Mindfulness – Page 1119 – Mindfulbalance

Speed

September 9, 2010September 8, 2010 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

There is more to life than increasing its speed

Mahatma Ghandi

Not always seeking something new

September 8, 2010September 9, 2010 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

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.

It’s not out there

September 6, 2010September 6, 2010 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

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

Letting the mind settle

September 6, 2010September 10, 2010 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Do you have patience to wait till your mud settles and the water is clear?

Can you remain unmoving till the right action arises by itself?

Lao Tzu

Being mindful of scrambled eggs

September 5, 2010September 5, 2010 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

The practice is quite simple really. It is to pay attention to each moment as it actually is, and be open to whatever is happening in that moment. It is not about creating a sense of calm or fixing our personalities. It is not about changing things at all, in one sense, but rather being with them in the light of awareness.

Seems simple. However, I continually find that it is not so easy to keep the mind focused on just this moment or this act. It often prefers to race ahead, thinking about what needs to be said or scanning the horizon for the next task to be done. I got a simple example of that this week. I was standing in line to get breakfast and was putting some food on the plate. I came to the last of the hot items, scrambled eggs, and put them on my plate, looking ahead to see where to get coffee and where to sit. Jenn’s voice from behind came, saying, “Thanks Karl for taking all the eggs“, which indeed I had. Leaning into the next moment – where to sit – or being busy composing an answer in a conversation, meant that I had filled my plate without noticing and consequently without considering others. Luckily, Jenn was kind enough to allow me make amends and to accept some of the portion I had put on my plate ……even though she could not help reminding me of it for the next few days.

When we don’t pay attention to this moment we can notice our minds speeding up to already be in the next. We also fail to pay attention to the deeper possibilities of caring for or listening to others. Mindfulness is sterile if it does not lead us to being more compassionate, more sensitive. A simple lesson, which we have to learn over and over again, hundreds of times each day.

The habit of ignoring our present moments in favor of others yet to come leads directly to a pervasive lack of awareness of the web of life in which we are embedded. This includes a lack of awareness and understanding of our own mind and how it influences our perceptions and our actions. It severely limits our perspective on what it means to be a person and how we are connected to each other and the world around us.

Jon Kabat Zinn