Awareness – Page 503 – Mindfulbalance

Grey days

November 9, 2011November 9, 2011 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

The past few days have dawned quite grey, and this has hardly lifted at all during the course of the day. Like all other types of weather this can be a useful metaphor for the mind. We frequently fall into the trap of thinking that we see things directly and clearly, when rather it is truer to say that we see them through the filters of our mental and emotional conditioning. For example, we often expand a lot of energy worrying about future events, many of which never came to pass in the manner imagined. It is as Mark Twain said, “I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened”. However this does not prevent us from believing that we see the clearly what is going to happen, when in actual fact we am looking through the fog of our own interests and fears. This means a lot of our energy goes into not what is actually happening in that moment, but into the anticipations of what may happen in the future.

One of the reasons for meditation is the cultivation of clear seeing. We practice meditation to strengthen our ability to pay attention to this moment instead of getting lost in the fog that we’re usually in. It is one way of trying to see the world clearly, and not getting stuck in the wanderings of our minds, no matter what is the changing “weather” of our moods or experiences. To do this we try to sit under all kinds of circumstances, whether we are well or sick, whether we’re in a good mood or down, whether we feel our meditation is going well or is completely falling apart. In this way we develop a consistency. and see that meditation is rather about staying with ourselves, in this moment, no mater what that is like. Clear seeing starts with becoming aware of some of the habitual patterns in our thinking, our defense mechanisms, and the ways we rehearse life, rather than live it directly

“This is an essential discovery: our experience of life and the world is strongly flavoured by our own internal cycles of mental weather – sunny, foggy, rainy, sunny, misty, cloudy – and around and around we go: jealous, proud, anxious, craving, excited, deflated. When we look closely we see that we have deeply ingrained habits of distracting ourselves from the present.”

Gaylon Ferguson Natural Wakefulness

Being with our experiential body

November 8, 2011November 9, 2011 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche talked about mindfulness meditation as a process of “touch and go.” “Touch” means really acknowledging, really appreciating, the texture of a particular mental content, not just bouncing off of it. It is the difference between a gentle squeeze and a superficial tap. This touching, acknowledging, appreciating, is the seed for developing insight — a way of being present to phenomena that invites fresh meanings to emerge. Because Westerners tend to be more split off from the experiential body than people in more traditional cultures, the practice …..can facilitate our ability to touch genuinely what arises in the mind-heart in a non-discursive way. As Pema Chodron recently advised a questioner with doubts about her meditation practice, “There is a secret ingredient — direct, nonverbal experience.”

David Rome, Searching for the Truth that Is Far Below the Search

Breaking down our identification with what is passing…

November 7, 2011November 5, 2011 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Awareness watches the sensations that occur with the natural coming and going of the breath. When we bring attention to the level of sensation, we are not so entangled in the verbal level where all the voices of thought hold sway, usually lost in the “internal dialogue.” The internal dialogue is always commenting and judging and planning. It contains a lot of thoughts of self, a lot of self-consciousness. It blocks the light of our natural wisdom; it limits our seeing who we are; it makes a lot of noise and attracts our attention to a fraction of the reality in which we exist. But when the awareness is one-pointedly focused on the coming and going of the breath, all the other aspects of the mind/body process come automatically, clearly into focus as they arise. Meditation puts us into direct contact – which means direct experience – with more of who we are.

We see how thoughts we took to be “me” or “mine” are just an ongoing process. This perspective helps break our deep identification with the seeming solid reality of the movie of the mind. As we become less engrossed in the melodrama, we see it’s just flow, and can watch it all as it passes. We are not even drawn into the action by the passing of a judgmental comment or an agitated moment of impatience. When we simply see – moment to moment – what’s occurring, observing without judgment or preference, we don’t get lost thinking, “I prefer this moment to that moment, I prefer this pleasant thought to that pain in my knee.” As we begin developing this choiceless awareness, what starts coming within the field of awareness is quite remarkable: we start seeing the root from which thought arises.

Stephen Levine, A Gradual Awakening

This Sunday, stop, be aimless…..

November 6, 2011November 7, 2011 Karl Duffy1 Comment

Does the rose have to do something? No, the purpose of a rose is to be a rose. Your purpose is to be yourself. You don’t have to run anywhere to become someone else. You are wonderful just the way you are. We already have everything we are looking for, everything we want to become. Just be. Just being in the moment in this place is the deepest practice of meditation. The Heart Sutra says that there is “nothing to attain.” We don’t need to search anywhere. We don’t need to practice to obtain some high position. We can enjoy every moment. People talk about entering nirvana, but we are already there. We have everything we need to make the present moment the happiest in our life, even if we have a cold or a headache. We don’t have to wait until we get over our cold to be happy. Having a cold is part of life. I am happy in the present moment. I do not ask for anything else. I do not expect any additional happiness. Aimlessness is stopping and realizing the happiness that is already available.