#184 Agency - direct and indirect methods

     Why are movies full of shooting and explosions so immensely popular? A small part in all of us - admit it! - dreams of definitively eliminating our difficulties - to "nuke them back into the stone-age!" Of course, difficulties are difficulties for the very reason that they're not so simple to get rid of.
     Human beings are very attached to approaches to solving problems - particularly simple(-minded) direct approaches. Warfare is a great example. How long have we been massacring each other? How many wars are going on right now? "And how's that working for you?" we should ask the combatants - or not. I once suggested to a friend, while we were having dinner, that warfare in the middle East was not helpful. She became so upset at that suggestion that she had to leave!
      "Grandmotherly love" is a wonderful influence on a toddler, and is equally effective at any age. This is nurturing - an indirect approach - akin to supplying all the vital ingredients for a seed in the soil to grow into a healthy flower. Nurturing takes time, patience, love and above all, wisdom. It works wonderfully.
     Can we intentionally let go of (most of) our much-loved impatient ineffective direct approaches, and cultivate our inherent wisdom?

#183 Motivation to practice mindfulness

     Most folks get into mindfulness in order to manage - get away from - stress. Another motivator is to get away from themselves, their situation, and "go to a happy place".
     But the more we desire, the more fixated we are about, and the more quickly we want to reach a specific goal, the less likely we are to succeed! This applies to any method, not just mindfulness. Why? Because the state of being rigidly goal-oriented is fundamentally incompatible with the method used to achieve it. To achieve most goals, one needs to be curios, open and fully engage with a new process, (at least temporarily) ignoring the goal.
     A gardener provides all of the conditions - good soil, water, sunshine, fertilizer, seeds - knowing that the plants will grow just fine - a natural result. So too in mindfulness practice, we learn to loosen our death-grip on what we want, and instead, learn to relax, and simply engage in the practice, letting benefits arise on their own.

#182 A shift in consciousness

     Daily we do, say and think things that we regret instantly or up to decades later. As our mindfulness practice matures, we notice our errors of judgment sooner and sooner. Also, the manner in which we notice them becomes less harshly judgmental. It starts to feel less like a body blow, more like observing a common unavoidable event.
     The shift from erring on autopilot to noticing the error from our innate, but underdeveloped, mature, evolved, Homo sapiens sapiens perspective, becomes progressively more subtle and effortless.
     We learn to feel the difference between being on reptilian autopilot and mature human - like the difference between driving while drowsy and driving while relaxed yet fully alert.
     On autopilot, errors are indeed common and unavoidable. The more sustained our mindfulness, the less likely the errors. Mindfulness gradually becomes our new operating system as we drive down the highway of life.

Photo: fulviavecchia   www.dpreview.com

#181 Healthy Psychosocial Maturation, Evolution of Consciousness - Why We Practice Mindfulness

     The purpose of mindfulness practice is to grow in wisdom. It's an intentional journey of learning and understanding. Mindfulness practice provides ideal conditions for our consciousness to mature, evolve:

• from stuck in the past & future toward dynamic presence 
• from self-centered reactivity toward altruistic response to others’ needs 
• from “I can’t handle this” toward increasing abilities to manage complexity, ambiguity & difficulty (ie real life) with competence & composure
• from rigidity & cynicism toward psychological flexibility, acceptance, humor & joy 

Lake Winnipeg, Gimli, Manitoba

#180 Courage to open

     “Despite how risky love is, how easily we are hurt, none of us can run from risking the dangerous shoals of love, compassion, and openness to others [and to ourselves], lest we live a sterile, unrelated life, locked within the constricted frames of our history and our comfort zones. The paradox of relationship will always be that rather than solve our problems for us, relationship brings us new problems, new complexities, but that we also grow immensely from these problems, these complexities. In short, the greatest gift of relationship proves to be that as the result of encountering each other, we are obliged to grow larger than we had planned.”

        Hollis J. What matters most. Living a more considered life. Gotham Books, NY, 2009.

"Stone Pears" 2003 by Artist: Nancy Camden Witt http://www.crossmillgallery.com/nancy.html

#179 Mind - Identity or Instrument?

     The default assumption for many is that the content of the mind ie self-talk and other habits of mind IS one's identity - who they fundamentally are. Yet we get sick and tired of both our own mental chatter as well as our habitual ways of thinking about things and seeing the world. Hence, "a change is as good as a rest"; how we enjoy traveling to another country, where we tend to see things from a different perspective. We keep outgrowing our own worldviews (unless we freeze in our tracks due to fear, laziness, lack of imagination or psychopathology).
     A healthy human adult is able to observe her own self-talk and thought patterns with some degree of objectivity and recognize if it still serves her long-term interests or not. If not, she can let go of the current worldview, and construct a new, more satisfactory one.
     Looking at oneself like this is referred to as introspection. Upgrading one's worldview is at least as critical to an individual as upgrading an operating system is to a computer.

Gimli, Lake Winnipeg, Manitoba

 

#178 Why should I meditate?

     Why should one take the time to sit down and "do nothing", when one could be doing countless other things that may be fun, necessary to do, or just a meaningless diversion?
     It's people who in some way realize that their life could be better, deeper, richer, more rewarding, that make the effort to experience a qualitative shift - who go beyond the status quo. But there's a strong tendency to remain stuck, even when life is far from ideal.
     Deep down, most humans are restless for a better life. Meditation is the time-tested means of nurturing and personally experiencing the evolution of one's own consciousness. It's safe, gentle, and works.
     No dogma, no leaving your intellect at the door when you enter. Meditation is training to come out of our common trance-like day-by-day existence - to wake up and live fully alive!

Hay bales, Manitoba, Canada