The constant flow of associations and judgements

Before you can do anything well, you must concentrate. You must still the mind in order to use the mind. In the Age of Anxiety we are in a mode of such extreme noise, internal and external, literal and metaphorical.

When thinking, observing, doing – stop. Pay attention to what is. Not how this compares with other examples of its kind, not how this kind contrasts with other kinds, not whether this is quantitatively or qualitatively better or worse or preferable or acceptable or the same as. Not yet.

First, just be with it. See it, feel it, totally sense it for a moment – longer if you can. Who are you and what are you doing if you are not judging, ranking, comparing, loving, hating, or planning? What does it mean to exist without these things? Allow there to BE a moment between the intention and the doing, the perceiving and the labeling, the decision to rest and the justification for inaction.

Never underestimate the power of nothing.