Look past your thoughts
so you may drink the
pure nectar of this moment.
-Rumi
To live with OCD is to maintain a teeny metropolis within the mind. Imagine the microcosm as it hums: serving as my own groundskeeper, police officer, and newsboy, I ensure successful quotidian efficiency within this small system. The lawns, impeccable; the laws, abided by. Obsessive compulsive disorder is common among the population, though it manifests differently in each body (the “tics,” insectile in their vexation, appear as quirky, repetitive actions).
For me, meditation helps immensely. And, as it were, my OCD serves as illuminating metaphor with which to better understand our syllabus.
I am simultaneously brain and body, spirit and shell. To establish harmonic equilibrium, I balance both. Being attuned to my internal narrator is both a handicap and, oddly, a superpower. The intimate nature with which I know myself (that is, am familiar with these quirks) equips me to rein them in.
OCD, in short, works as follows: “mind tells finger to switch off light” à finger switches off light. It continues ad infinitum—unless. In order to overcome compulsions, the brain must learn passivity. Recognize the tic, say hello, but do not allow it expression. As clouds pass across a sky, so must one’s thoughts.
Robert Gifford gets blunt: “If you don’t know what your problem is, you don’t know what the solution is”—while Renee Lertzman calls upon us to “acknowledge paradoxes, contradictions, and dilemmas.”
Acknowledging my OCD is the first step. Exercising my ability to let it go (i.e. practicing mindfulness) is crucial to remaining in cerebral shape. I can observe the trigger (“switch off light”) and decide not to do it. This is true freedom. This is what my prefrontal cortex can achieve.
By extension: what if our society became aware of its own deleterious triggers (“eat meat”; “buy newer clothes!”) and let them trickle by? What if we saw our thoughts for what they were: mere hot air?
And, finally, here’s Donella Meadows with breezy wisdom:
“There are no cheap tickets to mastery. You have to work at it, whether that means rigorously analyzing a system or rigorously casting off your own paradigms and throwing yourself into the humility of Not Knowing. In the end, it seems that power has less to do with pushing leverage points than it does with strategically, profoundly, madly letting go.”
Breathe in. Let it hold you.
Further thoughts on the correlation between mental health and climate change.
And the power of mindfulness vis-à-vis global warming.
Image credit: https://psychneuro.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/adobestock_100435039.jpeg
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