#602 Stillness & Momentum; Spaciousness & Anxiety

     We feel relatively secure when we feel in motion - literally or figuratively. The momentum of heading towards a goal  promises that we'll feel OK, especially when we get there! 
     On the other hand, stillness these days suggests the opposite. How does it feel being alone, with nothing to do, nowhere to go? Bored? Maybe, but below this very likely lurks anxiety. And what's the anxiety about? What is this "anxious quiver of being"?
     We're so deeply conditioned to chase after friends, position, security, mates, prestige, toys, money etc that we completely neglect to consider what's meaningful in our lives. Our momentum of chasing after stuff is so constant, we fail to realize that all this chasing after, is at the same time a desperate attempt to run away from - from what?

     Can we learn to deeply examine and engage the spacious stillness, silence, ... at the core of our being?

     Can we learn to hold our small "anxious quiver of being" within this expansive spacious intelligence?

snooked   www.dpreview.com

#560 Doing Less of What Doesn't & More of What Does Work

     Can we learn to become aware of & fed up with strategies that don't bring us long-term peace, contentment & joy? Can we persevere with practices that do? It really is that simple.
     We should not become jaded & cynical when buying junk we don't need, eating junk food, or getting drunk leave us feeling lousy. Of course there's infinitely more to life!
     See: http://healthyhealers.blogspot.ca/2014/08/getting-somewhere.html
 

Gretel with toy, August 17, 2014

 

#499 What is there to Accept?

     "Growing up" is an interesting process. A wise parent introduces new experiences to her child very gradually, so that these changes stimulate healthy growth & maturation. We know that exposure to too much, too early, results not in healthy maturation but counterproductive stress.
     However, our maturation process extends far past the time we leave home - it truly is "lifelong learning". So we ourselves must, consciously & unconsciously, become our own gatekeepers - ideally titrating new material at a pace we find growth-stimulating. Unfortunately, some of us can't say no, taking on way more than we can handle well; while others get stuck in the opposite rut - living very small, boring, unchallenging lives. What we assume we can't handle well, we consciously & unconsciously avoid, delay, suppress, oppose etc.
     Through mindfulness training, one of the many things we become increasingly consciously aware of, and learn to accept, is our current gatekeeper role, how it affects our life, and the fact that the actual quality of our life is literally in our hands.
     Then, upon becoming aware of models & roadmaps of normal psychosocial development (evolution of consciousness, or maturation), we realize that human potential is literally beyond anything we can currently imagine. We become & remain aware of, & accept the fact, that we're up in the air, sitting alone at the controls, flying our own personal helicopter called "this life" to destinations we've never experienced before. This is both amazing & daunting. We're called to be our own personal highly-skilled gatekeepers, sports psychologists, & life coaches.

     See: http://www.johnlovas.com/2012/01/post-traumatic-growth.html
     And: http://www.johnlovas.com/2014/02/meditation-is-powerful.html

Healer by Steve McCurry   stevemccurry.com

#484 Consciously Embracing Energy

     Moment-by-moment we make an incredible number of decisions automatically - without conscious awareness of making any of them: http://mindfulnessforeveryone.blogspot.ca/search?q=avoidance
      A bit more awareness reveals that we prefer personal safety over danger, personal benefit over detriment, and maintaining status quo over growth. While the first two generally (not always) make sense, the last one is detrimental to us long-term, & flat out boring short-term. Embracing (instead of avoiding) growth-change is plugging directly into the vital energy of life.
     By becoming conscious about how our mind works (meta-awareness), we can override suboptimal automatic decisions. This wake-up call is essential for our overall quality of life - the more awake & aware, the better.

Elena Shumilova  http://www.flickr.com/photos/75571860@N06/11874722676/

#481 Why Become Educated - through School AND Meditation?

     To know: "How to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out. ...
      The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day. That is real freedom.
     That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing."                                           David Foster Wallace

      David Foster Wallace's entire 2005 Kenyon College Commencement Speech (below) is WELL worth 22 minutes of your time.

#231 Practice, Distractions, Letting go, Accumulating

     It's somewhat surprising that even among those who complete and seem to benefit from an 8-week MBSR course, the question arises: is there a follow-up course containing 'new' information? The implication being that now they 'get it' and unless there's something new and different to stimulate (distract) the mind, they'd be bored.
     One of the reasons that we sit still, silently, for up to 50 minutes at a time is precisely to let go of distractions - habitual busyness, so we can clearly study the mind.
     Fortunately, people do take the 'same' MBSR course several times sequentially, and progressively deepen their practice and understanding each time. In fact MBSR facilitators could never teach the exact same course twice because the depth of our understanding is also progressively increasing with daily practice.
     In reality, we're only able to hear or appreciate what we're ready for. As we mature psycho-spiritually, we actually appreciate things as if we heard them for the very first time. So 'beginner's mind' is really a way of avoiding 'premature closure' - the common tendency to catch the drift of a theme and immediately 'shut down', because one (mistakenly) assumes one already 'knows all about it'.
     We can spend all of our waking hours these days reading the flood of scientific and other papers and books on mindfulness should we wish to simply accumulate knowledge. No matter how much we read about mindfulness - but don't practice it - we know NOTHING about it. More importantly, such scholars derive NO benefit in terms of decreasing their own suffering, or improving their quality of life.
     Those who teach mindfulness MUST have a deep ongoing personal practice, guided by wise teachers, if they are to truly help themselves & others. "See one, do one, teach one" is just plain wrong when it comes to being a guide to an immensely deep, broad, way of life.

     Practice refers to the discipline of cultivating a crucial capacity of mind, such as wisdom or concentration. Practices are rehearsals of desired qualities, which eventually become spontaneous, natural ways of being.” 
       Walsh R. “Essential spirituality. The 7 central practices to awaken heart and mind.” John Wiley & Sons Inc, NY, 1999.

Photo: giants   www.dpreview.com

#22 Avoidance

     How much of my doing is driven by trying to avoid activities, people, things etc that I presume to be incompatible with happiness?

     Avoidance can present in the form of denial, suppression, sleepiness, boredom, restlessness, compulsive behavior, a sense of being hunted - always having to run away etc.
      “... experiential avoidance does not appear to work well in the long run. Research has shown that ... a heightened level of experiential avoidance is correlated with increased anxiety, depression, substance abuse, worry, long-term disability, high-risk sexual behavior, inability to learn, poorer work performance, lower quality of life, and higher degrees of overall psychopathology.”
        Ciarrochi J, Mayer JD. "Applying emotional intelligence: A practitioner's guide." Psychology Press, NY, 2007.

     Mindfulness is about fully experiencing reality - ie the opposite of avoidance. Why? Because engaging directly with our life works. But don't take anybody's word for it - you need to experience this for yourself.

Artist: R C Gorman   http://rcgormangallery.com/