Tag: Meditation

Why we miss real understanding

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When time is reduced to linear progress,

it is emptied of presence.

John O’Donoghue

Sunday Quote

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There is a time for departure

even when there’s no certain place to go.

Tennessee Williams

Nothing new here: Stress is bad for you….

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A new study confirms what most of us already know. High stress is bad for us and is linked to cardiovascular death even if we do not have a  pre-existing cardiovascular problem. The study, published in The Endocrine Society’s Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM), shows that the stress hormone cortisol is released when we speed up and are under pressure and its purpose is to help the body recover from stress and regain a state of balance. However, when the stress is persistent, ongoing and chronic, an elevated level of cortisol  is maintained and this, paradoxically, is associated with cardiovascular risk factors. In other words, as we learn about in the MBSR Programme, the body’s own stress response system can become a problem when it remains switched on in response to deep ongoing stress.

Nicole Vogelzangs,  from the  VU University Medical Center in The Netherlands,  states: “Previous studies have suggested that cortisol might increase the risk of cardiovascular mortality, but until now, no study had directly tested this hypothesis“. The results of our study clearly show that cortisol levels in a general older population predict cardiovascular death, but not other causes of mortality.”

So creating a gap in the ongoing rush of your day and paying attention to your life is not just a nice option, but is crucial for your ongoing health. Then,  developing adaptive ways to work with the stress in your life, rather than simplistically wishing to escape to a stress-free world, is the next step. These ways could include looking at your diet, doing exercise such as walking or yoga, structuring your week so as to get some time in nature, making time just for yourself, and developing a meditation practice. If you click on the “Stress ” Category in the blog or on the “Effects of Mindfulness” you will find more posts or research on this subject.

Not always seeking something new

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And, again, a similar theme to those over the last two days, this time in the beautiful book by John Tarrant, The Light Inside the Dark:

Repetition is narrow, and, if undertaken mechanically, stifles us, but it can also allow us to go deep. In meditation we repeat ourselves day after day, coming back to the stillness and the breath, and again and again realize that we haven’t yet experienced it completely, that it is ever more subtle. Repetition, when done right, drifts almost imperceptibly into vast, new realms, but with a slowness that allows for deepening, beauty, the appreciation of the neglected moment. It stabilizes our relation to eternity.

A long conversation

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We sometimes mistakingly think that life will unfold magically in a flash, or that we will be born mature and fully developed, just as Athena sprung from the head of Zeus. It would be nice if we saw clearly, immediately, our path and role, but that would take away a lot of the lessons we gain from slowly finding out or from taking wrong turns. Life is, rather, a slow process, a long conversation and dialogue, where we do not often see clearly and are always searching,  as this beautiful Mary Oliver poem reminds us:

Another morning and I wake with thirst
for the goodness I do not have. I walk
out to the pond and all the way God has
given us such beautiful lessons. Oh Lord,
I was never a quick scholar but sulked
and hunched over my books past the hour
and the bell; grant me, in your mercy,
a little more time. Love for the earth
and love for you are having such a long
conversation in my heart. Who knows what
will finally happen or where I will be sent,
yet already I have given a great many things
away, expecting to be told to pack nothing,
except the prayers which, with this thirst,
I am slowly learning.

Mary Oliver, Thirst, Beacon Press, 2006

It’s not out there

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We have a habit of looking in the wrong place for contentment. We tend to look outside ourselves, seeing others’ lives and other places as possessing a greater level of happiness than we currently possess. This often leads us to instinctively compare, provoking a movement within us that happens in a flash and then prompts the telling of a story about ourselves and about life, which leads to our mood going down. As I have written before, we end up comparing our present self to a better self, or to the ideal portrayal of lives which we find in society or which our insecurities about ourselves have generated. We find that a lot of our anxieties arise because we are trying to match up to what we think our life “should” be like, or what others portray as being happy.

It is easy to fall into this trap when we travel. We see a different from of life, maybe faster and more “exciting” than our own, or houses situated in a better location, or places of quiet that seem much more peaceful than where we live. So we lean towards those things, or we leave ourselves, not realizing that true contentment is found within. We get caught in idealized views of what is possible for ourselves and travel far in our minds and in our spirits from where we actually are. And this often means we end up thinking that something must be wrong with our  lives or with us.

Meditation practice is a training in learning to stay, staying with ourselves, not running outside ourselves after every passing stimulus about things which will pass away. It helps us to not attach too much solidity to these comparing thoughts, letting them pass through our minds without hooking on to them. We realize that they do not bring the contentment they seem to suggest. It helps us seek real happiness within, where we already are.

The primary focus of this path of choosing wisely…is learning to stay present. Pausing very briefly, frequently throughout the day, is an almost effortless way to do this. For just a few seconds we can be right here. Meditation is another way to train in learning to stay or…learning to come back, to return to the present over and over again.

Pema Chodron, Taking the Leap