Yoga is the settling of the mind into silence.
When the mind has settled, we are
established in our essential nature, which is unbounded consciousness.
Our essential nature is usually overshadowed by the activity of the mind.
Yoga Sutras of Patanjali
The basic definition of meditation is “having a steady mind.” In meditation, when your thoughts go up, you don’t go up, and you don’t go down when your thoughts go down. Whether your thoughts are good or bad, exciting or boring, blissful or miserable, you let them be. You don’t accept some and reject others. You have a sense of greater space that encompasses any thought that may arise.
Chögyam Trungpa, Shambala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior
You cannot avoid paradise.
You can only avoid seeing it.
Charlotte Joko Beck
Our moods can be strong at times, and may be so at times today, but they are not the most reliable place to look if we want to get a true picture of our own worth or of what to do. In the long-term they rarely give correct messages about our lasting happiness.They frequently get in the way of us experiencing what is happening directly, and we lose a lot of the richness which is before us each day, as we are caught in these strong internal states.
Moods come with grand words and general ideas, but as intelligences they are less than we are, prone to think in terms of the best and the worst, and to make unnecessary comparisons that squeeze out life. At sunset there is no best or worst..….. A mood can only remove us from the evening’s sharpness. It is common to think of moods and despairs as genuinely earned and as part of our personality but that is their deception – they are propaganda from the Ministry of Despair and the Department of Grandiosity. When Psyche turns away from them, when the meditation continues to plod humbly along, these moods, like other old advertisements, wither and grow stale.
John Tarrant, The Light inside the Dark
On the same theme as recent posts, but applying it as a practical way of dealing with the stresses and crises that arise during our working day. This is an easy-to-apply way of breaking the cycle of stress reactivity – divert your attention to your physical environment, like the touch of your hands on the keyboard, your breathing, or your feet in contact with the floor. See if you can create a small break from the spinning of the mind by tuning into the sensations of the body.
To gain composure at stressful moments, we can apply the mindfulness effort of letting go – abruptly shifting our attention from our thoughts to the immediacy of our physical environment. By suddenly being mindful in this way, we discover a stillness, an emotional space of “not knowing” , like opening a door to an unknown room or leaping from a diving board. When we are mindful in the immediate moment, the chaotic flood of emotions no longer vies for our attention like a crowd of loud, unruly voices. Instead they focus and settle into a physical feeling, unclear and murky, but no less powerful – a tickle in the stomach, a vague softness around the heart, or an openenss in the throat.
Michael Carroll, At Times of Risk and Stress, Cultivate Stillness
We all have stuck places, and generally we know them, yet we remain stuck. Why? Does knowledge not make it possible to become unstuck? Yes and no. We remain stuck because beneath the surface our stuckness is wired to a complex. When we approach that stuck place, we activate energies below the visual range, and they in turn fuel the engines of anxiety. This anxiety has the power to flood the ego and shut down alternative choices. We are not aware this internal governance system has just usurped our lives, but we feel immediately more comfortable that it has. This wiring, which connects anxiety with ego, always has its origin in the past, often a disempowered past. This circuitry, which imposes history into the present, is why we stay stuck. By implication, getting unstuck demands that one be willing to bear the anxiety occasioned by the invisible circuitry beneath consciousness.
James Hollis, On this Journey we Call Our Life
