Focus your mind

I’ve been saving this text snippet and intending to post it here, either because it seems so insightful or so beyond the horizon of my daily life:

Who could take issue with the thoughts of a guy like Kambiz Naficy, a “poet, meditation master, and spiritual healer” whose curriculum vitae contains this pearl:

“It was then that Kambiz sold his company, traveled to the Iowa corn fields and retired into two years of deep meditation at Maharishi International University in Fairfield, Iowa. There he began intensive study of the Indian Vedantas and also found striking parallels between the Vedas and quantum physics.”

Go into silence and hear the “silent voice within.”
Fact is, the advice he gives sounds good. I’m definitely there with #1 on his list since my internal voice is rambling along perpetually. I’ve got a busy “voice within,” and most of the time I’ve got a lot more going on inside my head than emerges, either verbally or on the page.

Understand what it is that you really want in life.
The #2 bitlet of advice is a bit trickier: to understand what you what…  I’m thinking Maslow’s hierarchy here, where the basic needs take priority over conceptual “wants.” Sure, I want to write a book (or write anything for that matter), but I also place a priority on more mundane accomplishments like the ability to pay the electric bill. I want clean laundry too, and healthy, well-fed pets. Come to think of it, I “really want” a car that starts and runs. I think our guru is suggesting that we disregard the practical side of life and simply visualize a greater, abstract goal, a big idea instead of a small stepping stone to just getting by.

Probably, Kambiz, like most men in the universe, is pathetically oblivious to how the little things get done without his input, how the floor gets swept, for instance, or how clean socks magically appear in his drawer every week. Let’s just pretend for now we identify with that privilege and can interpret “really want” as some higher abstract goal because the magic fairy of housework and wage income is going to make sure all our practical daily needs are met.

Focus your mind, concentrate, and visualize success every day when you awaken.
I find the instruction to “focus your mind, concentrate, and visualize success every day” the most appealing and yet the most difficult of this list. I usually feel so scattered, with so many snowflakes blowing at me from so many different snowclouds that I’m unsure which way to ply my energies. Really, this bit of advice is probably what made this whole snipplet so fetching for me, and why I’m writing about it here.

Now that I’m juggling a buncha money-earning endeavors, plus keeping a household going as a single woman, in order to make every day a success with gazillion conflicting pulls at my time, it’s imperative that I mentally choose my priority for that day. Usually this act of sifting through competing demands happens as I’m sluggishly responding to my morning alarms, in the too-brief interval when there’s still time to delay getting out of bed.

In a sense this is “focus,” but it’s more like bailing when the storm water’s seeping in, as opposed to steering toward a destination beyond the storm. I think our guru is suggesting that we pluck that big idea out of the myriad internal chattering that’s leaving us scattered and directionless, and deliberately choose to focus on the big idea. I.e. every morning, while lying in bed, I should remind myself, “I want to write.” (IF that is my ultimate higher order goal.)

Take a few steps each day toward your goal without being distracted.
Well, I don’t know, seems like the whole point of this post is I can’t, I can’t for one reason or another. The harsh reality of getting through each day is clobbering the idealistic vision of succeeding on a higher plane. But inspiring advice, nonetheless. And today I’m using it; I’m writing here.

Refresh your energies through spiritual practice.
I’m listening to Mohawk “spirit flute” as I write this, and that’s about as spiritual as I want to get at this point in my life. Not for me, sorry.

When you become successful, give something back to humanity.
On the other hand, the altruistic “give something back to humanity” phrase is another appealing element to this otherworldly advice. I like the idea of doing your best to be a good human being, a good steward of the earth, of other living creatures. Seems to me you could do this even en route to the Big Goal on which you need to focus your energies.

Anyway, now that I’ve pulled this apart, sorta like you sift through pumpkin goo to get at the seeds, I’m going to let it rest. It is my birthday, after all, for another two hours (as I write this). I’ve been telling people I’m 82. I’ve gotten ample birthday congratulations this year, lucky for me.

Another day perhaps I’ll write about the snowflake strategy of my life… billowing and drifting everywhere all at once, saying Yes to as much as possible and hoping to build up a success network, small successes, to lessen the impact of gigantic clobbering whoppers of setback and failure. It works, I guess. I made it to my 49th birthday.