Diane’s Guide to Enlightenment

My descent into touchy-feeliness continues unabated.

First, I gave up gossip because I realized it was making me feel icky—knowing those things about people does not improve my appreciation of their talents, ever; in fact, it can only lessen it. I’m at a point in my life where it’s easier to feel compassion for the mistakes people have made with their lives. Snark is both too easy and leaves me feeling foul inside.

No. Really.

I’m still me, people. Just a me determined to excise snark and sarcasm from my vocabulary. It’s a constant process—now when I let loose at someone and snark I know it’s about me, not about them. Most of the time, when someone says something I find stupid or hurtful, I tell myself, “That is not about whatever they are talking about, that is about them, and that is something they need to deal with.” It makes dealing with the world much, much easier.

I’m also doing meditation and and I’m keeping a gratitude journal. And as with most things, there are iPhone apps for that, and having an app makes things just that much more fun.

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I was sold on trying meditation again by The Happiness Hypothesis. I’ve tried meditation at various times in my life and always failed miserably—I’d either fall asleep during (possibly, the “lying on the floor” position was not my best choice) or forget to do it. I do well with guided meditations, but that doesn’t seem to be the same thing as garden-variety sit-down-and-shut-up meditation at all. Guided meditation tends to put me “out” much the same way hypnosis does: I wake up at the end of the session feeling pretty good, but with no memory of what happened or what Nigerian scam I’ve agreed to.

What I do now is take 10-20 minutes a day to meditate. I sit on the floor, legs crossed Indian-style, back straight. Sitting this way turns out to be way more painful than it was when I was in kindergarten because I’m so much less flexible, and suddenly the reason that meditation and yoga are so tightly interlinked becomes extremely clear. I put my hands on my lap, palms up, and I try to breathe in on a count of four and out on a count of four.

I also put on my headphones and listen to the Brain Wave app from Banzai Labs, which is a binaural beats generator. It has 20 different programs—”Positive Mood Boost,” “Lucid Dreaming,” and “Meditation” are three—but mostly what I’m aware of is the sound of “pink noise.” I thought it was “white noise” but “pink noise” is apparently totally different. It provides just enough cover to help me tune out the outside world, and if the binaural beats are helping me meditate, so much the better.

So far my meditation practice usually goes like this:

One, two…my hips are really tight and my nose itches. I need to get a meditation pillow to sit on. Focus! Breathe in: One, two, three…I’ll do a body check and breathe relaxation into the tense parts of my body. Mostly I’m thinking about things itching. Breathe out: One, two… I wonder if I ran the dishwasher last night. I will push that thought away for right now. Breathe in: One, two… Does this get easier with practice? Practicing, there’s a good idea. Breathe out: One, two, three, four… Hey, I got to four that time! Next stop, enlightenment! Wait, what’s this about the dishwasher? Breathe in: One, two… now my foot itches.

I haven’t had any amazing things happen as a result of doing some meditation: no spiritual experiences, no suddenly becoming psychic (as apparently happened to one woman, who then ran out and wrote a book on meditation, which I happened to read some time ago). My big goal right now is to get to a whole count of four in and out before my mind wanders. This will most likely occur sometime in my next incarnation. But that’s really okay: learning to quiet my mind, if only for a count of two, is pretty good. It’s amazing how loud my mental radio is playing ALL THE TIME.

(I also use Brain Wave on the “Creativity Boost” setting when writing. Does it make me more creative? Who cares? The pink noise drowns out the rest of the world.)

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I also read in a number of places about “gratitude journals,” which are journals you write in every day about the good things in your life. (Apparently Oprah talks about these; she was not one of my inspirations for doing this. This is not a judgment, just a statement of fact.) All you have to do is write down five things you appreciate every day! How hard could that be?

To encourage me to do it, I use the Gratitude! app from the Happy Tapper. Look at the icon: Doesn’t that make you smile? That’s just cute. Seriously: Good job, app icon designer.

The Gratitude! app gives you a page per day to write down 5 (or 10, or whatever) things per day that you are grateful for, plus rate your day from one to five stars, plus stick a picture on the page. For one thing, this app reminds me to take pictures of stuff with my iPhone so I will have a picture for my day’s entry, and since I’ve begun using it I’ve never had a less-than-three-star day. I have to report that, as with meditation, I haven’t had any of the marvelous mystical things that people report happening when they start using a gratitude journal, but I don’t care: it’s just nice to remind myself every day that things are good and honestly I have lots to be happy about.

I’m not too proud to admit that “high-quality chocolate” has made the list more than once. Because some days, I really am all about appreciating the chocolate.