#750 Comfortable Numbness vs Authenticity

     "To break through our comfort, our ease, our behavioral patterns, our habits, the power of our environmental instructions that we all receive from childhood to the present. It takes something powerful to cut through that and get our attention. 
     I often think of Tolstoy's novella that was published in 1885, 'The Death of Ivan Ilyich.' Ivan Ilyich is a common name, sort of like John Johnson, and it's about a person who lived wholly according to the dictates of his time and place. He went to the right school, he espoused the right attitudes, he married the right person, he lived in the right neighborhood, he practiced the career ladder. Nothing ever interrupted the flow of his life as it was supposed to be, until one day he has a pain in his side. The pain doesn't go away, and it turns out to be a terminal illness. After going through the five stages that Kubler-Ross later identified in the 20th century of denial first, and then anger at the interruption, and then bargaining, and then despair, he reaches acceptance in the final hours of his life. After he passes away, everybody around him is indifferent because it was about John Johnson, not about me. 
     Of course, what Tolstoy was suggesting is, again, here's a person who got his appointment, and paradoxically, probably lived a more authentic life in those final days and hours than all the rest of those years put together. (see 'Post-Traumatic Growth' literature)
     So it is for all of us: there's so much of our life that's routinized, and patterned, and goal directed—again, often good goals. At the same time, the psyche has another point of view, and when it wishes to, it will break through. I think [the word] 'summons' is both reflecting the intensity of that encounter with one's own soul, and also that it brings with it an accountability. If you get a summons from a court or a lawyer, you have to pay attention, and if you don't pay attention, there are going to be consequences."

James Hollis: "A Summons to a Deeper Life." 65min interview (podcast) with Tami Simon.
https://www.soundstrue.com/store/weeklywisdom?page=single&category=IATE&episode=13007&utm_source=bronto&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=N180304-WW&utm_content=This+Week:+Featuring+James+Hollis,+Joanna+Macy,+and+Karen+Brody

awakeningartsacademy.com

#623 Sanity 101 - From Trance to Agency

     We're surprisingly often caught in the momentum of a trance. Something triggers the memory of an old, meaningful event (pleasant or unpleasant), and we suddenly:
          • Overreact (our "button was pushed");
          • Freeze, become incapacitated by anxiety / fear;
          • Simply zone out, off in an imaginary world.
     Too often we don't engage appropriately with life, in real time. This seriously compromises our character, quality of life, and efficacy.

     Mindfulness practice helps us quickly recognize when we're "off" ie inappropriate to our present situation. We strengthen "the muscle" that efficiently, seamlessly brings our attention back to right here, right now, thus stabilizing concentration. Continuous awareness of, and appropriately responding to one's current circumstances, is the very basis of sanity.

#552 The Greatest Risk of All

     "There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction."          John F. Kennedy

     I'll never forget the video clip I saw on TV of an old donkey that labored all its life drawing water from a well, by walking in a circle, pushing a long pole. When it was old and spent, they untied the donkey. What did it do? It kept walking in a circle.
     In large poultry operations, chickens are kept their entire lives in a tiny cage, laying eggs or rapidly fattening-up for slaughter. Quality of life - for chickens, farm workers, & consumers - is efficiently minimized to maximize rapid profit. Most of us, much like the chickens, don't know & don't care. Work, eat, sleep, die - comfortable inaction of "a life unexamined".

     There are healthy alternatives! We can intentionally become more aware, more conscious - buy free-range chicken, free-range eggs, we can become vegetarian, we can become vegan. We do NOT have to go along with every dysfunctional consumer trend like zombies!

     "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."          Henry David Thoreau
 
     While it's very easy to become "comfortably numb" from routine work, especially in a consumer society, our quality of life depends on our creativity & other aspects of our evolving consciousness. We don't have to physically go elsewhere, but do have to WAKE UP!
     We can & must live an "undivided life" - from our deepest core values. Nothing else is worth our life!

#410 Direct Engagement with Life

     Whenever our immediate perception of what's in front of us, or within us, is less than 100% accurate, then our response - our behavior - has to be proportionately inappropriate. Most of the time, our perception is distorted by our emotional attachment to memories of past ups or downs, which in turn project cravings or fears into our future. In this manner, our perception of reality ie what's actually happening right now, right here, is distorted - partially or completely hidden from us. We're continuously reliving past fantasies or nightmares (even though our memory of events is continuously revised ie is inaccurate). So quite literally, most of us live in a trance most of the time.
     The sooner we become aware of this terrible waste of our "one brief & precious life", the more seriously we practice to become mindful - to wake up to seeing things as they are, and behaving appropriately, kindly.

     See: http://mindfulnessforeveryone.blogspot.ca/2012/06/141-reminders-to-prioritize.html

Dale Chihuly   http://www.chihulygardenandglass.com/

#389 Trance & Unfiltered Reality

     "People are not simply in or out of trance, but are constantly moving from one trance to another. We have our work trances, our relationship trances, and our parenting trances. Some of these states are useful and appropriate; others are not." Bandler R. Richard Bandler's Guide to Trance-formation: How to Harness the Power of Hypnosis to Ignite Effortless and Lasting Change. HCI, 2008.

     The first two sentences are supported by research:
     "studies on attentiveness show that people are only briefly and unpredictably attentive. Attention habitually diverts to unrelated thoughts and feelings, leaving any task at hand to be managed 'on autopilot.' These studies suggest that mindlessness ('mind wandering,' 'zoning out,' 'task-unrelated thought') is 'one of the most ubiquitous and pervasive of all cognitive phenomena' and that it often occurs unintentionally, without awareness, occupies a substantial proportion of our day, and leads to failures in task performance."        Lovas JG, Lovas DA, Lovas PM. Mindfulness and Professionalism in Dentistry. J Dent Educ 2008; 72(9): 998-1009.

     However, involuntary trance is no more "useful and appropriate" than being addicted to drugs or to any other constant filter between people and reality. I say 'involuntary', because clinical hypnosis is a powerful and very useful therapeutic intervention - as is the short-term use of narcotics for acute pain. But who (besides an addict) would normalize, or especially advocate, daily use of narcotics as a way of life?

     See also: http://mindfulnessforeveryone.blogspot.ca/2012/03/65-embracing-full-catastrophe.html
     and: http://healthyhealers.blogspot.ca/2013/04/fear-avoidance-ineffective-existential.html

Award-winning photo by Stuart Gibson

#376 Embracing Our One Precious Life

     People commonly mistake meditation practice for self-hypnosis - a way to escape real life by going into a trance & hang out in "a happy place".

     But meditation is the exact opposite of escaping reality. Meditation is a gentle way of waking up, with eyes, mind & heart wide open, and embracing reality every bit of it - joys, sorrows, as well as regular daily aspects - "the full catastrophe". To give our real life a grizzly-bear hug with a thundering 'YES!' from every cell in our body.

     So we should be aware of the "temptation, and inherent danger, of focusing exclusively on the positive aspects of self-development, whilst ignoring the challenges, struggles and losses which were also part of the growth process. Even the field of positive psychology acknowledges that nobody is happy all the time, that subjective well being is a mixture of both positive affect and negative affect and that whilst profound personal growth may occur during adulthood, it is often preceded by adversity or trauma. ... a psychological account which can embrace these contrasting aspects of change could enhance our understanding of the processes of growth." 

       Mercer J. Exploring the processes of self-development encountered by adult returners to higher education: A lifespan psychology perspective. Psychology Teaching Review 2010; 16(1): 24-36.

#2 Getting started

     Reflecting on what motivates you to train in mindfulness is worthwhile.
     Mindfulness requires time, and initially, an investment of energy just to see if it will be as valuable as you first thought.
     Many today start practicing mindfulness because of its well-documented effectiveness in "self-regulation" ie managing stress, anxiety, depression, chronic pain, etc. The initial intention is often to get rid of a problem.
 
Common MISCONCEPTIONS about mindfulness:
     It is NOT about escaping reality, zoning out, or even having reduced levels of alertness / consciousness / engagement. Mindfulness involves sustained, continuous, equanimous awareness.
     It’s NEITHER a hypnotic trance, NOR hypervigilance. Mindfulness is more like the calm, stable quality of awareness a dentist experiences while receiving dental care. She has calm, clear, detailed awareness throughout the procedure, without anxiety or drowsiness.
      Mindfulness training – and self-care in general – are NOT self-centered, selfish acts, quite the opposite. Our personal well-being “… is essential for the health of society ... growing evidence suggests ... that performance is intimately tied to emotional well-being, sense of community, sense of meaning and purpose, emotional regulation, self-reflection, and so forth.” Hart 2009