Transforming your commute into a spiritual practice
Based on the teachings of Eckhart Tolle, author of “The Power of Now” and “A New Earth”.
This is about changing the daily commute from being a chore to being a joy. It’s also about becoming the best and safest driver you can be.
“Mindful Driving” simply means being in touch with the present moment as you drive, to have a heightened awareness of everything going on around you, to drive consciously. It’s something that few people know is even possible, much less practice.
To learn to drive mindfully requires that you know how your brain works when you drive.
This is your brain in traffic
Your brain is the tool that you use to solve problems. In fact, it is always trying to figure stuff out, even when there isn’t anything to figure out. That’s why we often enjoy activities which have no other goal than to exercise your brain. Sudoku, anyone? Driving, then, should be a virtual Disneyland for your brain, right? Driving a car generates a constant torrent of data that needs to be processed by the brain.
The problem is, driving has become second-nature to us. Our brains have gotten so used to driving that we can do it without much concentration. We drive, largely, in a state of unconsciousness. And although this is a very efficient use of brain power, it has the side effect of reducing the amount of data your mind has to process. And when your mind has nothing to “figure out”, it starts making things up. It starts imagining problems and how it would fix them. You are actively driving, but your mind is saying, “Hm, I wonder what I’m going to have for lunch? I hope we don’t go the same place that Frank took us last week. Boy, he really annoys me!”
Now, your ego is driving your car.
Ego: The Ultimate Back Seat Driver
This is ego as described by Eckhart Tolle:
“The ego is not only the unobserved mind, the voice in the head which pretends to be you, but also the unobserved emotions that are the body’s reaction to what the voice in the head is saying….The voice in the head tells a story that the body believes in and reacts to. Those reactions are the emotions. The emotions, in turn, feed energy back to the thoughts that created the emotion in the first place. This is the vicious circle between unexamined thoughts and emotions, giving rise to emotional thinking and emotional story-making.”
Now, imagine you are waiting in a long line to exit the freeway and a car suddenly cuts in front of you. Your brain, reacts in the present moment. Because of a perceived danger, adrenaline is released into blood stream. You don’t think, you just react, and you avoid a collision. There is a brief moment of relief, but now you still have adrenaline in your system. Your brain having completed it’s task, now has nothing to do, so it starts to make things up, creating a negative feedback loop with help from the ego: “Oh my God! I can’t believe he just did that! Who does he think he is?” Your body reacts to the phantom emotions as if they were real. You’re mad, in both senses of the word.
Your mental state is now unconscious and negative. Your chances of having an accident, especially with someone else in a similar state, has grown exponentially. If both drivers are extremely unconscious, an escalation to violence would not be surprising. Unfortunately, there are no law against D.U.E.; Driving under the influence of ego.
Compare this with arriving at your destination calm, relaxed, safe, and maybe even grateful for the two hours of stop-and-go traffic you just experienced. Interested? Here are some “signposts”.
Make your drive an exercise in mindfulness
The first step to mindful driving is to decide to drive mindfully before you leave your house. Think of it as an experiment. Say to yourself, “For this one trip, my goal is to be as conscience as I can.” Make being aware of the present moment as important as getting to where you want to go. In fact, you can’t get where you want to go without the present moment. Keep coming back to this idea as you make your trip.
Start right
When you get in your car, before you start the engine, stop. Takes several conscious breaths. You might want to use an exercise taught by Thich Nhat Hanh in “The Art of Mindful Living”, breathe in and say to yourself:
“Breathing in, I know that I am breathing in.”
“Breathing out, I know that I am breathing out.”
It might seem silly, but that simple action immediately brings you in touch with the present moment. It also helps to quiet your brain. But, without doing anything else, you are likely to soon start hearing “the voices”, so we need to make our brain be quiet.
Go back to Drivers Ed.
Remember when you first got behind the wheel? You were nervous, but excited. As you guided your car down the street that first time, you were acutely aware of everything, not wanting to miss anything. Remember what that felt like? Good.
Now, drive as if it were your first day of drivers education, as if you have never even seen this street before. This simple action brings you immediately into the present moment. Use all of your senses to increase your situational awareness.
Driving with the kind of awareness you had on your first drive, combined with the lifetime of experience you have acquired, will make you a better driver immediately. But turning it into a spiritual exercise will require expanding your sphere of awareness even more.
Stretch out
Instead of observing only those things that have to with driving your car safely, let all of your senses come into play. Feel the palms of your hands against the steering wheel. Be aware of the color of the sky, the feel of air that rushes over your skin and that your car is gliding through. Take a conscience breath. Listen to the sounds of the car. Listen to the sounds of your body, your heartbeat. Try not to name or judge anything you notice. Just be aware of them.
Now, go even further and become of aware of the silence out of which the sounds arise and fall back into. The silence is the space around the sounds.
Become aware of physical space; the space between your car and the other cars on the road, the space between your car and the horizon, your car and the edge of the universe. Become aware that everything you and everything you experience are made of atoms, which are mostly…space.
Be aware that all of the people in the cars around you are special because they are part of your now and you are part of there’s (Sometimes, I think of people as playing a role as themselves in the movie that is my life, so I thank them for doing such a good job.)
By this time, your brain will probably chime in and say, “Hey, this is bull#*@^!”
Become “The Watcher”
Your brain and ego will still try to get your attention and try to fool you into believing what they are saying is real. You won’t be able to stop them and you don’t have to.
All you have to do is to become aware of your thoughts, the voice in your head. When you hear the voice, recognize that it is like a tumbleweed that rolls across the road in front of your car. It’s there, then it’s gone. Become, as Tolle put it, “The Watcher”:
“Be present as the watcher of your mind — of your thoughts and emotions as well as your reactions in various situations. Be at least as interested in your reactions as in the situation or person that causes you to react. Notice also how often your attention is in the past or future. Don’t judge or analyze what you observe. Watch the thought, feel the emotion, observe the reaction. Don’t make a personal problem out of them. You will then feel something more powerful than any of those things that you observe: the still, observing presence itself behind the content of your mind, the silent watcher.”
Have you ever been running late because you are stuck in traffic and gotten panicky about it? You start thinking about what excuse you will have to give someone, or what someone is going to say to you when you get there late. You feel tension build in your body. You can almost taste fear in your mouth. But then, suddenly, traffic clears, and you end up getting to your destination on time. You almost feel silly for needlessly adding negativity to your life.
That’s because, it is silly. Sure, you missed a chance to fill the entire time that you were worried about being late with present moment awareness. But the good news is this: That part of you that sensed the silliness is the real you, your true nature, laughing the laugh of the big-bellied Buddah. When that happens, when you realize that you are the you that’s smiling at yourself, then there’s joy.
Drive joyfully.
