We pulled in to Nevada City from Road Trip 2008 on Friday, three days ago. Today is the first day of being back in “take care of business” mode. As it was when I left, community work (our first Nevada City Farmers Market was on Saturday!!) is taking a significant amount of my energies. In thinking about planning for the week and being aware that I was working 36/7 the week before leaving, I’m also wondering how best to proceed, post-vacation.

I feel like there are some wild horses stampeding along the mental plains and I’m unwilling to let them have their way. Taking some time on the back porch, this is where my thoughts are leading for reining the stampede back in…

Learn to control my mind and I can do any and everything. This is my practice now, controlling my mind. Observe:

• One thing on my plate can consume 110% energy (i.e. drawing from reserves and not sustainable).
• Ten things on my plate can consume 50% of my energy (i.e. I’m organized, taking care of business and not expending any energy unnecessarily).

Which do I prefer? That’s a no-brainer! Which am I doing at this point in my life? Ten things on my plate at 110%. My goal is to get that down to 80%.

No wonder I’ve been so drawn to meditation lately. I thought it was going well and then I got a book at the famous Powell’s Books in Portland called, Turning the Mind Into an Ally. [I love the title and lament the reality that the mind is such an unruly foe so much of the time.] Sakyong Mipham, the author talks about the nine stages of meditation in the Buddhist tradition.

The first four have to do with placement of the mind on the breath. In other words, developing the ability to hold calm attention on the breath without getting distracted by a wandering mind. He calls this stabilizing the mind. One way to think about it the mind as a body of water. The untrained mind is like a rough ocean with tall waves on which you get thrown and pulled all over the place. As the mind stabilizes, the waters calm. The next step might be white caps on the ocean–you still get tossed about but not as much. Eventually, the deep waters on which you float are calm and serene. One way to tell where you are on the waters is how many breaths you can take in meditation without a thought popping in your boat. Once you can do about 21 breaths in a row, you’re probably at the second level.

Like I said, I thought I had been doing well with my meditation, but after reading Turning the Mind Into an Ally, I’m quite clearly still in level one. LOL.

Why do I think this is such an important practice to cultivate? It’s mostly intuitive–I just know that getting my mind under control is an incredibly important part of my development as a person, but also for the work I do in the world. Burn-out is so last paradigm! Learning how to say “No” to requests for my time and energy is one part of the solution–but it’s a small part. There is a lot to do in the world right now. Change is happening so fast and our participation in creating the communities that truly serve its members is crucial. But like I said, burn-out is no good. Getting spent because of all the responsibilities on my plate serves no one.

The ultimate question, as I see it, comes down to a foursome: “How do I do as much as possible, as well as possible, with as little effort as possible, and have as much fun as possible?” I’m still figuring it out but I know that meditation is the key: it enables me to stay clear on priorities, focus my energies, do what I do best and leave the rest for collaborators, stay out of drama-filled situations, and have the greatest impact.

Maybe someday meditation will replace the need to do weekly planning and ToDo lists but I probably won’t get to that point until level six or seven, which, according to my timeline, should happen in another three decade or so. =)

This morning I was experiencing low motivation to get out of bed. As I lay there, completely comfortable and snuggled in, I wondered if I’d be able to tell the difference between being overrun by an ego who wanted to uselessly mind wander vs. simply being tired in which case some more sleep would be a good thing.

I opted for overruling the ego and was on the yoga mat within 10 minutes. Ahhh. Happy to be up getting the energy flowing! After yoga, 15 minutes of meditation–well, kind of. I tell ya, the ole noggin’ was not cooperating this morning. Sitting was similar to laying in bed–I felt bombarded by all kinds of out of place thoughts (meaning, appropriate during other activities) and had a heck of a time relaxing my mind. Leaves me feeling kind of spun out–and it’s not even 8:30am yet.

Over a cup of chai, I read an article in Inc magazine called “Bill Zanker Never Wants to Come Down” about the ambitious leader, Zanker, of the Learning Annex. I knew the Learning Annex to be a source of day long seminars. It’s changed since he bought it back from his former partner in 2002. Now, in addition to seminars, they put on those huge, convention center sized, big hype, “get rich”, weekends featuring Tony Robbins and Donald Trump.

I’ve never seen Tony Robbins do his thing. Sounds like it’s quite a performance. Thousands of people jumping up and down screaming at the top of their lungs indicates some darned persuasive motivation, indeed. What they were experiencing, Robbins’ calls the “peak state”. And this is the way to change your life, living in a peak state. Find a trigger to get yourself back into it, and ride that emotion to a new life. It’ll probably be a physical activity or movement as “emotion is created by motion” he says.

That does bring up an interesting concept. Can you imagine someone pumping themselves up in the cereal aisle at the grocery store in an attempt to get back to their peak state? Maybe they were being drawn to a sugar cereal and they knew that they’d want the healthy variety if they were tapping into their potential in their peak state. What if 10 people in the grocery store were doing this? Someone in the veggie section, another in the frozen foods, another in front of the Ben & Jerry’s case… It’d be quite a racket.

On a more moderate note, reading about this immediately recalled my wandering mental state in bed this morning. It’s not a state of mind I care for, nor do I think it contributes to my desire for a productive, fun, and interesting day. Frankly, I feel victimized by my monkey brain.

Here’s what I got from that article to apply to this situation: Don’t bother trying to talk myself out of that state (that just feeds the monkey brain!). The only motivation I need is to actually start moving–get on the yoga mat, go for a bike ride up a big hill, turn up the music and start boogie-ing, jump up and down–something with the intention of ramping up the energy level. For me it’s like shaking off a negative mind funk. I’d had a sense that just getting myself to the yoga mat was a huge step in the right direction. Now I know that’s the ticket, Tony says so!

Here are 2 more gems from the yoga retreat that haven’t made bumper sticker status, but really oughta!

Fun multi-layered thoughts from Alinda:

The Creator didn’t give us a body to get out of it. Do yoga.

Get a life. Do yoga.

One of the aspects I love about yoga is its ability to bring me back to my essential self when I get too head-y. Insta-return!

This past weekend found me at Wilbur Hotsprings for a 3 day yoga retreat led by Thomas Fortel. SaWeet! Life condensed to the essentials: soak in hot mineral water, do yoga, eat, read, repeat twice, then bedtime. Do same the next day. Fascinating how quickly that lifestyle became the “norm”. How quickly the lack of 2nd brain (laptop) was forgotten.

Brain reprogramming. When my mind gets clogged up, spun out, freaked out, or goes into perma-monkey chatter brain, I know it’s time to hit the reset button—aka brain reprogramming. It’s like a looping program needs to get wiped out of memory.

I read Stephen King’s On Writing. Fascinating! While I don’t particularly care for his novel genre, I truly enjoyed this memoir/writing tips book—a storyteller to the core. He reveals quite a bit about his life and what led to his current popular fiction icon status. I was happy to read that he writes for the love of writing. For the love of discovering how a character will get out of a predicament.

Sounds to me like he has a love of the creative process and mystery—trusting that the story will work itself eventually and surrendering to that process. There is an implicit understanding that micro-managing will only get in the way or stop the process entirely. The only allowable control freak tendency being to sit his butt down every day to write.

And isn’t that why so many people don’t do what they claim to have a passion for? They don’t make the time for it? That says to me, “not enough passion” and that it’s time to re-evaluate what you think you want. That’s one of the most valuable things you can do for yourself. If you really want it, you’ll figure out how to make it happen.

“Why all the writing on meditation? How is it relevant to simplifying my life and business?” you ask. Oh, let me count the ways! Meditation is about focus and disciplining the mind.

Consider, what is happening in the mind when you feel overwhelmed or stressed out. Usually, your mind is spinning around seeing all the things that need to happen but going too quickly to stop, prioritize and act. If that ain’t a mind that needs focus and discipline, I don’t know what is!

Check out this passage that we read at Meditation Class last night. It is from Anodea Judith’s book, Wheels of Life:

We take it for granted that we need to take showers, clean our houses, and wash our clothes. We’d be uncomfortable if we didn’t, to say nothing of being the object of social criticism. Yet, the mind and its thoughts need cleansing, perhaps even more than our bodies. The mind works longer, encounters wider dimensions, and runs the operating system of our life as well! While few of us would consider eating dinner on yesterday’s dirty dishes, we think nothing of tackling a new problem with yesterday’s cluttered mind. No wonder we feel tired, confused, and ignorant!

Time to clear off the desktop. Feeling the urge for everything to be clear (and clean? maybe this is the next step - LOL) My internal head workings, the computer desktop, my desk, my room, the kitchen counter–all of it! my car seats and floor. Is this compulsive? But then, what is the drive for a spiritual practice? A connection to the divine, yes? How can Stuff not get in the way? Too assumptive? Fine. At least, how can it not help to be clear? Isn’t that what we want for relationships, projects, goals–Clarity? What is that? being sure of what you want. The desired result understood and strong. Clear. Sure you can see through the windshield with rain or some dirt on it, but isn’t it easier wiped clean? You betcha.

The first of six meditation classes was great fun last week. One of the goals of this method of meditation is being in the world. Action in Contemplation & Contemplation in Action. Perfect for a Project Simplify frame of mind! Simplification of action and thought is reached in slowing down (which is the real reason for my anti-multi-task convictions!) Simplification is the first step to savoring, the first step to delicious enjoyment of the moment. When I got home after the class I had a few bites of some smoked salmon. It was a little tough and at first, I found myself chewing through the toughness. Then I slowed down, and let my taste buds in on the action. Chew, draw some tasty juice over my tongue, swallow. And again, chew, draw some tasty juice over my tongue, swallow. Mmm, yummy!

The instructor, Mary Jane Ryan-Connelly teaches “passage meditation” that she learned from Eknath Easwaran. We are reading from his book entitled, Meditation: A Simple Eight Point Program for Translating Spiritual Ideals into Daily Life. In this non-denominational method, you take a prayer passage or spiritual text and repeat it to yourself. The goal is to give the mind something to do, not to get attached to, or think about, the words, and for the words to sink into the consciousness. Hmm, I don’t think I’m explaining it as well as Mary Jane did last week…