Day 17: metaphor madness

Tuesday, December 30th, 2008

In search of lost time by bogenfreund

Sleep cycles

Having managed to get up after only a little sleep yesterday, I fell back an hour or two today, but I’m not too worried, because it was due to me getting excited about my new ideal day plan and working on it a little too late. I’m aware of this pattern, I was able to stop myself before going nocturnal again last night, and I can work on this some more to get back to a more ‘traditional’ cycle (I’ll not be getting up at 6am, but even 10am would be an improvement).

I love my learning

I had a thought during my meditation about little grains of sand in a special egg timer, or people in an air lock. The point being that I love learning, however when I learn something it is only really useful to other people (I can solve their problems but not my own). It is only when something has become realised that it is useful to me (I can recognise it to help identify and adjust my own patterns).

Going from knowledge to realisation however is even harder, I think, than learning something in the first place. This could be because I’m well practised at learning and not so much at realising, or it could be inately more difficult. I don’t suppose it really matters which is true, except as a rule of general interest to the populous, but for me it means that I need to focus more time on realisation than on learning in order to balance things out.

I love my metaphors

So, to get my mental imagery back into play, if you keep filling an air lock (with really wide doors at the front) and don’t switch to opening the much smaller doors at the back for at least as much time then you’ll only be able to solve other people’s problems, but not your own (something I know all about). With the egg timer the image is a bit more complicated, but it’s the same idea: the top section can be flipped so that it has a large hole at the top and a tiny hole at the base to feed into the bottom chamber, or it can be set so that it has an opening for one grain at a time at the top, but a much larger opening feeding through to the bottom chamber. The idea behind that was that it is very satisfying filling the top chamber with sand (or filling the air lock with people). You can see a real difference as it fills up. You feel good at the difference you’ve made. However, it is the slower progress of filling the second chamber which is really going to make a difference. This is my realisation (oooh, a meta-realisation?)
So, I’m going to try and remind myself to let go of the urge to be constantly cramming new learning (about personal development) into my head and instead focus on making sure I am truly understanding the principles in my own life.

Warning! Warning!

Except that that feels false, and off. So that’s not right either.

The airlock idea seems easier to understand and visualise, but I think the hour glass is closer with the idea that I can still be learning whilst also focussing more effort on realising. Since actually, you can’t focus more effort on realising. It’s not something you can ‘work at’. It’s more about living consciously and noticing what comes up so that you can apply your learning to your own stuff then.

It’s two different processes: sand into hour glass & sand into lower chamber. In theory then, playing around with this metaphor, I could have a large opening with which to fill the hour glass with sand (lots of time and effort spent on learning) and also a large opening with which to allow the sand to trickle into the lower chamber (lots of time and focus on being mindful). But there’s definitely only so much time and focus that I have to give to anything, so it’ll be a balancing act.

And another metaphor

The idea therefore is that I need to remember to stay mindful whilst I’m on this journey, what I am now calling my ‘Alternative MA’. I’m thinking mindful classes are going to stay on the syllabus, which is also known as meditating.

I love throwing metaphors around, I hope I’m not confusing you.