Trusting the silence

This week I've been focusing on working more meditation into my daily rituals. I've been working in a 10 minute meditation in the morning and the evening. This has been especially helpful as this week I was juggling work, performances in both my after school drama classes, and tech for a show I'm sound designing. It was stressful but I got thru it by just throwing myself into what needed to get done and focusing on my breath.

I did have a bit of a meltdown on Thursday night. We had just finished the last dress rehearsal of the show. I went to check my phone on the break and I saw the news about the missiles launched at Syria. I was hit by a wave of feelings and I put the phone down and let myself get thru the rest of the rehearsal. Then on the bus ride home I was mindlessly scrolling thru Facebook. I'd check it, put the phone down and then pick it back up again and check it some more. It felt like I was trying to drown out a big feeling that I needed to process so I put the phone down and just sort of went silent for a bit while my friends talked on the train ride home. Then I hit the pressure point- over and over again I realize that my grief about the world and my grief about my mom are one big grief monster.  Once again I am overwhelmed by the reality of the world and the reality of not having mom around to vent to about the reality of the world. So when news hits me in just the right place, it triggers a good cry. So I ended up crying on the Red Line and my friends from the show were there to talk me thru it and then I went home and felt pretty good. Just needed to release that.

The thing is if I hadn't put my phone down to really listen deeply to myself I probably would have continued going about my evening feeling "some type of way" and not being able to place what that funk was. This led me to think about treating inner dialogue like you would treat conversation with a friend. I often find myself hitting something upsetting and then trying to ignore that feeling with a compulsive facebook check or other distraction. When I allow myself to have the feeling and ask myself what it's about. I find that space inside for it and it becomes less of a big thing. It's basically inviting your monsters to tea (paraphrasing another great Tara Brach lecture).

This week in the Daily OM course I've been taking (Communicating Like A Buddhist) the focus is on observing how you use silence. The idea of the exercise is to observe how you use silence in conversations. I spent a lot of time alone either on transit or in the office this week. So I've been observing how I use the silence in conversations with myself. So I'm learning to be more comfortable with my thoughts, especially the grumpy anxious ones, and not interrupt these internal conversations with too many distractions. I'm hoping viewing internal dialogue as a relaxed conversation will help me be more mindful of when I'm a going toward a distraction and I can use my time more wisely and all that good stuff.