Turtles All the Way Down

Reading because I liked Hank Green's books and I like John Green and while I'm disappointed that he writes YA I figured I'd give it a shot. It might be really good that he writes YA because young folk definitely need someone to give them a clue and most adults don't seem to have a clue of their own, much less one they can give away.

Aza is reading Davis' blog and encounters a quote followed by Davis' comment.

The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another. – William James

I don't what superpower William James enjoyed, but I can no more choose my thoughts than choose my name.

And Daisy thinks…

The way he talked about thoughts was the way I experienced them – Not as a choice but as a destiny. Not a catalog of my consciousness but as a refutation of it.

When I was little, I used to tell Mom about my invasives, and she would always say, “Just don't think about that stuff, Aza.” But Davis got it. You can't choose. That's the problem.

And if I could talk to Aza and Davis I would tell them that you can choose. You can't choose what thoughts will pop into your head but you can choose which ones you pay attention too.

In meditation you do this little loop over and over. You put your attention on your breath, a bit later you notice you're distracted, you let go of the distraction and put your attention back on your breath.

Or you could write it out like so:

• Put your attention on your breath.
• Notice when you become distracted.
• Let go of the distraction.
• Begin again.

In a 10 minute meditation session you'll spend most of your time distracted but you'll notice the distraction eventually and every time you notice you get better at noticing. And every time you let go of the distraction you get better at letting go. And every time you begin again you teach yourself not to give up.

If you sit and in 10 minutes you go through that loop 100 times you're not failing at meditation, you're training your ass off putting in the reps that will show benefits later.

Coming back to the book, if you train those mental muscles and you learn the surrounding philosophy you learn that, as Aza's therapist points out later, you are not your thoughts. So when you have a thought like Aza's invasives that's something that some subconscious bit of your brain is worried about but it doesn't have to be something you're worried about.

Don't think that I'm saying it's easy. I mentioned that we do that loop over-and-over in practice and you'll do it over-and-over in life, and that's okay. You have the thought, you acknowledge it and let it go (which you've practiced hundreds or thousands of times during meditation) and you go back to what you're doing.

I don't have OCD but we all get stuck in loops sometimes, and occasionally I'll talk to my subconscious, which I think of as a cute little monkey that gets scared sometimes. And I might say <soft, calming, voice>“It's okay monkey. That sounds scary, and it's a real thing that could happen, but it's really unlikely and we can't do anything about it anyway so we'll keep it mind but we're gonna get on with life in the mean time. Thanks for your concern.”</soft voice> and while that seems weird it can help. You're not a single entity, you're a collection of brain processes that are all trying to help, but they don't understand the world and sometimes they get excited about the wrong things. It easier to calm them (ourselves) down if we don't identify with their excitement and if we acknowledge the concern, but also that it's misplaced.