Just sit there!

 All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone. (Blaise Pascal)

 

Every night I get up at 3 am as woken up by an invisible alarm clock and then just sit there for a couple of hours doing nothing, just staring into space. That’s typically when the ideas for my notes are flowing but there are also long stretches of time when I just observe the programs that run through me. Jesus went for 40 days in the desert, Buddha spent years meditating in isolation. We all have our idiosyncratic quiet time. If you want to get anywhere spiritually, resist the temptation to run away from your self.

 

We all carry pain bodies inside. They come out now and then when the pain just gets too overwhelming, but mostly we only notice them indirectly in an inner restlessness, a boredom, an inability to sit still, a need to occupy ourselves. Ram Dass put it well when he said, “Within the spiritual journey you understand that suffering becomes something that has been given to you to show you where your mind is still stuck.” Never mind suffering, to the contrary, be mindful of suffering and see it as the vehicle to set you free.

 

Just sit there—can you do it?