Slowing Things Down If you want to understand yourself and others you MUST learn how to slow things down. For example I contend that all respect for another human being has a tinge of fear to it. How did I arrive at this contention? By slowing it down. I sat quietly and VERY SLOWLY imagined people I respect and then paid VERY CLOSE attention to what I was feeling as I imagined each one. I discovered that though I loved and admired these people I also feared them. Why I wondered? Because the folks I respected represented a standard for me to live up to; a standard that I feared I would not be able to achieve. If I happened to know the respected person personally I feared losing their respect for ME. I also feared letting them down. None of these insights arose from intellectual thinking. They arose from self observation. Regardless of whether respect evokes fear or not, slowing things down is an essential discipline to cultivate. All too often unwelcome or unpleasant truths are so quickly and effectively suppressed that we deny their existence. It is only by slowing things down--- or through what the monks of Mepkin call contemplation ---that we allow these subtle feelings to reach the surface. The more we suppress the more absurd and out of touch with ourselves we become. We live our entire lives like the obese person who has so effectively suppressed the knowledge of all the calories he is consuming that he can say with a straight face: I eat next to nothing and still gain weight! His nutritional coach doesnt waste time arguing with him. Instead he advises him to slow things down. To wit, he tells him to just write down everything he eats. Im advocating the same thing! Slow things down and consciously attend to all those little fleeting emotions and thoughts etc that usually arise and pass away so fast that you dont notice them.
Posted on: Sun, 21 Sep 2014 15:51:28 +0000