#405 Momentum of our Lives & Growth

     It's fair to say that we tend to develop characteristic ways of dealing with situations, making us fairly predictable (& boring). When we encounter a situation, we tend to see it not as the unique situation that it actually is, but as a "type" or category we've seen before, and so we tend to react to it more or less the same as we reacted to this type before. 
     In other words, "we see things not as they are, but as we are" - the current event a mere trigger that reactivates our "baggage" and so we replay "the story of my life" yet another time. Our story line has the momentum of a long moving freight train. 
     Seeing something with fresh eyes, clearly, for what it is, with "beginner's mind" allows us to respond to it appropriately, according to the present context (without our old stuff spilling all over and distorting the picture).
     The more we practice mindfulness, the cleaner the distinction between the past, present and future. If one paints with watercolors, the longer one keeps using the same jar of water to dip one's brush, the darker and murkier the water gets, and thus increasingly interferes with the purity of color of any paint one tries to apply to a fresh piece of paper - the brush is already colored. Mindfulness practice allows us to use clearer and clearer water (our consciousness) each time - and every new painting has more and more remarkably true & vivid colors.
     See also: http://mindfulnessforeveryone.blogspot.ca/search?q=helicopter

Ireland