#701 Self-talk Drives Us Crazy YET We Cling to It - Why?

     When we first learn to meditate, many of us try desperately to "get rid of our thoughts." No wonder! Doesn't self-talk feel nightmarishly repetitive?
     Then why do we also compulsively entertain every thought that comes by? Because we seem to assume that self-talk IS our very self! 
     IF this internal chatter were "a direct readout on reality," emanating from our "self", then of course we should hang onto it. BUT doesn't internal chatter strike us as irritating, superfluous noise? AND when we have rare moments of mental stillness, peace & quiet, instead of dying, doesn't it feel wonderful? Don't we actually feel MORE vibrantly alive?

     With a bit of courage & lots of persistence, we gradually let go of clinging to ("entertaining") passing thoughts. As we do, we can progressively become healthier.
     Shunryu Suzuki, a highly regarded Zen teacher, advised:
               "When you sit,

               you leave the front door open,

               you leave the back door open,

               and you don't serve tea."

#683 Mindful Awareness - So Much More

     What do these words really mean? Obviously not daydreaming while performing activities requiring careful attention.
     But aren't there surprising similarities between the type of attention it takes to rob a bank, perform intricate surgery, watch a fascinating movie, yell at someone in a fit of anger? Could a fairly young person muster this type of attention? How about certain animals? Have you seen how quickly a crow can custom-design a simple tool? So there must be far more to mindfulness than focused attention. 
     Learning to stabilize attention on the flowing, changing content of the present moment is an important, but partial aspect. It helps us to let go of clinging to the past, the future, to stuff that never was & never will be. But replacing all that with clinging to the present doesn't help much! Everything in the present is also temporary, fleeting, can't be held onto, nor identified with - this is simply the way reality is.
     As we abandon our delusions & wishful thinking, our attention shifts from self-obsession to an open-hearted embrace of the big picture - everyone & everything - the flow of present-moment reality. And everything changes, both gradually and all-at-once.

The Biscuit Eater, Mahone Bay, NS

#656 Suffering - Results Guaranteed

     “We can guarantee ourselves suffering when we cling to a desire for things to be different than they are. We can practically define suffering by saying that it is clinging to that desire. 
      Things are not different than they are. They are as they are.

      Wanting things to change is not the same as putting out the effort and determination to bring about change.”

        The author and his wife barely survived a fiery plane crash, and underwent a long, painful period of rehabilitation for extensive burns and other injuries. He wrote the book “Through the Flames” chronicling their journey. 
       Allan Lokos “The Miraculous Body” Shambhala Sun, May 2015.

studio11photography.blogspot.com

#653 Awareness Leads to Spaciousness & Freedom

     “Change will happen naturally as we open to the truth. The more we bring our attachments into awareness, the freer we become, not because we eliminate the attachments, but because we learn to identify more with awareness than with desire. Using our capacity for consciousness, we can change perspective on ourselves, giving a sense of space where once there was only habit. Discipline means restraining the habitual movement of the mind, so that instead of blind impulse there can be clear comprehension. 
     In our quest to understand where our unsatisfactoriness derives from, we are often inclined to search for causes and people to blame. … the search for causes has to lead eventually back to the individual. Although traumatic and terrible things may have occurred, it is the individual’s mind that perpetuates the suffering, and that can be trained to change. As long as we are struggling against the feeling, hoping to eliminate it by getting high or being cured, we are still attached. We can relieve unsatisfactoriness only by sharpening our focus and changing our perspective.”

        Epstein M. "Going on Being. Buddhism and the way of Change. A Positive Psychology for the West." Broadway Books, NY, 2001. 

Rutger Bus   www.dpreview.com

#612 Feeling Lousy? Now What?

     Feeling down, blue, out of sorts, alone, useless, etc happens so often for many of us that, at some level, we identify with it - it feels like home, "that's me - that's how I am, who I am". Other emotions, like love, joy & happiness seem to slip right through, so we correctly recognize their transient, ephemeral nature.
     Is it possible that identifying with downer emotions is what makes them so sticky? What if we didn't focus on these so intently when they appeared - would these evaporate as seamlessly as joy? Can we imagine the effect of having no preference for joy over sadness?

#509 Letting Go of Friction & Noise

     We have automatic, conditioned reactions to many life events. Some reactions are avoidant or aversive - we try to keep unpleasant, difficult or otherwise threatening things away physically, away from our heart / emotions (via armoring) or at the very least away from our consciousness (via suppression, repression). We reflexively erect pretend boundaries or barriers between ourselves and challenging reality.
     Our other reactions involve grasping or clinging - we automatically chase after, try to catch & permanently hang onto things we want or think we must have. 
     Grasping arises from instinctive fearful neediness, avoidant behavior arises from instinctive fearful aversion. Both are fear-based & self-centered. Both are primitive instincts we share with animals, right down to single-cell organisms. This echo from our collective & personal evolutionary past expressed through our fearful inner child can be sufficiently powerful as to dominate our life OR at the very least, add a great deal of undesirable friction or noise.
     Enabling (in the negative, psychological sense - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enabling) our inner child predictably drains us of energy, and predictably leads to suffering. As we gradually become aware of this repetitive, dysfunctional pattern, we become motivated to find a better way to live - more & more like the inner wise grandparent.
     Mindfulness practice is all about intentionally, gently but persistently, shifting (evolving) our level of consciousness ("operating system") from fearful child to wise adult.

Steve McCurry   stevemccurry.com

#456 Awakening to Things as They Are

     We progressively awaken to the moment-to-moment reactions we have to life by noticing how each reaction is preceded by a felt physical sensation. Two amazingly frequent sensations:
     1) closing off, tightening / hardening of the body - particularly the heart-mind - towards stimuli that we negatively judge. This is aversion or hatred - a rigid, adversarial reaction.
     2) aching hunger - particularly in the gut - towards stimuli we judge to be enticing, desirable. This is craving or clinging - a wanting, wishing, pining away for, desperately desiring to keep reaction.
     In aversion / hatred we're running from / fighting off stuff, in craving / clinging we're running after / desperately hanging-on to stuff, based on the fundamental misunderstanding: that things as they are, are unacceptable. 
     And how actually are things as they are? Fluidly changing, ephemeral - far more like inner transient energies than solid external chunks of matter, that can either be accumulated in our bedrooms, or hauled far away to be buried.
     These are not dogma, simply observations at a given stage of mindfulness meditation practice. From a Western psychological perspective, it represents a normal, healthy shift from rigidity towards psychological flexibility & accepting reality.

St. Andrews by John England   http://www.fogforestgallery.ca/bios/bio_england.html

#435 Right Effort does not Take, but Generates Energy

     Intelligent effort in mindfulness practice is not at all like trying to lift a very heavy object. It is effortless & instant - as when we redirect attention from this to how my right foot feels right now. How much effort & time was involved?
     By gently, intelligently, persistently stabilizing our natural capacity to fill awareness with real-time sensory information, we practice displacing & hence progressively reduce the noise of self-talk and reduce the internal friction of clinging to ghosts of the past & future. This liberates a great deal of energy which becomes available to creatively embrace all that the present holds now.
     So 'right effort' does indeed instantly liberate energy, that is otherwise squandered on creating noise & friction = suffering. Paradoxically, we practice right effort by 1) repeatedly becoming aware of going off track into unskillful thoughts, words / speech / self-talk, & action - ie catching ourselves not being mindful, 2) accepting innumerable 'errors of judgment', and 3) gently, seamlessly, persistently coming back to embrace the present, we inevitably, unstoppably, progressively stabilize our natural inherent capacity to be mindful, with all it's benefits.

Luca C   www.dpreview.com

#420 From Anxiety to Peace

     At some point when we're learning to swim, we stop flailing wildly & hyperventilating, - and we begin to relax in the water, breathing slowly, deeply - both our strokes and breathing becoming infinitely more efficient and effective. We're no longer struggling against water, but instead, we're savoring the process of swimming. It's a huge experiential shift when fear mysteriously drops away, and we're embracing the whole experience - suddenly, we know everything's OK.

     Somewhat analogously in meditation, at some point - inevitably if we persevere in our practice - we stop relying on frantic mental / physical activity "to keep on top of things", and instead, begin to relax, trusting inner stillness & silence - innate wisdom. Wonderful.

katarina   www.dpreview.com

#400 Do I Have a Choice? - the Jar of Soil & Water Metaphor - Part 3

     Experience tells us that our attention habitually focuses & "clings to" whatever we find most attractive or aversive. This is a subjective, emotion-driven, survival-based reflex. Psychologists talk about "approach-avoidance dichotomy" - see: http://healthyhealers.blogspot.ca/2013/04/fear-avoidance-ineffective-existential.html 
      The vast majority of potential "objects of consciousness" (tiny particles of soil) never reach our conscious awareness because they simply aren't interesting enough, positively or negatively. Extremes (larger particles of soil) grab our attention, while the infinite shades of gray in between don't.
     The power of attraction or repulsiveness of an object can be likened to magnetic pull or push between poles of two separate magnets. It's as if this power were inherent to, was within, the object. Wild tigers - avoid; ripe berry - grab & eat; attractive potential mate - capture & drag back to cave. This primitive binary reflex was appropriate, yet remains functional (brain stem) so we continue to feel jolts of attraction or aversion. These jolts can feel so powerful, that we can feel overpowered by objects of desire or aversion - "I couldn't help myself!"
     Yet, none of these jolts are absolute imperatives to approach or avoid - there are infinite shades of gray even withing each object, as well as the context of each object. In this light, each object approaches zero charge, opening up many nuanced appropriate choices & behaviors. None of these "objects of consciousness" (soil particles) are inherently, by nature irresistible nor horrific - the felt "power" is from within - our selective focus of attention (eg "love is blind" or "blinded by hatred") creates the apparent attractiveness or aversiveness we have towards the object. Most importantly, from a practical standpoint we CAN up- or down-regulate this entire process.
     If we spend a lot of time (selectively) focused only on how wonderful it would be to own a particular luxury item (ignoring all negative & neutral aspects of the object itself, as well as the context of how our life would differ if we owned it), the power of attraction of this item will progressively grow more surely than if we had spent an equivalent amount of time watching the best professionally-produced ads for this item. For the power of aversion, the exact same holds true for time invested selectively focusing on the aversive aspect of an object (eg catastrophizing). Habits of mind are made powerful through our own powerful, predictable mental training. If we don't like the resultant power over us, we clearly can & should stop building it up - let the object-specific process (eg craving a BMW) undergo disuse atrophy ("what you don't use, you lose") and change the focus of our mental training towards different, healthier preferred goals. The power is literally in us (clear water) not in the objects of consciousness (soil particles). Specifically, awareness (clear water) is inherently equanimous, balanced ie does NOT have to STICK to the soil particles, which can freely sink to the bottom of the jar.
     Smoking-cessation is logical, healthy & beneficial for all concerned, YET to free themselves, most smokers need to participate in effective smoking cessation programs. We are so bound to our habits, the "momentum" & direction of our lives is so challenging to alter, that most of us need to participate in effective, systematic training programs - like mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) - to achieve this evolutionary change in our consciousness & behavior.

Fence and Silo by John England     http://www.fogforestgallery.ca/bios/bio_england.html

#399 Letting Go of Soil - the Jar of Soil & Water Metaphor - Part 2

     Continuing with the jar of soil & water metaphor of #398, sitting meditation practice shows us that we're so used to thinking about something that we actually feel one with or identified with thoughts ("cognitive fusion"). It's as if the clear water didn't exist, only the soil. Thoughts ("objects of mind" - bits of soil) seem sticky, some much more so than others eg the memory of someone insulting us; or catastrophizing about an upcoming interview or medical appointment. Our entire world can become this one story (single particle of soil) for days, weeks or even longer, while our day-to-day affairs are managed "on autopilot."
      Another discovery we make in meditation is that our thinking is mostly about the past ("the good - or bad - old days") or future (wishing or anxiety). This is despite the practical fact that the present requires our full attention. ALSO experience and now science shows that stable awareness of what's going on in the present moment feels  good - much better than being off in the past or future. Our quality of life is at its highest when we are whole-heartedly engaged in the present for prolonged periods of time eg being with a beloved person or pet, "wrapped-up" in a great movie, doing our hobby, participating in an exciting (even extreme) sport, etc.
     The soil particles are in motion - either being stirred up or settling down, while water is at rest. When we're present, mindful, we have the perspective of clear still water & observe the particles (thoughts) floating by without attaching to (identifying with) them. Training allows this to happen with increasing ease, consistency and stability. Sticking to particles going by is a habit. Noticing & repeatedly letting go of this old mental habit ("cognitive defusion"), replaces it with a new mental habit - mindfulness. This is the predictable, scientifically-proven effect of mental training that rewires the brain, creating new connections and new brain cells (neuroplasticity). 
     Gradually we come to feel at home in clarity (clear water), without habitually clinging to the (mud particles of the) past or future, resting joyfully in the constantly changing fascinating challenging present moment. 
     See: http://mindfulnessforeveryone.blogspot.ca/2012/12/249-busy-scattered-distracted-monkey.html

Kentville, Nova Scotia

#386 Mindfulness feels like Freedom

     "When true mindfulness arises, one feels as if one is stepping back and observing what is happening in experience, rather than being embedded in it. This does not mean separation or detachment, but is rather a sense of not being hooked by a desirable object or not pushing away a repugnant object. There in the middle, equidistant from each extreme, one encounters a sense of freedom that allows for greater intimacy with experience. It may seem paradoxical, but ... we can take an attitude toward the objects of experience that is at the same time both equanimous and benevolent."                    Andrew Olendzki PhD

#63 Cognitive defusion

     "when we become skillful at noticing our habits of mind and letting them come and go without disturbing us, we realize that each state of mind, including strong emotions, only lasts for seconds before being replaced by another one. .... In this way we cultivate some freedom from the frantic imbalance created by each one."         Darlene Cohen (1942 - 2011)

Photo: Joel Sartore   http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/