Category: Practice Tips

In the traditional calendar of the Church this week is the last week of the year, and this evening, as light fades, the New Year begins. This older calendar probably measures time closer to the natural seasons and the rhythm of nature, even though this year, on a beautiful late autumn day like today, winter seems quite far away.

As in many other areas of life, we have a choice as to how to see and use our time. One understanding of time at this period of the year suggests that that there is not enough of it, that we need to hurry up now, that there is a lot to be done to prepare for the holiday celebrations. Today the shops were full with people, as the Christmas shopping festival makes its demands on our use of time. On the other hand, the traditonal church calendar and the way of nature suggests that this is a period to slow down, reflect and restore.

One way or the other we have to find a way to punctuate time and place value on how we use it. Like many I know, I struggle constantly to find a way to nurture my inner life while at the same time juggling time pressure in the face of the various demands of work life. It is easy to commit ourselves to this culture’s insistence on product and action until it exhausts us and we forget why we even do them in the first place. We tell ourselves that things are too hectic and that we need rest. We say that we will do better tomorrow and we do not.

One way of staying grounded in the face of our busy lives is the familiarity of routine. Routine connects us to one essential thing, our place in the universe. Morning and evening, season by season, year after year we watch the sun rise and set, beginnings and endings follow on one another inevitably. To establish a routine of meditation allows us resist the demands of more pressing events. The hard fact is that nobody really has time for meditation. The time has to be made. There will always be more something more pressing to do, something more important than the apparantly wasted time of mediation. Our focus is not on how to feel right for meditation, or whether we are too busy or whether we can meditate correctly but to just show up and meditate. Period. How else can we work out the real meaning of time? If it is just for rushing and work, what will we do when work is done? What is the point of leading a useful, successful life, if we do not live a meaningful one?

To live each day as if it were your last, you would be trying to remedy all the mistakes you had made,

If you live each day as if it were your first, you are freed from all obligations, all guilt, all the regrets, all the things unsaid.

Katrina Repka & Alan Finger Breathing Space for the Modern Woman

A new MBSR Course starts this evening, and as always I am looking forward to meeting new people and to working with them on developing the day-to-day practice of mindfulness. Starting a new Course always stimulates me, because it brings me back to starting again, with fresh eyes, a collective ongoing work. I am exploring again, in an intensive way, a familiar terrain. It is not just the work of those who are starting the Course, it is my work also.

It renews my day to day life, because daily practice is an ongoing laboratory for examining my mind and my life. And they are always changing. So meditation is a starting over, a new beginning, every time I sit down. The introductory words said tonight can be freshly applied every day: No matter how many times your mind wanders, simply go back to noticing your breath, without making any judgments. In other words, Don’t be too interested in how well you are doing. Be interested in how well you start over.

It is the same in our lives outside of formal practice. We make intentions to change, to have a new beginning. And often we fail. However, we base our confidence to change on a gentle attitude toward ourselves. When we get lost we simply say, “I will start over again”, without judgment, thus avoiding the negative energy of blame and returning to the present moment. In this way we cultivate faith and confidence and move toward the future.

I had a very stimulating discussion today with my Supervisor from the Centre for Training in Mindfulness at the University of Massachusetts.

Part of it focused on the way that Mindfulness practice does not explicitly focus on making us happy, unlike some other programmes out there, but rather emphasizes living with the life we actually have. In other words, we are not deliberately working to make our pains and our problems go away, as if they get in the way of us experiencing our real life.

Rather, they are our real life as it is unfolding now.

What mindfulness does is allow us to relate to the difficulties of life in a new way. Relating kindly, with curiosity, even welcoming.