06/12/2025
In "The Creative Act: A Way of Being", Rick Rubin says, "Zoom in and obsess. Zoom out and observe. We get to choose."
I often speak about my inclination to not watch the news or follow global or political events too closely, which many think is naive. But the thing is, as humans we are so conditioned to tune our energy into anything and everything. Why? Because it gives our active minds something to ruminate on. It gives our gossiping mouths, something to talk about. But have we stopped to think about how much of our vital force energy we use daily, on things which are so inconsequential to our actual physical life? And which are actually detrimental to our physical wellbeing? Think about what we could do with that extra energy if we rerouted it from 'other' to self?
We should certainly never ignore societal problems or avoid working to improve them. But we cannot get lost in them either allowing them to consume our attention, or vital life force. Consider this: By allowing ourselves opportunity to create space for our attention to focus on awe, rather than the fear-based programs which thrive in our subconscious, driven by lack and scarcity and which are fed daily by what we see on the internet, social media and in the news, we can generate physical and mental health that let's us show up limitlessly for ourselves AND in a way which helps bring more energy and commitment to positivity impacting the world and overcoming devastating societal trends which we follow and engage in, mindlessly.
My hack to learning to 'make space' and to observe my thoughts and to understand what makes me tick, what makes me scared, has been meditation. Meditation is not about stopping the ruminating mind. The mind is a mechanical process, which will run on its own train track regardless of our intention. Mediation is about watching the ebb and flow of mental activity. With gentle precision and honesty we stay with our breath and with our thoughts. And this teaches us to find presence - to stay with an experience, through it all.
Someone recently asked me -
"What keeps you up at night?"
Since I began meditating in 2020, nothing. The answer is 'nothing' - Nothing keeps me awake at night. Because I realized that I was the cause of my own suffering. I realized then that I too, was the creator of my own peace and inner well-being. When, with presence we observe our inner most thoughts, we genuinely begin to feel things which we have suppressed or put 'out of our minds.'
And when we feel, we begin to heal.
Watching our thoughts and emotions gives us some sense of the cause of our suffering. What it is that we are ruminating on. The cause of our suffering is purely the relationship we have with life and everything in it. When we realise that all of our experiences are neutral in nature, we realise that it is us alone who makes something 'good or bad'; 'right or wrong'. We are the puppeteer as well as the puppet. Just something to ponder.
