#11 Let me bore you to sleep - Jason Newland (9th April 2018)

Hello and welcome to jasonnewland.com with background sounds of neighbours yelling for some reason. I hope it's not too loud or if it's not loud enough I'll go and ask them to be a bit, you know, a bit more yelly. So this is let me bore you to sleep.

Only listen or watch this if you're watching on youtube when you can safely close your eyes because it may cause boredom. Recently I've been doing these fairly regularly and the whole point of them is to just give yourself some space to let go for whatever amount of time that you choose to do so. If you have things to do after this then maybe set your alarm just in case you get really bored and drift off.

And I suppose the other things make sure the oven's turned off and don't watch this if you're or listen to this if you're flying a helicopter. You know just just the list is endless really. If you're you know doing brain surgery then don't listen to this maybe.

You know if you need to concentrate basically or if you're operating heavy machinery. People say that if you're operating heavy machinery. I've never actually seen any machine that is light.

It's all kind of heavy isn't it really? Made of metal. Rarely see machinery made of polystyrene. I was thinking before I started this session that because I heard the generous neighbour sharing his yells with everybody else and I was going to say well you can you know allow whatever sounds in the background to just flow over you you know so that you can enjoy the sense of comfort that you're experiencing.

But then I thought that's really aimed at your background sounds. I shouldn't really be adding my own background sounds on top of that. Imagine if someone didn't realise it was my background sounds and they wondered how come every time I listen to Jason there's some bloke yelling in the background.

He's not always there. Please tell me that you can hear the yelling otherwise I need to go and see the psychiatrist. I'm hearing things again.

I do wonder sometimes what's what processes is going on in some inside somebody's head that they would be yelling really loudly. To be that unaware of the surroundings that other people live below and by either side or maybe above them. I've never quite really managed to figure that one out.

I learned a long time ago that if you're going to share a house or share a building with somebody or with a group of people consideration is very much needed. I'm often amazed at how much a lack of that consideration that there is. Maybe I'm just maybe I'm just too uptight sometimes.

I should relax and start yelling myself. So the point of these sessions is for me to just waffle on and talk about whatever I feel like talking about. I think it'd be nice to maybe talk about how you physically feel.

Again I've got the birds singing outside. We say birds singing but they're not really singing are they? I guess they're just talking perhaps to each other. I do love the sounds of birds apart from pigeons.

I'm not prejudiced against pigeons but they really they really insist on being heard and they don't give up. They just keep going. Cuckooing or whatever you call it.

Woo woo woo. Constantly for hours and hours. I sometimes think that if pigeons had hands they'd be carrying placards.

You know they'd be demonstrating against something I don't know what. Lack of berries on the trees. We used to have pigeons in Trafalgar Square in London.

It was famous for that. It was absolutely swarming with pigeons. You could stand there and they'd be everywhere.

I used to love it when I was a kid. Now you go to Trafalgar Square, no pigeons. Or if there are there's minimal.

They all got moved on. They got evicted. The pigeons got evicted.

I suppose I should say by the way these this session may contain stories of pigeons. Just in case anyone doesn't like hearing about pigeons. Could have had like a trigger warning at the beginning.

I'm actually on a bipolar group on Facebook. I'm not particularly active but I do you know I visit it and I watch what's going on and see the conversations and there was this big discussion yesterday about people should put TW for trigger warning in the title of a post if they if it's possibly going to trigger. It might trigger somebody emotionally.

But isn't that everything? Anything has the ability to trigger somebody. Emotionally doesn't necessarily mean in a negative way. It could be you know I get triggered when I smell certain things or when I hear a certain tune.

It could be a trigger to think about a past memory. Yeah so I think with the bipolar group although it's supposedly there to be supportive to people with bipolar such as myself with mood disorders or whatever. It's still just a bunch of people disagreeing with each other.

Just like in any other Facebook forum or group. It just seems to be full of people that need to be right. Have a real need for it and I'm not sure why.

I don't really know what's so important about being right. What about feeling? Because the thing is no one ever wins an argument do they? Not really. Even if you walk away from an argument feeling that you were right it doesn't mean you've won because the other person will not agree with you.

So you haven't really won. You only in a sense win an argument if you manage to change the other person's mind. And as human beings the more somebody tries to well for me it's more somebody tries to change my opinion on something and try to force me to take on their opinion their belief system the less likely that's going to happen.

I imagine it's the same with a lot of people and if you come away from an argument feeling angry or hurt or betrayed or any of those other emotionally charged words then you've not won anything. There is no gain. I think the need to be right is one of the most painful needs.

It's like trying to build a ship made of cardboard and then filling it full of containers and passengers and expecting it to keep afloat. It's probably nothing like that but I was quite excited about that analogy and to look at halfway through it and then I started I actually did get a bit bored of it. I was thinking what am I talking about cardboard boats? Who cares about boats and cardboard and the need to be right? What's that got to do with going to sleep? How's that gonna help me to drift off?

I know that a lot of you probably think how am I supposed to drift off if you keep talking about such interesting things? That's the problem is I try and be boring but I know that I'm just an incredibly interesting and stimulating character.

I feel so tired, proper tired. I always think about the, I don't always think about anything but sometimes when I think about the idea of trying to stay awake when feeling tired there's two main occasions that I recall. One was when I was about 17 or 18 and I was up all night, well up to probably early hours of the morning with somebody talking and I found by pushing my tongue up to the roof of my mouth I could like hold back the yawns.

I don't bother to do that anymore I just yawn. Someone says oh am I boring you? If I yawn I say either so I just say yeah or I say I'm just yawning. I don't really want to study the reasons which caused me to yawn in that instant.

I'm not that interested in the yawning process if I'm honest with you. It might be because I'm tired. I'm sure it has nothing to do with you talking about a conversation you had five years ago with your accountant.

No, sure it wasn't that. It was just a natural bodily function just like farting. No one, you know, people say if you yawn am I boring you? Are you tired? Am I boring you? When you fart no one ever says well do you need to go and have a shit? No one, do they? Do you need a dump? Bowel movement? Anyone? Bowel movement? You know, fart at the dinner table.

Someone says oh the toilet's just up there, it's on the left. Church farts are probably the best and they're good because you've got all the incense stuff in there so it covers the smell up but you've got the vibrations and you've got the echo. It also livens up the funeral so you can focus on how you're feeling.

Getting back to the seriousness of this boring let me bore you to sleep session. I could, I could just talk to you about my life. That would be boring.

I do sometimes start sentences. I'll be talking to someone and then I just stop half sentence so I just I've lost interest and it wouldn't be lovely if we could do that just wherever we were without it being taken as offence, offensively you know. Just to walk out.

Maybe in a job interview you're in there and just say okay that's that's enough I've had enough of that job interview and then just walk out but not in a rude way. There are ways to avoid being rude I mean instead of just saying I've lost interest in this conversation see you later you could do a little tap dance or you could pull out a little a little porcelain statue of a penguin and for me I could talk about my experiences with a shamanic journey that I did years ago where I was a penguin. That is the whole story.

That's the thing some people can like really enlarge on their stories with exaggeration and let's face it lies. I think sometimes it's and I can't be bothered. I just think it's uh I don't know why I'm talking about this on this session.

There's something about do I really am I invested emotionally in this conversation to think up some lies and it's always no. I don't see the point in lying. Any reason to lie or is to get something off of somebody you know to manipulate somebody or in a way to make yourself look or seem different to who you are.

I can kind of relate to that in a way there's something about having a degree of comfort in your own skin that sounds a bit serial killery doesn't it. When I say in your own skin I mean you know within yourself not compared to wearing someone else's skin. I mean that's just strange and possibly doesn't fit in with the relaxing sleep that this session is about um I think there's something quite relaxing about being able to just be who you are but at the same time realize that who you are is constantly changing.

Nothing stays the same even fart smells eventually disperse. Broken bones heal an empty bladder fills up again. A full tummy after eating lots and lots where you're so full you can hardly move.

That doesn't stay like that for long. In a few hours time four five six however many hours you're hungry again. Just like the weather, feelings, emotions, physical feelings always changing.

Thoughts, ideas and I like that idea. It just seems like when we try to stick to a belief system it's like trying to sleep in a tiny little tent and expecting to be able to sleep in all year round without any kind of effect. You know you put it up in the summer on a beautiful day no wind and everything's fine.

The ground's all dry but then you know in October maybe it's cold and rainy maybe even snow and if you sit in that tent complaining about the weather and how it should be warm and you should be dry and the tent should be fine all year round. Well that's a belief system that doesn't really work and we all seem to be walking around with our own versions of that. You know our belief systems that are maybe slightly too static and of course there are some things that require a static belief system but these are things that I don't think need to be learned.

There's natural stuff knowing the certain things that we perhaps should not do or other things that perhaps we should do which doesn't really need to come within a belief system. I do find it both amusing and problematic at the same time talking to somebody whose beliefs are so stuck and limited for some things. I don't think anybody's like that with everything but the amount of people that I've spoken to that have a belief and it's as if nothing will change that.

When apart from something extreme maybe you know some people are against homosexuality. Some people have a belief system that's so strong that they're against it really you know without any kind of brain activity. I think I would say there's no brain activity there with that.

It's just a closed off imprisoned belief not allowed to it's like it's being starved. It's not allowed to drink or eat or sleep or do anything therefore it can't grow. It can't learn new things perhaps in the same way with a plant.

I'm no botanist but apparently you put a plant without any sunlight it just dies but as soon as you know you put sunlight out it will grab for the sun it will travel try to get to the sun. In some ways plants are way more adventurous and motivated and optimistic than I am. They reach for the sun not just for the stars but they reach for the sun with every intention of getting to the sun.

I'm making that bit up because I don't know what the thought process is or how that works with plants and things like that. But they're alive they're living of course. So I'm just looking at the at the dial.

I think it must be nice to just let go of beliefs and that's partly why I'm here. It's not that I'm trying to get you to do anything. I don't need you to do anything.

It makes no difference to me because I'm only responsible for myself. I hope that I can help in some way and I hope that I'm able to offer some space where you can have a rest from the bullshit basically. Have a rest from your own bullshit.

Your own limiting thinking. We all have that stuff. I'm very good at sabotaging myself.

Very good at you know reminding myself to things you know negative things about myself. Not always so good at reminding myself that I'm actually okay really. I'm a fairly decent person in some ways and this gives you an opportunity to kind of just do that you know.

Take some time out of the day and take off those clothes of beliefs. I don't mean physically take your clothes off. Of course you can do that if you want as long as it's warm enough.

Turn the heating on if you're going to do that if it's cold. The thing is you can take off those metaphorical clothes of limiting beliefs. I don't know why I use the word limiting beliefs because all beliefs are limiting to a degree.

But then some of those limitations are worth perhaps having those beliefs. And then you try and figure out how much of that belief, how many of those opinions that you have are actually your opinions. How many of them originate from you? How many of my opinions originate from me and not from friends or parents or school teachers or bosses at work, former jobs I've had, colleagues, work colleagues, television, radio, newspapers, the internet, the walking dead, the tv show not the actual walking dead because there aren't any at the moment but there have been times when I felt like I was the walking dead.

But having that opportunity to just take a break from all that stuff, drop the opinions, drop the beliefs and be the person you are, not the person you used to be. I think it's trying to hold on to the past, trying to hold on to your past personality, to who you think you should be, to how you used to be. This is probably a bit like, you know, you're in the sea, you've fallen overboard and you've got someone in a life jacket or lifeboat trying to help you out but you're holding on to a weight as heavy as yourself, if not heavier, like a big massive poo-shaped suitcase full of baggage and full of opinions of who you used to be and how you, you know, perhaps feel you should be now still.

The person in the lifeboat is saying let go of the poo-shaped suitcase and you say no I want to hold on to a poo-shaped suitcase. And the person in the boat would be saying well why are you holding on to the poo-shaped suitcase that's really heavy? Because I can't get you both in, I can only get one of you in. You know, you can get in but you can't bring the poo-shaped suitcase in as well, there's no room, we've got too many things in in this boat already.

And you may look in the boat and say well why have you got so many bags of rice? And the person saying well I'm a volunteer, lifesaver and I was actually at the cash and carry buying lots of rice for my shop. I have a rice shop and that's why there's so many bags of rice. So there's not enough room for your poo-shaped suitcase.

Anyway what's inside that poo-shaped suitcase? What's so important that you're holding on to it? And the person would say well it's me, it's the past, it's how I'm trying to be, it's mannerisms that I've learned from other people, it's behaviours that I've learned and I think other people expect me to behave that way so that's why I keep it going even though it's not me anymore and it doesn't feel comfortable and maybe it's causing problems in my life. The man in the life jacket, life boat thing might say well why don't you just let it go if it's not you anymore?

You've moved on, you're a different person to the way you were then and the person in the sea holding on getting colder and colder still trying to hold on to that poo-shaped suitcase and he might say well I don't know, I don't even know why I'm trying to hold on to it. I'm just doing it because that's what I've always done and I've never questioned it.

I never questioned my behaviour or why I do or say the things I do and anyway that's what people expect from me.

They expect me to behave and act like this and say the things I say and the person in the lifeboat might be saying well you say something it muffles and the person in the water said well what did you say I didn't hear you because you were muffling and the man in the lifeboat said oh sorry mate I was just eating some rice the man in the water says what the right what raw rice man in the boat says no no it's not raw it's cooked I cooked it before I came out so the man

in the water sort of is getting colder and colder and colder and he's saying well how did you know how did you have time to cook it before coming out here I mean didn't you just straight come out of here straight you know straight away and the man in the boat said no I was uh I already had it as a packed lunch it's cold it's cold rice but it's cooked there was some vegetables in it prepared it this morning the man in the water okay can't feel his legs now because it's so icy still

holding on to that suitcase shaped like poo the man in the boat says you just gotta make a choice we can't have both you on there that poo shaped suitcase is just so large and I'm not even sure if it is a suitcase or it's just a giant poo it looks like a whale has swum by and done a big dump and for some reason you've decided to hold on to it the man in the water saying no it's it's not a whale dump it is actually a suitcase and then the man in the boat

says well so it's a suitcase you actually telling me you went into a shop and you asked for a poo shaped suitcase not just shaped but it looks like a big poo with a handle he said yeah and then the boat says and look look at the handle and he just like showed him a bit the handle of course he didn't let go of it but he opened his hands a little bit just to show him and sure enough there was a handle made of sweet corn but it slipped out of his hand and the

poo started to float away and the man in the water didn't know what to do next does he get saved be taken back to safety in the boat dried off to live a happy life in freedom to explore his own to explore your own person who you are now or do you let go of that boat and start swimming towards the big floating turd suitcase and those are kind of the choices in a way freedom safety or repetition limitation limitation opinions beliefs and this brings me to the end of my incredibly boring session at least

i hope it was boring enough for you so this session lasted well about 47 minutes so i'm gonna go wish you well see you next time bye