We often are tempted to identify strongly with the mini movies or stories that are continually running in our heads. However, like the changing weathers of these last few weeks, many come and simply pass away.
We usually take ourselves to be the sum of these thoughts, ideas, emotions and body sensations, but there is nothing solid to them. How can we claim to be our thoughts or opinions or emotions or body when they never stay the same?
Jack Kornfield
Work can be fast and relentless: pressing deadlines, looming goals, endless meetings; email, phone calls, “to do” lists. At times we can feel out of control, as if driving a car with no breaks, rushing through our jobs holding onto difficult turns, cutting corners, racing through an occasional red light. We might even say to ourselves at the end of the day: “Hey, what just happened – I just spent my whole day at a job without noticing any of it!”….When we are mindful of our job’s speed and hecticness, we take a subtle step: we actually slow down in order to notice how fast we are going. By simply observing the speed mindfully, we have tapped the breaks, so to speak, and slowed down just a bit.
Michael Carroll, Awake at Work
Awareness of sensations is considered the first foundation of mindfulness because whatever we experience — feelings, emotions, thoughts and sensory perceptions — also arise as sensations in our body. When mindful of our body, we open to the changing stream of sensations without grasping or resistance. The experience might be fear or joy, it might be the intensity of aliveness, or it might be numbness. ….This mindfulness is not a distanced kind of witnessing. […] we should “observe sensations within sensations.” This means not imagining our hand, for instance, but actually directly feeling from the inside the energy that is our hand, as it is in any given and changing moment. We are training to experience the body from the inside out.
Tara Brach, Letting Life Live through us
When your mind is reeling in confusion,
breathe deeply into the centre of your chest.
Connecting to the core of your being this way extends loving kindness to yourself ,
even when there is none in sight.
Ezra Bayda
I have heard it said that 90 percent of getting along well in life is in showing up for it. I’d add to that thought – showing up fully in each moment. Being present is not just present in body alone but in body and clear mind…We may acknowledge at some level that all the moments in our lives are teachers, but we don’t always want to meet the teacher., so we seek sometimes to control or regulate our experience in a variety of ways. If we have any hope of being free from the habitual swings of our reactions, if we have any wish to live more openly and freely, if we see to, as writer Barbara Kingsolver says “look life in the eye and love it back” then we need to take a look at what is clouding our view.
Diane Eshin Rizzetto, Waking up to what you Do
Breathing is a means of awakening and maintaining full attention in order to look carefully and deeply to see the nature of things. But sometimes we try very hard to practice to remember to breathe. “Breathe, my dear” is like a gentle voice …reminding us to come back to ourselves with awareness of our breathing. It can give us comfort to practice to take it easy, gently, slowly.
Thich Nhat Hahn
