LINCHPIN

My mom is reading this book by Seth Godin called, "Linchpin". This guy is really cool. He's always talking about people working together making a difference, yada yada. I'm pretty sure he is one of the top bloggers in the world, not to mention a best-selling author.

Anyway, she told me about this part in the book that explains how our willpower is exhaustible. I think he uses the idea of the mind/emotions as a giant elephant and the willpower as this little dude on top trying to steer. Well, you can imagine that at some point that little dude loses steam and can't drive the big elephant around, so he gives in and the elephant just stomps around wherever she pleases.

I correlated this to Vipassana practice.

For the first few weeks after sitting at a 10day, even if we aren't disciplined enough to do our morning and night hourly practice, we have much more willpower than we usually do. We may actually be able to observe ourselves avoiding pain and craving pleasure to sidestep the present moment for a second or two. You know, like catch ourselves in the act of perpetuating further miseries. We may say no to drinking heavily one night, or to inhaling McDonald's cheeseburgers that one day, or to losing our temper with a friend or family member. We do these things because we still have some of the energy of the 10day. We still have some willpower left over.

But if we lose our hourly sits, (which most of us do, myself included) we eventually completely run out of our source of willpower.

The point is, we all have a tank. It is not a big tank. (Actually, for me, I think it's on the smaller end). And that tank has to be filled man. And of course, there's no service stations anymore. Nobody is going to come out and say, "Hey there, you want me to fill'r up?" No way. It's all self-service these days.

So what am I trying to say? If we don't fill up our tanks, then we have lost all mastery of the mind. The elephant wins and we are lost in a bunch of self-created BS all over again. Why are we so uninterested in carving out time each day to fill these tanks? Why do we give so much time and importance to the most trivial things and cut corners when it comes to our own inner peace and happiness?

For those of you who do manage to sit for an hour every morning and every night, how the hell do you do it? How do you convince yourself that filling that tank so you have the willpower to be aware and equanimous, is the most important part of your day?

Humans are weird.

FEN