There are a number of things that make life kinda sweet. One of these things is driving at night, while it’s dark, it’s quiet and then enjoying the music over the speakers (beats the laptop anytime), while also experiencing driving with the rooftop slightly opened, since the weather is finally improving. It helps me to calm down my mind, silencing it and as such functioning as some sort of mind discipline (more on this later), being caused by having to focus on the road, while next having music calming me down some more and making me all happy.

While being on the road I was wondering about a number of things, one of which being why I like to drive in the middle of the night. Most of the time you can find me cycling home coming from the beach, but today I had some things to do in another city, so the car it was. I always feel a bit decadent when driving. Most people seriously think I’ve bought my gloves especially for this car, but alas no, although they make a good match :-). One of the reasons I like to drive at midnight, probably has to do with my preference of this time of day. It’s the time with little input from others (if any at all) and there seems to be something magical about driving in the dark, with just a few lights (as opposed to complete darkness which I do not like at all).

One of the things I intended to do was write a little something about the confusion in my mind. At nighttime one would expect this could be done quite easily, but believe it or not, the Dutch (and one Swedish) friends are still awake, leaving me little to none peace of mind to actually write down my thoughts. Still I’m determined to make it work, so I’m doing my utmost to ignore the bleeps around me and just give in occasionally.

Today I was talking to someone about the chattering in our heads. I know a thing or two (and a lot more) about this myself and one of the things that helps me is to write things down and get some understanding of why there’s so much chattering going on. Part of my thoughts has to do with something I wrote earlier today to someone. While writing, or better yet after writing I noticed I’d been expressing my thoughts and emotions is a not very friendly manner, making me wonder if this was a wise decision. Well some things cannot be undone, so I just wrote an additional message to explain my confusion and basically to say “sorry” for being somewhat (?) blunt and direct in the previous messages. It’s not in my nature to express my displeasure with things so directly (at least not when it comes to personal stuff, businesswise I do not mind at all), so whenever I do I always want to correct it straight away. Won’t help one bit and takes away all intent, whereas what’s been said has been said and it has no use at all to try and change this.

So another method is to get into a meditational state. Whereas it took me lots of effort to close my eyes and just sit, it’s actually become a comforting place to be. At first I allow my mind to wonder on, within certain limits, having to do with the place I reside at in my mind. This actually follows a certain pattern, allowing me to go deeper in the meditation, while at the same time expressing my thoughts, worries, emotions and all that needs to go in order to get that quiet mind. Depending on how much chattering is going on, I’ll get into nothingness pretty quickly, or I’ll just enjoy the experience of being in this other place, while at the same time my physical body is completely relaxing. The combination is a wonderful one causing me to feel safe during the time I’m away from all daily choirs and influences.

When chatting earlier today about silencing the chattering of our minds, I responded that going into a meditational state or trancelike state actually did wonders for me. When thinking about it, it seems almost like a contradiction that in order to have to learn to meditate or go even deeper, I had to learn mind discipline. All these years no one was able to silence my mind, till I went to medium courses. The teachers who were supposed to be teaching a “woo” subject, were actually very strict and required focus and discipline, specifically mind discipline. For the first in my life I’d found something I could get myself to calm down with. I’ll admit I prefer other methods which can go way faster (as in a few words), but unfortunately “they” are mostly not accessible, so it’s nice to have multiple options when it’s really needed.

Talking about one of these methods, today I got to realize that one of these actually wasn’t working for me at all. If anything it had made me all confused. I’m talking about writing other people and next experience new perspectives and with it some more structure. However today the structure seemed lost and as a result confusion set in and with it more chattering, hence the multiple messages I talked about earlier on this post. In the last message I expressed my confusion and this seemed to result in more peace of mind. Getting away from all it, getting in my car was a good next step. It allowed me to enjoy music and the surroundings in the midst of night, so by the time I was starting to write this, I was actually really happy again.

When I got to write with someone (else) about having a hard time sleeping because of chattering going on (no not specifically of my mind this time), I remembered I already had decided earlier today I wanted to write about the mind discipline, leading up to the mind calming down and to me this emphasizes something I wrote about yesterday as well. It’s about things (topics) popping up whenever they need to. Yesterday it had to do with the metaphysical and evidence, today it was about mind discipline to silence the chattering of the mind. Personally I love it, when things have a way of working out, such that what’s best to talk about at a specific moment, actually gets the attention it deserves.

This being said, it’s time to wrap things up. With expressing my thought to (electronic) paper, fatigue is setting in. Before falling asleep I’ll be doing some exercises having to with mind discipline and with some luck I’ll be fast asleep before having finished them. I’m aware that mind discipline is gone for that moment, but that’s okay, ‘cause it will have served its purpose by then: getting the mind to quiet down.

There is one BUT however (if there wouldn’t be, one could wonder if it really were me talking here), of course I wanted to check my mail before wrapping things up. Why? Because there might be something in the mail, getting me off balance and then the whole mind discipline routine would have to take place all over again. Checking my mail actually proved to be a good idea, as in even soothing. I can now say that one of these methods I was talking about before in this post, is actually working again, at least for me it is… :-). It has given me some more food for though, but that can wait till tomorrow!