Tag: Mindfulness

Two ways of working with our fear

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A quotation from Pema Chodron –  in the same theme as posts from the last few days – on our need to turn towards the fundamental groundlessness which exists in life and in our hearts. The actual practice is outlined here –  becoming aware of how fear manifests itself in our body and trying to stay with that, rather than moving into stories of blame or defectiveness. 

Raw fear initially emerges as a dot in space, as a doorway that can go either way.  If we choose to take notice of the actual experience of fear, whether it is just a queasy feeling in our stomach or actual terror, whether it is a subtle level of discomfort or mind-numbing dramatic anxiety, we can smile at it, believe it or not. It could be a literal smile or a metaphor for coming to know fear, turning towards fear, touching fear. In that case, rather than fear setting off a chain reaction where you are trying to protect yourself from it, it becomes a source of tenderness. We experience our vulnerability, but we don’t feel that we have to harden ourselves in response…We’re all very familiar with the experience of fear escalating, or the experience of running away from fear. But have we ever taken the time to truly touch our fear, to be present with it and experience it fully?  Do we know what it might mean to smile at fear?

Pema Chodron, Smile at Fear

New to Mindfulness Practice 8 : Passing through the mind

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Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky.

Conscious breathing is my anchor

Thich Nhat Hahn

Moving into disorder

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In human beings there is a constant tension between order and disorder, connectedness and loneliness, evolution and revolution, security and insecurity. Our universe is constantly evolving: the old order gives way to a new order and this in its turn crumbles when the next order appears. It is no different in our lives in the movement from birth to death. Change of one sort or another is the essence of life… when we try to prevent the forward movement of life, we may succeed for a while… but inevitably there is an explosion.

To be human is to create sufficient order so that we can move on into insecurity and seeming disorder.

In this way we discover the new.

Jean Vanier, Becoming Human

New to Mindfulness Practice 7: Drop the commentary

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When we practice meditation, we express confidence in the simple yet powerful gesture of opening to whatever arises during our meditation session.  We discover that the practice requires that we sit still on the cushion, letting go of our internal dialogue, opening to our world — very simply, very directly.

When we examine this experience of opening, we find that we are expressing a part of ourselves that we may tend to overlook: we are expressing our ability to trust ourselves completely. In order to open — in meditation and in life in general — we must let go of our familiar thoughts and emotions, we must step out from behind the safe curtain of our inner rehearsals and onto the stage of reality, even if it’s for just a brief moment. When we open on the cushion, we renounce our attachment to our emotional security blanket, over and over again. We drop our pretense and our story lines and stand naked in the midst of uncertainty — the very essence of confidence itself.

Michael Carroll,  Bringing Spiritual Confidence to the Workplace

Accepting our emptiness

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Following on from yesterday’s post, and applying it to our notions of psychological growth and maturity. Just as in nature, we need to be able to tolerate – and stop fighting with – the complexity,  disruptions, reversals and emptiness which are part of the normal human condition, and stop seeing them as unusual or as enemies to growth. In this way we move away from trying to get rid of them,  to accepting and authenticating them.

In our zeal to eliminate the ghosts of our childhood, to nourish the empty places of emotional insufficiency and to achieve the pinnacle of psychological development…we were treating feelings of emptiness as something that needed to be fixed and cured, and therefore losing the ground upon which we rest. Our aversion to emptiness is such that we have become experts at explaining it away, distancing ourselves from it, or assigning blame for its existence on the past or on the faults of others. We contaminate it with our personal histories and expect that it will disappear when we have resolved our personal problems. Thus. Western psychologists are trained to understand a report of emptiness as indicative of a deficiency in someone’s emotional upbringing, a defect in character, a defense against overwhelming feelings of aggression, or as a stand-in for feelings of inadequacy. Since most of us share one or more of these traits, it becomes easy to pathologize a feeling that in Buddhism serves as a starting point for self-exploration.

Mark Epstein, Going to Pieces without Falling Apart

New to Mindfulness Practice 6: Notice the breath

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As you start the practice, you have a sense of your body and a sense of where you are, and then you begin to notice the breathing. The whole feeling of the breath is very important. The breath should not be forced, obviously; you are breathing naturally. The breath is going in and out, in and out. With each breath you become relaxed.

Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche