Meditation and Me

I’ve always been a thinker. As far back as I can recall, I was drawn to ideas, imagination, knowledge. I would read Trivial Pursuit cards for fun. I would read books on facts and trivia. (I still have one! “1001 Surprising Facts”). On the ranch, my favorite pastime was thinking. Feeding steers in sub-zero temperatures. Riding horseback amongst the junipers. Sitting on an open-cab tractor in 100+ degree weather. In class. In church. At home in the middle of the night. In all of it, I was thinking, dreaming, planning.

Almost 50 years in, I have a very well exercised thinking brain. It can absorb copious amounts of information. It can strategize and plan. It can problem solve. And it can be paranoid, delusional and anxiety-riddled. Conversely, I had until recent years, an under-developed feeling brain (heart). I was afraid of any emotion I couldn’t control. I felt like feelings were a distraction from getting things accomplished. I viewed emotional people as unstable and unreliable.

In essence, I was the mental version of the guy in the gym who only does upper body workouts. My thinking brain was all yoked up but my feeling brain had chicken legs. This imbalance came into stark awareness after a spiritual awakening in 2014 and the ensuing shifting, changing (and death) of old forms and structures. Then I felt EVERYTHING. And my thinking brain didn’t know how to handle it.