A Self Reflection Practice Christians Can Learn From
Which is you sit there for 60 minutes. So unfortunately not less than an hour at a time, because it takes 30 to 40 minutes to sink in past the initial chattering. So you get to the good part or the so-called runner’s high equivalent. And you sit for 60 minutes every day and you do it for at least 60 days. And you do it first thing in the morning. When your mind is clear and you’re alert and you’ve had a good night’s sleep.
And you sit up with your back straight and you can use cushions, or you can use a chair or whatever. There’s no magic position. And just whatever happens, happens, whatever your mind wants to do, you just let it do. If it wants to talk, you let it talk. If he wants to fight, you let it fight. If it wants to be quiet, you let it be quiet. If it wants to chant the mantra or pay attention to breathing, you can do that, but you don’t force anything.
You just kind of let it happen. And so you don’t fight it. You don’t resist it. You don’t argue with it. You don’t double down on it. You just kind of let things happen. And when you do that for at least 60 days, my experience has been that you kind of clear out your mental inbox and all the craziness that was going on. All the chattering will come out. Some problems will get resolved. You will have some epiphanies. You will make changes to your life.
Some will be self-examination, some of it, you just get tired of, some of it just needs to be heard once, and then it goes away. And eventually you will get to a mental state of inbox zero, where now you’re just thinking about what happened yesterday. You’re kind of caught up and your mind is relatively clear and just your anxiety level goes down. You’re living more peacefully. And I’ve been doing this for about two and a half years now.
And I’ve probably missed about a dozen days total. But there are some days where I’ve done two hours a day or more. And I will tell you that is the single most important thing that I do. It is a sheer joy. Much of it is highly entertaining, pleasurable. Sometimes it’s just flat. It’s nothingness. I can’t even tell you why I do it. I can’t even tell you what’s going on in that state, but I will tell you that time spent by myself is the most important time that I have.
And thanks to that, I am now much more self-contained. I don’t feel like I need other people. I don’t need external sources of pleasure or happiness all the time. I drink less. I’m not attracted to trying any drugs whatsoever. It’s just, life is easier. It’s more pleasant. I don’t take things as seriously. I’m not afraid of my mortality as much anymore. I don’t fear aging. I don’t lust after things.
I don’t have this constant pervasive need to find something outside of me to make my life better. When the best hour of my day is spent by myself, then the world has very little to offer me and I can still participate in it, but it doesn’t have that grip on me that it used to. I don’t fear solitary confinement. And I think that is a superpower. And I think everyone should have it. Everyone does have it. It’s easy.
It requires doing nothing. It’s your birthright. You can’t fail at it. There’s no way to fail at it. Literally all you have to do is just sit down and close your eyes and just be by—give yourself a break for an hour every day. Just take the time off from the world.