act of intentionally doing nothing. This seemed as radical as ridiculous to me at first. After several weeks of going in a loop, I finally caved. “What did I have to lose so why not give this a shot?”, I said to myself.

I promised myself that whatever thought would come up that I would let it flow without judging or punishing myself for having it. So on a Friday night, I closed the door of the guest bedroom of my dad's house and found a comfortable position on the bed, and proceeded with intentional boredom. Honestly, it didn’t feel great at the beginning. I let my sadness of what’s been lost become tears then witnessed the anger at myself become a scream into the pillow but then something fucking weird happened. I felt this warmth and let out a soft smile at the memory of being amongst my closest friends at the beach. Just as soon as it came though, it had passed as well. “I guess everything passes, negative or positive”, I said to myself. So, I sat there for about thirty minutes doing nothing (staring at my mind scape) and respecting all the thoughts (stars) and associated emotions without getting attached to any.

My logical brain quietened and as the subtle jazz of my heart grew louder, for the first time in a long time, I felt like myself. I’d been operating at surface level for so long that I had forgotten how to identify my emotions and express my feelings. By the end of it, I felt the depth of my experience and all that I have been through. The bad, the ugly but more importantly, the good. I found myself feeling hopeful for the next steps in life regardless of whether I knew what those were. In that moment, I decided that I wasn’t going to be stuck in regret or incessantly worry about the future. I’m realizing that the universe will test us in unexpected ways until the lesson gets through to us. Now even if it feels uncomfortable in the beginning, I’m looking forward to the next lesson.

Of course, reading one book won’t solve all the problems but it can go a long way to expanding one’s perspective. Truly, it’s wild how we can get caught up in surviving the experience or building the next block without strengthening our foundations, well, I can only speak for myself. In retrospect, how did I expect to scan my operating system for malware without the appropriate scanning software? There’s no perfect formula or magic pill for self-awareness and there will always be negative patterns to explore and recognize but we get to choose how we respond despite the circumstances.  

Maybe you already know all of this so…*high five*? All I know is that I no longer strive to be perfect in this life. Perhaps I truly am a simpleton but I’m catching on. For so long, I’ve been focusing on specific stars in the sky but in doing so, I was missing out on the splendor of the entire night sky. So, can I ask you for a favor? Tonight, will you enjoy the beauty of your own starry night sky? I sure hope you do. Have a great weekend!