My wife and I attended the Liberal Arts Swimming Championships at Principia College last week to watch our daughter swim.

For some of the races we acted as timers, which put us down in the marshalling area of the pool where the swimmers dive in at the beginning of their races.

As timers, we ran stopwatches to act as checks against the automated timing system, which evidently is not always reliable.

If you’ve never been to a swimming championship like this, let me tell you, they are very LOUD! The swimmers are extra hyped, full of team spirit, wanting to cheer their teammates on and so forth. The enthusiasm is constantly spouting out in one humongous cacophony of chatter, conversation, cheering and miscellaneous noise that swells the arena to decibels that can pull your hands to your ears. Sort of like a rock concert in full blare. It’s all fun and healthy, but can feel earsplitting at times to the novice.

I got used to the noise, but what fascinated me was the instant quiet that repeatedly hushed over the arena whenever the referee blew his whistle to signal the start of a new race.

 

The instant quiet was very impressive.

 

In the matter of 2 – 5 seconds, five to eight hundred people spread all over the building stopped making noise to allow the swimmers to hear the start horn and begin their swim.

 

I marveled over this phenomenon.

 

Have you ever tried to quiet a roomful of boisterous noisy kids…unsuccessfully? Has your thinking ever whirled out of control, swirling with fears and worries, and you tried in vain to get off the mental carnival ride? Have you ever got caught up in a heated debate with opinions flying left and right and yearningly looked for an exit but to no avail?

 

Back to the swim meet…

 

Every time the whistle blew, the noise died with haste. You wouldn’t know it was the same space. Like flicking a light switch off and on. It was pure heavenly peace…for a few seconds anyway. Then the race was off, and so was the cheering.

 

I wondered how the other types of noise mortal mind often produces could be turned off just as rapidly.

 

The noise of fear, uncertainty, worry, doubt, angst, and their kin…

 

Watching hundreds of people immediately quiet down at the sound of a few whistle blasts is proof that it can be done, and rapidly.

 

Desire and respect, I thought. The audience loved the swimmers, their children, for the most part, and wanted them to be successful. To give them a good start on the race, they needed to be quiet. So, they shushed. They made up their minds to be quiet, and they did. Mortal mind was controlled like flicking a switch on and off.

 

And so it can be done in other mental venues as well. When the chatter, yelling and screaming of mortal mind seems out of control, it can be instantly brought to a halt with a simple decision to stop it. The human mind makes the choice.

 

There is no out of control situation.

 

What appears to be an out of control scenario is another version of mortal mind belief being displayed at the moment. It looks out of control, but it is not. It’s just the nature of the belief, and it can be changed as readily as any other belief, just like those hundreds of audience members could be instantly quiet when they wanted to be.

 

BTW…Jenna did well at the meet, finishing first in a finals consolation round for the 100-meter freestyle.