Do you ever notice the noisy chatter inside your mind? Sometimes, it's so faint we barely notice. On other days, the noises are so loud. Like the first drop of rain before a frantic storm, beginning gently then pitter-pattering for hours. I once had a friend sit me down over chicken and waffles in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco and tell me to turn down the noise around me. There were waitresses shuffling across the dining hall, guests clinking their glasses together, a jazz pianist tinkering his tunes merrily and slowly, I closed my eyes and felt the fuzzy blackness taking over - I was letting go of the noise. It feels like this exact sensation occurs when thoughts become loud even in a quiet setting. It's easy to notice the thoughts getting loud in a post like this, but what about when they threaten to consume you - when you are rolling down the cliff of your thoughts, what about when the pitter-pattering continues to grow louder and louder? Well, you just have to let it reach it's course.
The delayed response of feeling in real-time. The voices come up louder and angrier than before. All the yoga, meditation, and wisdom you've read in books - seems to be a distant glow in these moments. You feel all the words they told you are right. You believe their sharp tongues, jagged lines around their mouths. Somehow, in the most fragile moments, you believe that these mouths have more meaning, more truth than the beliefs you have told yourself for the past however many years. The beliefs you have been drumming inside your skull - meditative breathing, find your mat every day, intention, intention, write an affirmation on your mirror. It's all or nothing in the moments when it gets LOUD.
And so, I noticed that the two greatest remedies in the exact moment that it gets too loud to bare is - bobbing up in the storm, embracing the sensation as much as one can, almost like a psychedelic trip that has gone dark - reminding yourself that you are not the experience and that it will pass. Instead of resisting against the storm, learning to become one with the storm and feel the cold rain droplets, while being present to the sharpness of the voices wherever they may be coming from - no matter how untrue they may be. And second, take a small action. Your action can be as small as taking a shower, or sending that text to your friend, reading a couple pages from your book - but one small action also has a ripple effect in a storm and that is worth remembering.
Comments