#695 Accepting Ourselves, Accepting Others, and Then ...

     We keep trying so desperately to be accepted, valued and loved. We're acutely aware, at some level, of our many imperfections. And we fear our very survival hinges on eliminating, hiding, or overcompensating for our "defectiveness".
     After a while, we start realizing that nobody is perfect; and that unconditional love is painfully rare. Imperfection is tolerable, but life without unconditional love is brutal. What can we do about it? We know that we can't make others do anything. 
     But we can learn to accept ourselves as we are, then it's relatively easy to accept others as they are, and then, perhaps, we ourselves can become the source of unconditional love - the absolutely most precious, nurturing aspect of life. Perfection within imperfection?

     “When you came into this world, you cried and everyone else smiled. You should so live your life that when you leave, everyone else will cry, but you will be smiling.”                         Paramahansa Yogananda
        Dana Sawyer “Huston Smith: Wisdomkeeper. Living the World’s Religions. The Authorized Biography of a 21st Century Spiritual Giant.” Fons Vitae, Louisville, KY, 2014.

Public Gardens, Halifax, NS

#655 Directly Experiencing What Is

     “… we have to drop our attachment to mental categories; then the true meaning can infuse us.”

     Tanahashi K, Chayat RS. “Endless Vow. The Zen Path of Soen Nakagawa.” Shambhala, Boston, 1996. 

#532 How to Keep from Becoming Frustrated? - Part 1

     World & local events on the news often sound horrifically ugly, barbarically cruel, primitive. The perpetrators are often amazingly brazen, defiant, even triumphant - claiming religious, political or other "rationale" for their subhuman behavior. Disgust is a common, understandable reaction from civilized society.
     How - or why - should we keep from supporting those who would "nuke them back into the stone-age"? In short, that would make us horrifically ugly, barbarically cruel, primitive. It's critically important to recognize our own potential for evil. "Wiping out evil - out there" eg capital punishment for murderers, does nothing to eliminate our own capacity to cause others great suffering.
     Those perps on the news are literally our relatives. How would we want our children treated if they were the perps on the news? It would be with superhuman understanding, respect, fairness, with rehabilitation instead of vengeance in mind.
     The other humbling aspect for us to ponder AND act on is the part WE play in these global events. How does our appetite for ridiculously cheap clothes contribute to child labor & dangerous sweat shops in third world countries? How does our appetite for street drugs contribute to the drug-related massacres in Mexico, Columbia etc and on our own streets? Our appetite for oil, exotic produce from around the world, our inflated standard of living, - all come at a price - increased suffering for poor, powerless people around the world.
     WE need to clean our own house! The more clearly we see ourselves, the more humble we become, the less unnecessary suffering we cause ourselves & others. Awareness, humility & kindness work for us, work for others - these just work!
     We surely know by now that "the war to end all wars" - both of them, and all the other wars on drugs, terrorism, poverty, etc - are primitive useless garbage - enough - they don't work!

Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia, May 4, 2014

#514 Surviving - OR - Thriving in your Studies?

     It's well known that most of our stresses today, are misinterpretations of threats to our egos, as if these were threats to our actual lives. Extreme examples: one man looks at another man, or another man's girlfriend, "the wrong way", causing (at times lethal) confrontation; paralyzing anxiety over writing "high-stakes exams" eg fellowship, board or bar exams; cyber-bullying tragically leading, in some cases, to suicide. We routinely take some things way too seriously; while at the same time, we pay too little attention to things that actually matter. How we direct our attention & energy can make the difference between barely surviving & thriving.
     For students it's very important to realize that excessive stress also negatively impacts judgment & memory. While studying, if you're worried about doing badly in a subject, you likely waste huge amounts of time & energy listening to negative self-talk. Stress also interferes with your ability to remember the material, so the efficiency of your studying is greatly reduced. Then, while writing the exam, if you're stressed, your judgments eg choices you make on a multiple-choice exam, are negatively impacted. See: http://mindfulnessforeveryone.blogspot.ca/2014/02/490-safe-learning-environment.html
     Not well known is the fact that the opposite of fear-based stress is love. See: http://mindfulnessforeveryone.blogspot.ca/2012/06/140-love.html How much effort did it take for you to learn all sorts of information about your favorite sport or hobby? None - it certainly didn't feel like work! How difficult is it for you to remember all this info? Easy, effortless! 
     To the extent you're able to bring about liking or even loving the subject that you're studying, you eliminate all the self-defeating, energy-draining barriers that keeps the information from going deep into your memory banks. If you don't find the subject itself inherently likeable, can you see how much good will come from knowing it? Now, what you study, will behave EXACTLY like all that information about your favorite sport or hobby. You are learning to open up, & welcome in information. Once it's deeply within "the marrow of your bones", it's readily retrievable & appropriately applicable in any context (test or real-world eg clinical application).
     Learn to become aware of self-talk, thoughts & moods. If they're not helpful, learn to let them go & switch over to ones that work for you! YES YOU CAN!

IlanS   www.dpreview.com

#441 Emotions, Momentum & Mindfulness

     Emotions may or may not initiate, but they do energize & perpetuate activity - motion with momentum - propelling a course of action, a predetermined direction toward a goal.
     Even for noble initiatives, shouldn't we still proceed with full conscious awareness of the process & ever-changing conditions, ready & able to enact any modifications & corrections that invariably become necessary along the way? Isn't hot-headed impatience usually detrimental?
     And if, as is often the case, our initiative turns out to be less than brilliant to start with - shouldn't we have the humility to markedly change or scrap a bad action plan?
     Like ethanol & stress, strong emotions trample good judgment. Persevering consciously, intelligently, with great care, to complete a worthy goal comes from a much deeper, more still, more silent place than the chaotic abode of powerful emotions. Chaotic energy can be effectively tamed, transformed & harnessed in the service of wise mindful behavior.

#397 Wise Behaviour Only Arises from Wisdom

     From birth we're conditioned to act in ways that please our parents, families, then friends, teachers, then bosses, co-workers, and the rest of society. Whether we did or did not accomplish an act is clear, easily judged. How well we did it is much more difficult to judge, and is somewhat subjective. Our attitude & intentions while accomplishing the act are very difficult for someone else to judge.
     So based on a lifetime of conditioning, many of us live our lives tightly governed by external approval of our actions. We become compulsive doers, "overachievers", "terribly busy", to the detriment of our attitudes, intentions, emotions - our inner life.
     Many of us literally fear peace, quiet, tranquility, stillness, self-reflection, meditation etc assuming that these might somehow competitively inhibit our ability to act (loss of external approval). We become anxious when we have even a bit of free, unstructured "down time".
     Indeed a part of us (brain stem) is conditioned to react with an approach-avoidance reflex to (societal & other) stimuli. However, the most highly evolved part of our brain (prefrontal cortex) is the seat of our executive function, mature judgment, meaning, values, attitude, intentions, quality (vs quantity), long-term goals ... our vitally critical inner life that should be directing our outer life.
     Civilized mature human beings should be intentionally cultivating their ability to operate with their FULL mental / human capacity. Meditation is an important means of achieving this for oneself. Universities must assume leadership to ensure their graduates are WISE, not simply reacting to societal pressures via primitive reflexes. 

#393 Awareness, Acceptance & Dwelling in Two Apparently Distinct Realities

     As a natural consequence of ongoing mindfulness practice, we gradually become increasingly clearly aware of what's going on - both within and outside of ourselves. This is often described as "waking up" as if from a dream, or becoming conscious after being on "autopilot".
     Another natural consequence of our ongoing practice, we gradually stop believing the brain stem's judgment of all that we perceive as either "good" or "bad" (black-or-white thinking), and are thus more & more able to replace primitive egocentric (brain stem) reactivity with wiser allocentric perspective & behavior (prefrontal cortex).
     Interestingly and importantly, our brain stem remains in place & functional, so we remain aware of our own ongoing immediate egocentric judgments. However, meditation practice progressively rewires our brain, changing it structurally & functionally. So the brain stem's messages are perceived less & less as commands for immediate action, and are increasingly perceived as dubious options with a long track record of leading to suffering. And because of our direct experiential knowledge, we fully understand - and have compassion for - both ourselves & others when we more or less automatically obey brain stem reflexes.
     As our prefrontal cortex becomes increasingly dominant, we increasingly recognize not only our own, but other people's inherent clarity, wholeness & wisdom. We recognize & nurture this amazing natural human capacity in ourselves and others. This is the ultimate height & depth of human activity.

#385 Understanding Willpower & Competing Goals

     Health psychologist Kelly McGonigal PhD, author of "The WillPower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It", defines a willpower challenge as "basically a competition between two parts of yourself. Even though we have one brain, we actually have two minds. And we are completely different people, depending on which systems of the brain are more active. So a willpower challenge is anything where those two versions of yourself have competing goals. 
     For example, a part of you may really want to eat a candybar for a snack, and there’s a part of you that has longer-term goals - thinking of health, weight-loss, bikini season, etc and the banana seems like the better snack. Both of these choices you may be drawn to by different parts of your mind – two different versions of yourself. You could be the very same person, but depending on your mindset, energy, stress levels – your brain is going to meet this willpower challenge in a different way, and you’re going to end up making one choice today and another choice tomorrow. 
     There’s a really interesting fundamental gap between what people know they should do and what they want to do. People are very identified with one version of their self – feel deep down that they’re the person who wants the candybar, and this other person who wants the banana – who is that? That’s not really me. 
     So I realized that people don’t just need to KNOW what’s the right or healthy thing to do, or tips for stress-management or productivity, they need to FEEL like this person and they need to BE this person as the default, rather than always walking around feeling like they had to resist this core self who only wants immediate gratification or never wants to do anything difficult.”

     THIS transformative shift - from surface concepts - to understanding in the marrow of one's bones - occurs by way of mindfulness meditation practice. See: http://mindfulnessforeveryone.blogspot.ca/2013/08/381-each-moment-new-beginning.html

#350 Conditioned Reflexes, Autopilot AND Conscious Awareness, Mature Judgment

     During meditation, as loud self-talk settles down, we gradually notice that a much quieter self-talk continues unabated. Also, despite our efforts to let go of thinking, we notice that we're periodically whisked off by a train of thought - one that may not even be particularly interesting. Patiently, peacefully, seamlessly we turn attention back to the here-and-now.
     It takes moderate effort to remain alert, conscious of what precisely is going on in our mind-body moment-by-moment. Monitoring posture, muscle-tone, breath and mind requires moderate effort. Not enough effort, and we go on autopilot or night-time sleep. Too much effort, and we go into striving, doing mode, trying to force something that isn't real, isn't helpful.
     We gradually learn not to take conditioned habits so seriously. Conditioning turns out to be a sadly simple affair as we come to appreciate it in greater detail - with frightening similarity to a drunk's predictable behavior. Sadder still is remaining on conditioning's autopilot.
     Meditation literally allows us to objectively, directly see our (primitive) conditioned reflexes AND gives us the choice, the freedom, the opportunity to try something infinitely better. In "observer-self" we are simultaneously conscious of conditioning AND the creative freedom to choose differently, consciously, wisely. Awareness increasingly stabilizes so we can live in an increasingly mature, evolved, wise manner.

Rick Wianecki   http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/

#349 Equanimity in our Relationships is More Real

     Our relationships, with others, and even with ourselves, can be real roller coasters. I think it's simply accurate to say that, like most people, we are imperfect "works in progress," slowly becoming less foolish, and a bit wiser as the years roll on, and as we all accumulate impressive collections of errors.
     So when someone screws up badly, if we're really honest with ourselves, we can admit that either we've been there, or at the very least, could easily have done the same thing. Yet, out of fear, we tend to publicly denounce "bad guys," trying to convince ourselves "well I could never have done that!" Instantly we transform into "the church lady" & do our little "superior dance." Meanwhile the poor sucker who did just "do that" is wondering "What the hell happened? How could I possibly have gotten into this mess?"
     The more we realize the possibility of ourselves erring, the more skillfully we'll avoid doing so - and - the less harshly we'll judge those who do mess up. Most of us are neither demons nor fully enlightened beings, most of us are just getting by, carrying a heavy load. Let's give each other a break - we all need it.

     "Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It's a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity."           Pema Chodron

Murat Tosun   http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/

#316 Fear, Reactivity, Mindfulness, Mature Judgment, Wisdom to Navigate a Complex World

     It's easy to feel tight, claustrophobic, as we worry about our own security, welfare, and health in what seems to be an increasingly hostile, random, uncaring world. We're bombarded with gory superficial details of the tragedy of the day. Invariably we're left wondering why?, "searching for answers," "looking for closure".

     Our primitive brain-stem, retained from our reptilian ancestors, automatically triggers quick action in response to fear, greed & lust, to keep us alive individually, and as a species. The fear we feel on hearing of a tragedy, triggers an almost overpowering anger and impulse for swift revenge. This automatic brain-stem reflex is instant, simple & clear BUT - no longer works (did it ever?).

     We live in an incredibly complex, constantly & rapidly changing world. To survive, and hopefully thrive in this challenging climate, our pre-frontal cortex - the seat of judgment & executive function, the main distinguishing feature of humans - can & must override primitive instincts. This requires consistent training. We have constant reminders of the incredibly foolish behaviors that result when the pre-frontal cortex is bypassed: under the influence of alcohol, rage, "in the heat of passion" or other strong emotions. To live wisely, we need to intentionally nurture our own and others' evolution of consciousness. Mindfulness practice is an excellent, evidence-based way of doing just this.

anttitapani   www.dpreview.com

#196 To Flourish amid Complexity, Ambiguity, Liminality & Constant Change

     We have a natural aversion to complexity, ambiguity, liminality - to moving targets in general. It must be a hangover from our reptilian past - we just love quick, simple (even simple-minded), clear-cut decisive action. However, our world is infinitely complex and constantly changing.
     No wonder so many seek refuge and willingly become brainwashed in simplistic dogmatic black-or-white worldviews - "you're either with us, or against us". Ambiguity intolerance is characteristic of an adolescent level of development - high school cliques, bullying etc. Many of us never grow out of this. Adults elect leaders who give instant "witty" (sarcastic) responses to complex questions or criticisms - not exactly a sign of wisdom.
     Many of us go towards the other extreme - willingly remaining perpetually confused. Facing reality can be deferred for an entire lifetime. There are endless distractions to help keep one mindlessly entertained.
     Clear seeing, accepting ALL of reality, as it is, including the difficult, complex and ambiguous aspects, requires sober responsible maturity. Welcome to real adult life!
     In mindfulness we learn to become accurately aware of what's going on around us and within us. Only when we perceive clearly can we respond appropriately - to help instead of hinder, to decrease instead of increase suffering.