When Love Holds It
- English Burst
- Nov 12, 2022
- 2 min read
Updated: Dec 5, 2022
Look -
What happens to the scale
When love holds it;
It stops working.
- Kabir
How much judgement do we contain? Of ourselves and others, of ‘the world’, of political leaders, of companies? Perhaps you even judge yourself for those judgements. Sometimes it’s difficult to really notice it's there; oh my god he is so up himself, humans really should be doing better, why is the weather always so bad, I really should be doing something more productive, I really shouldn’t be judging myself for judging people, I really shouldn’t be judging myself for judging myself for judging other people etc. etc.
If anyone has ever been around a microphone before you will know there is such a thing as a feedback loop. A signal comes out a speaker, goes back into the microphone, gets amplified in the speaker, then goes back to the microphone and continues increasing in volume until you get that ghastly high-pitched screeching sound. Could it be the same with our judgemental thoughts?
With a feedback loop, it helps to turn the volume down, or turn the speaker off altogether, but where is the volume knob for those incessant judgements going on in our minds? Mmm I can’t seem to find one, perhaps it’ll be invented in seven hundred and fifty years. For now, we’ll have to make do with alternatives, for example, meditation, the pub, the gym, Netflix etc.
Meditation, as a word in English, has increased in usage rapidly in the past half a decade. See this graph. However, like the word art, it can be referring to a number of different ‘things’. Often we use the word meditation and don’t really know what exactly we mean.
In the Inupiaq dialect of Wales, Alaska, there are said to be around seventy individual names for ice! Yes, just ice, but different variations of ice. If we look at languages from cultures that have given us much of our knowledge of meditation, we naturally find a much more nuanced and varied naming system of ‘meditations’.
For example, in Sanskrit, we find dhayana, samadhi, vipassana, japa, tapa, shunya, mantra, shamatha etc. There have also been efforts within English to better categorise meditation, in this example, brain wave states associated with different practises are measured and used as a basis for meditation categorisation. Namely, focused attention, open monitoring and automatic self-transcendence. Let’s not stop there, we also have other words like mindfulness, breathwork, body-awareness, tree-hugging, hugging meditation, visualisation and so on.
However, let’s not get in over our heads on this and come back to the simple volume knob analogy. One definition of a type of meditation could be: a practice to turn your mind’s volume down over the course of years or decades.
Have you ever tried meditation? Or in other words - have you ever noticed how incessant (and annoying) your mind (your thought amplifier) can be and started a practice to reduce it, or relate to it in a more satisfying way?
Well now’s your chance to try it out. Here’s a short guided ‘meditation’ for you:
Short Meditation
Take about fifteen to thirty seconds for each of the four steps. Warning - you will have to stop reading.
1. Notice what you can hear, the closest and furthest sounds. The loudest and quietest sounds.
2. Notice what you see, the colours, the light and shadow. The overall picture and the minute details.
3. Notice how the movement of your breath can be felt in different areas of your body; shoulders, chest, face.
4. Let the movement of your out breath relax your body on each out breath.
That’s it, hopefully this has brought a smidgen more spaciousness to your mind. Thanks for reading.
Glossary 1
Up himself/up herself = arrogant or overly self confident, offensively so
Gosh Jeremy is so up himself, he’s always talking about how amazing he is at sports, and how big his sports car is.
I don’t like her, I think she’s too up herself, she doesn’t seem to notice how arrogant she comes across.
Feedback Loop = within a system, when an output gets fed back into an input, specifically within audio, it is when an audio signal gets repeatedly amplified due to the signal going back from a speaker into the same microphone, creating a high pitched whine
Ghastly = very unpleasant, shocking or causing horror
That house was ghastly, the wall paper was coming off, it smelt bad and the garden was a total mess
I felt ghastly yesterday, I hadn’t slept well and was also feeling quite ill.
Glossary 2
A screech/screeching sound = a high-pitched, unpleasant sound You need to replace your bike brakes, they screech really loudly when you use them. That water tap screeches a bit when you turn it on To make do with something = to accept something (for use) even though there are better alternatives/options We’ll have to make do with this knife to cut the carrots, even though it’s blunt, I haven’t got any others. I make do with what I’ve got, I don’t like to spend money on new things that I don’t really need. To get in over our/your/my head(s) = to get into a difficult or complex situation that you cannot get out of or understand I really got in over my head on this weeks maths homework, I couldn't understand a thing, it was far too difficult! When I offered to lead the company meeting on Friday, I realised afterwards I had got in over my head, it was too much to deal with, I just didn't have the necessary experience yet.
Glossary 3
An analogy = a way of explaining an idea/point by representing it in a metaphorical/figurative way, a way of explaining something by using a different but related idea
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross wrote this analogy about humans and stain-glass windows: People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.
I liked the way the teacher used that analogy about how the human mind is like the software in a computer and the body is like a computer’s hardware.
Smidgen = a small amount of something
I think there is a smidgen of chocolate powder left in the cupboard, but not enough for making a cake
I think we could do a smidgen more red in this logo design.
Exercise 1
Write a short paragraph about how you relate to or deal with your own judgments. You can mention times when it is appropriate to judge, and when it isn’t. Try to use some of the new vocabulary from this article, and maybe include some analogies!
© English Burst 2022
Comments