Illustration: The Magazine of Yoga

How To Stop Projecting Your Random Nonsense

Enough with not being judgmental. When I’m being “not judgmental” my ego is just having a field day.

BY MAGAZINE EDITOR SUSAN MAIER-MOUL

Tony Robbins gives a wonderful piece of advice. “Make a decision,” he says. Frankly that’s the best, the very best, description of meditation I’ve ever heard.

In my last column I offered a practice of attention built around noticing laughter. I’d call it meditation, but that word seems to be loaded with connotations. Calling it a practice of attention has its problems, too, though. It’s vague and heady.

Making a decision is sweet and simple.

The dharma of Super Mario

When my son was small he was pretty obsessed with a Super Smash Brothers character, Captain Falcon. Often when we were doing things together, he would fall into murmuring narrations of a fantasy in which he was involved. He’d be remembering things he’d seen cartoon Captain Falcon do as we crossed a street or did the dishes or any of a hundred other ordinary things.

Without warning his voice would begin to rise with excitement until he’d shout Falcon punch! (often accompanied by a kick or a small punch in the air).

I was always impressed with his commitment and absorption. As we grow up, our fantasy life does change, but in that aspect, not much.

Every day, there’s the world going on around me with its being-the-world business, while in my head I’m narrating my version of what I’m doing in it, telling myself my little story about who did something and what it means based on stuff I’m playing back from an experience that happened to me some other time.

Soon enough, an impetus will push that narrative past its inner-me limits and I’ll find myself metaphorically falcon punching – a random driver will earn my ire, a person on the street will look at me a little too long, or a conversation will go where I don’t want it too, and boom – my rising inner muttering erupts in a judgment call I have next to no evidence for other than my projected nonsense.

Simple but not easy

I don’t know about you, but if I let it go, I find myself collecting scraps of validation as to just how really totally correct my story is. I always know once I start enumerating my defense that I’m reeking of reactivity, but it’s definitely hard to give up, to just simply stop.

Because most of the time that accelerated narration and falcon punch haven’t got a thing to do with the world-being-a-world around me. I really do have better things to do with my energy.

Now that I’m over fifty, I seem to be crazily aware of any kind of leaking life force. It’s like I can hear it hissing.

And whereas I used to want to stop the sound of the damned hissing because it was so annoying, now I want to know where it’s coming from. I want to stop the leak, not the sound of the leak.

So I began to practice noticing

If I notice the hiss early, it’s easier to do something about the leak. If I’m caught up in my storytelling and distracted, the leak gathers force. By the time it’s loud enough that I can’t ignore it, there’s a pretty powerful energy-suck going on. A black hole. I usually melt down, a drama I can’t quite tolerate the way I used to.

I have to make a decision, many times a day. Not once in the morning, not when I go to the mat, but over and over. The more I try to pay attention to those leaks the less I can listen to the narrative about what isn’t fair, who’s a jerk or what isn’t my fault.

It’s not that I’m “trying not to judge”, I’m not doing that kind of efforting. When I’m being “not judgmental” my ego is just having a field day.

Instead, I’m learning, by practicing, how to let go of everything that isn’t what I choose to be doing.

Decide and be done with it

Now, again, I know everyone is different, but if I’m going to get involved in cooking up a reason to make that choice every time I have to – if I have to defend the decision against mounting falcon punching logic and excuses and – with me – especially hypothetical shit, it’s going to take all my energy. I’m not going to have any attention left for what I’m doing.

What works for me when I’m practicing is to stick with, “It’s just a simple decision, it’s not a Nobel prize.”

It’s a decision about what I’m doing, it’s about what I’ve already chosen, and I don’t make the decision twice if I can help it. If I make it twice, I’m going to be making it three times because my foxy logic will learn from the second decision how to make the third time even more compelling! I’m nobody’s fool, that’s for sure.

Nobody’s but my own that is.

Hence practicing with laughter. It’s a nice practice object. It’s not esoteric, it’s free, it’s you know, “natural.” Laughter is recognizable. It’s sudden, sort of unpredictable. It’s not unpleasant, I’m not inclined to avoid it.

And it defies reason.

Practice breaks down the strength of my stories

When I choose a practice object like laughter, I pay attention to when I laugh just because I’ve chosen to pay attention to that, and I don’t give myself a second reason.

Because if I can’t pay attention to something as simple and un-provocative as what makes me laugh, how am I going to learn to pay attention to things that make me feel guilty? Or inadequate? Or scared? Or angry?

That’s the stuff that really wastes my life, my time and my energy. It goes from a hiss to out of control way too fast.

I want to get in there with my decision about what I am paying attention to while I stand a chance.

I know what I want and I’m ready to learn how to have it.

© 2011, The Magazine of Yoga, LLC.