Spending our days

This morning I cruised the online Guardian. I was consuming the media and inundating the mindbrain with tittle tattle. The latest book from Thich Nhat Hanh (The Mindfulness Survival Kit: Five Essential Practices) suggests that this is not always a good thing to do. But a thought train was set in motion that may encourage Engaged Buddhism so I will write about it.

Oxfam produced a report in advance of the 2014 World Economic Forum in Davos. The report notes that “the bottom half of the world’s population owns the same as the richest 85 people”. That is 85 individuals – they could all fit in a double decker bus!

Another Guardian article gives details about the 85 individuals. They are all worth more than ten billion dollars. Some are self made rags to riches types while others inherited from their parents and are presumably the idle rich – especially those over 80. This led me to wonder how they spend their days? How might it be different from how I spend mine?

I am now retired and a member of the idle and reasonably well off collective (IRWOC). But I am not idle. I shake-up my brain by inputting cutting-edge counter-intuitive thoughts that elicit cognitive dissonance and thus a desire to reinforce my world view by tying up the loose ends that appear. The particular challenge that I have set myself is to pay more careful attention to the subjective aspects of the conscious and unconscious ‘me’.

The methodology is in two parts:

1. Sometimes I am systematically academic and intellectual in discovering what is being thought in the relevant disciplines. Prominent amongst these are mindfulness, evolutionary psychology and neuroscience. Elsewhere I have blogged a list of favoured authors and their significant books. I also watch their video and audio presentations. Sometimes there is the threat of information overload and of failure to focus. So I sit quietly and better systems of filtering the information appear in the attention centre.
2. Sometimes I practice ‘just sitting’ and ‘being still’. This delivers a peace that passes rational understanding. I try to write about it, preferably in ‘flow’. The idea is to switch off the rational intellect and to let the unconscious do the work. There is ‘flow’ which is productive while being non-egoic and outside space and time. Sometimes there is also Presbyterian guilt about this painless ‘something from nothing’. But I now know it for what it is and let it pass.

This work pattern can appear to be self centred. But the goal is mindfulness which encourages selflessness which promotes equanimity, compassion and peace. No self, no problem.

There can be more peace and happiness in the world. Arguably it can develop through a fusion of eastern and western thinking and feeling. The process has begun. Let it be supported by non-egoic ‘me’. ‘I’ will spend my days attending to the altered states of consciousness in my head and ‘I’ will make the outcomes available to others through my blog.

I belong to the transcendental wing of IRWOC. I need to be choosy in how I consume the media. I must beware of tittle tattle and be mindful of how I spend my days.