Heroes Not Zombies

When did you last just sit? And where was that?

Do you have a favourite place to sit? And what do you do while you are sitting?

When I was a busy GP in Edinburgh I’d often drive through Holyrood Park on the way from one house call to another, or one clinic to another, and if I saw someone sitting on one of the park benches….just sitting….I’d get a sudden longing. I’d think “How great to be able to just sit”.

In our busy lives, we’re always doing. In the midst of that we are encouraged to “live in the present moment”, to learn to be “mindful”, learn how to meditate, learn to “soyez zen” (as I’ve heard it said so often in this part of France).

I know it’s important to be active but I also know it’s important to slow down sometimes (I have a whole series of posts on verbs…. Here’s one on slowing down) . Yes, maybe to meditate. Maybe to focus on my breathing. Maybe to day dream even.

Sometimes I go outside and sit down under the mulberry tree, listen to the birdsongs around me, look at the blues and greens and other colours in the world around me, breathe deeply and fill my lungs with the clear air, close my eyes and feel the warmth of the sun on my skin.

Sometimes I practice some form of meditation, sometimes Heartmath, sometimes I just let my consciousness flow, drifting from a sensation to a feeling to a thought.

I find some of my best ideas arise in those moments and I’m reminded of David Lynch talking about TM and diving for the big fish….

ideas are like fish. If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you’ve got to go deeper. Down deep, the fish are more powerful and more pure. They’re huge and abstract. And they’re beautiful. Everything, anything that is a thing, comes up from the deepest level. Modern physics calls that level the Unified Field. The more your consciousness – your awareness – is expanded, the deeper you go toward this source, and the bigger fish you can catch.

(from David Lynch’s “Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness and Creativity”)

Seriously, if you are busy doing all the time, you aren’t going to catch the big fish! Pull up a chair, sit on that bench, and “take a moment”. Who’d have thought it? Moments are there for the taking!