Occasionally during meditation, I seem to receive a message from somewhere outside of my own mind. This has only happened six times (I think) in the last 12 to 18 months. Each time I heard a message, I had been in a state of complete calm, lacking any hint of even a single thought. In addition, each time, I had been meditating between 45 and 60 minutes at the point of receiving a message. I’m not sure if “message” is the most accurate term available to describe what I heard. They may be more appropriately called “statements.” Apparently I have given meaning to the statements which could be responsible for me thinking they are messages. Without sifting through my notebooks which refence the dates of receiving each of the messages individually, I can not recall which message came first, although I think I know what the first two messages were. One of the first two messages or statements I heard was “Each begets the value of the day.” Upon hearing this, I wasn’t sure if it was a voice that I heard or a thought that I noticed. I opened my eyes, possibly as if to see if someone was there with me. I did not know the meaning of the word “beget” and wasn’t even sure if I had ever heard it before, so I promptly looked up the meaning online. Yes, I would agree with the message I heard that day.
It felt like a reminder to take action, to make a plan for being productive, to not waste my days feeling disorganized and confused. It fit well with the other of the first two messages which stated, “Gather the pieces together.” Again, I wasn’t sure if it was a voice or a thought, but either way, I was certain that it was not coming from my own mind. It felt as if someone was placing information inside my head or giving me a directive. It was clear to me that I was supposed to be organizing my massive collection of creative work which includes a mess of writing and music, almost none of which is finished and all of which seems somehow connected to each other, yet impossibly far away at the same time. My general sense about this body of work is that it will become something bigger than myself, possibly as complicated as a TV series. I have many pieces of the work in screenplay form with the help of Final Draft software, while many other pieces are simply written in notebooks or in MS Word docs. Then there is the music, the unfinished songs, which I sense are trying to glue all the bits of the story together, but I haven’t been able to understand how all these parts are supposed to all fit together.
I have yet to “gather the pieces together.” I am overwhelmed by the mess and where to begin. There are too many notebooks, too many folders and files on my laptop, too many external hard-drives, too many back-ups of documents that may or may not be named properly, just simply too much of a mess for me to make sense of. I don’t know how to organize it. That’s not surprising, as I don’t know how to organize much of anything in my life. I’m confident that one of my mental health struggles is ADHD, although that has not been officially diagnosed. It is clear to me that ADHD has been negatively affecting my life for many, many years, probably my entire adult life.
I’ve never had much luck organizing anything in my physical environment. Within the digital world, I have had limited success with organization, such as keeping emails and digital files well organized while employed at NAMI Minnesota (National Alliance on Mental Illness) for several years, and when I was able to organize my 2010 memoir. I don’t know how I did it. I recall a sense of purpose that guided my organization with that writing project.
When it comes to my desire to straighten out my mess of words and music, I don’t know where to begin. Each time I look through an old notebook filled with random thoughts and ideas I somehow feel that it fits somewhere yet I have no idea where to put it. Part of the problem is that there is nowhere to “put it.” These notebooks keep growing in number. I continue to fill the last page of new notebooks, each time thinking “when did I write all of that?” I find myself wishing I had typed all of the words instead of writing them on paper because I tend to think it is easier to move the digital pieces around than the physical notebooks and sheets of paper, but for me, it isn’t easier.
The digital mess is just as daunting as the physical mess. When I open a document that I haven’t visited for a long time, the same thing happens. I don’t know where to put it. I don’t know what to do with it, so I close it with a heavy sense of dread and loss. I think about dying with all my unfinished work never reaching anyone. What a waste that would be. There is that saying about not dying with your music still inside you. That’s what it feels like will happen to me, literally. It’s not just words that capture ideas and thoughts, it is real music that I have written and recorded, although most of it feels unfinished. It seems likely that my music may die when I die because I will likely never find a way to organize my mess that is my life. This leaves me feeling lost.
What would I do if I was lost in the real world, perhaps in a forest? I suppose if I were walking when I realized I was lost, the first thing I would do is stop. If it were daytime, I would look for a hint of direction from the sun. Hopefully it would be a clear day with no clouds blocking my view of the star closest to Earth. I may need patience if the sun appeared to be directly overhead as I would wait for apparent movement to show me direction. I would also look for higher ground from which to gain a new perspective. Hopefully I would be able to see either where I came from or where I needed to go, and possibly both. This act of stopping, asking the sun for information, and looking off in the distance to gain a sense of direction reminds me or meditation.
When I meditate, I start by stopping. I stop my body. I simply sit still. I close my eyes and I sit still. When I remember to do so, I begin focusing on my breath which helps me see how tense and anxious I am most of the time. Then I notice all the unwanted thoughts and I begin using imagery to let those thoughts leave my mind. Then I look to a higher level of energy (this could be called a higher power, I suppose) to show me a glimpse of purpose of direction. When I am patient and allow myself to practice meditation in a way that works for me, I usually reach a point of clarity, although often nothing spectacular. Sometimes it is simply a sense of which task is most important for me to accomplish that day or week. Other times it is a realization of what is lacking in my life, or what it is I need to let go of. Occasionally it is an understanding that although I usually feel out of place in this world, I more accurately belong right where I am now, and that I will always be where and when I belong. Meditation helps me see and understand my world and helps me make sense of where to place my focus and energy to live an effective life of purpose and meaning. Meditation helps me understand that I need to take action to achieve results, and that ultimately it is I who needs to decide what to do next. Meditation has literally allowed me to understand that “each begets the value of the day.” I suspect that if I am patient, meditation will also help me understand how to “gather the pieces together.”
– Brian Jost
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Read or listen to Brian Jost’s memoir: “Grounded by Bipolar Disorder; One Pilot’s Landing” (available in print, e-book/kindle, and audiobook). Click HERE to find the book on Amazon and Audible.