Tag Archives: Be fully present

Noticing ordinary perfection

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To overcome perfectionism, you’d have to learn to accept reality for what it is at any given moment. I can imagine the objections: ” What? Accept the reality as it is? You must be kidding me!” Not at all. There are two reasons to accept reality as it is. First, there is no other reality at any given point in time than the one that there is. We can think of things being different from how they are at this period in time, but this hypothetically better, ideal reality exists only in our minds. In reality, there is just reality. So what is there to accept but this? The second reason for accepting the present reality as it is? It’s already perfect.

Pavel Somov, Present Perfect

Gentle holding

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It took a long time for the analytical world to look at the importance of the way a baby is held, and yet when you come to think of it, this is of primary importance. The question of holding brings up the whole issue of human reliability.  

Winnicott

By not stopping our thoughts and feelings in meditation, we are paving the way for gentle ways of being with our experience. When thoughts are intentionally cut off, that is often an act of harming. if it is done aggressively, even with a miniscule amount of force, it supports and furthers the tendency to get rid of thoughts rather than to get to know them.  Our ability to get to know our thoughts and feelings depends on our ability to stay with them,  and staying with them depends on our capacity not to get rid of them. Holding our experience gently, thoughts and feeling come and go in their own time.

Jason Siff, Unlearning Meditation

Not going anywhere in life

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I have tried to stress the critical importance of the non-dual aspect of meditation by emphasizing that it is not about getting anywhere else. This of course immediately brings up a lot of bewilderment in people, because almost everything we do seems to be about trying to get somewhere else. Why on earth would you not want to get somewhere else? If you’re in a lot of pain, or if you have some kind of illness or whatever, you always want to get back to where you were, or get to some better place in the future. It sounds almost un-American just to settle for what is, but that is a misunderstanding of the potential for living in the present moment. It’s not a matter of settling. It’s a matter of recognizing that, in some sense, it never gets any better than this.

Jon Kabat Zinn.

No need to journey

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Sometimes we take quite a journey – physically or mentally or emotionally – when the very love and happiness we want so much can be found by just sitting down. We spend our lives searching for something we think we don’t have, something that will make us happy. But the key to our deepest happiness lies in changing our vision of where to seek it. As the great Japanese poet and Zen master Hakuin said, “Not knowing how near the Truth is, people seek it far away. What a pity! They are like one who, in the midst of water, cries out in thirst so imploringly.”

Sharon Salzberg, Lovingkindness