We all have a kind of constant commentary running through our minds.
Sometimes this narration is innocuous. “Glad we’re finally getting some rain - we really needed that.” Or, “I wonder what my friend has been up to lately.”
But often times the commentary in our heads is laced with judgement. “This aching knee is always slowing me down.“ “The traffic wouldn’t be so bad if everyone learned how to drive correctly.”
In general, the more we let the commentary run the show, the more our brain gets attached to its thoughts, critiques, hopes, and fears. This can condition us for a subtle pattern of judge-mental-ness. When commentary starts habitually taking up so much of our energy, it feels like we're losing our minds.
When we can stop or slow this habitual mental commentary, and experience the moment we are living in, we fell a refreshing shift. But this isn't easy - it’s really difficult to simply and directly experience our lives without judgement.
This is where the classic spiritual text, the Tao Te Ching, is an essential guide.
The Tao Te Ching is a guidebook for helping us find life. It seeks to disrupt our mental commentaries and connect us with a direct experience of life. It’s not a religion or a philosophy. It’s a simple collection of wisdom poems that helps us feel the sunrise, be kindly present to our fear, taste our coffee or tea as if for the first time.
One of my favorite lines (and perhaps most anxiety-producing images!) comes from the Tao's chapter 15:
We pay complete attention to whatever we are doing, as if we were crossing a river on ice-covered stones.
Imagine if, rather than staying in the moment, we were complaining about our situation while trying to cross that river. We’d be distracted from simply being present to the task at hand, and lose our footing.
A while back I was walking by myself outdoors. I was consumed with some commentary in my mind and getting all wound up. In the midst of the commentary, a line from my morning reading of the Tao inserted itself:
The present moment is all that we have.
This startled me. I asked myself, Okay, what's happening right now?
I became aware of a slight breeze on my cheeks as I walked. It tickled a little. I smiled. About two steps later the commentary came rushing back. I noticed it, shifted back to feeling my cheeks, and this time I walked about half a block in that quiet experience.
These days when I'm walking, I often go back to that simple tickle-on-the-cheek experience and I find myself experiencing a bit more of life as I do so.
Of course, we will never stop thinking. We do make sense of life through thoughts and our minds. But the commentary doesn’t need to run the show.
The themes and images that are prominent in the Tao help us move toward a direct experience of life. But these concepts only point us in that direction. To read or understand them isn't the same as experiencing life. And I've learned I would rather feel a tickle on my cheek than wrestle with the commentaries in my mind.