Adjusting the Volume

What happens when you turn the volume down on your music or podcast? You hear everything else around you. Whether driving around town, or taking the subway, as soon as you turn down the volume of your audio, the “rest of the world” starts appearing, as if it did not exist until dialled the volume lower.

The volume of our thoughts is freakin’ loud on a regular basis. If thinking involves hearing a voice inside your head, if you find yourself talking to yourself in your mind, safe to say the internal volume is high.

It’s all too common for us to be thinking about the past or the future and almost running through a script of the various characters involved in the scene we’re projected onto the screen in our mind, overlaying on top of the present moment such that what we see (and hear) in front of us becomes but a blur.

With volume this jacked up, everything else is tuned out, most importantly including this literal moment called life right in front of you.

I think what’s really going on when we meditate is that we’re turning down the volume on our thoughts. When we turn our thoughts down a few notches by giving them the time of day, or as I like to say “giving them the airtime they so desperately have been begging for,” they quiet down on their own, just like a child does when they’re deeply listened to.

Once the volume is lower on our thoughts, what’s left is this very moment, including bodily sensations (temperature, pressure, movement) and whatever sounds and sights (even with eyes closed) that are around us.

I don’t think we’re increasing our awareness of This, we’re just turning down the volume on our noisy mind. The present moment then fills the void.