Tag: Mindfulness

Deciding to stay present

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The state of not-knowing is a riveting place to be. We encounter not-knowing when , for instance, we meet someone new, or when life offers up a surprise. These experiences remind us that change and unpredictability are the very pulse of our existence. No one really knows what will happen from one moment to the next: who will we be, what will we face, and how we will respond to what we encounter.  We don’t know and there’s a good chance that we will encounter some rough, unwanted experiences, some surprises beyond our imaginings, and some expected things too. And we can decide to stay present for all of it.

Elizabeth Mattis-Namgyel, Open Stillness.

Space that can encompass all

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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

How to work with disappointment today

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When you come in contact with some setback or disappointment, your goal is not to stop it, your goal is get to know it. Instead of running away,  you touch in, you tune in. Drop the storyline. What happens with the storyline is that you escalate it, and then it turns into rage.  Drop the storyline. Just experience the disappointment and stay with that.

Pema Chodron.

Keeping our life whole

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Anything you do to escape the fundamental duality of ego consciousness just kicks more energy into it. Your only choice is to stop. That unsplit, unifying place is found at the fulcrum. This is the holy place, the whole place. The demand for human consciousness to have the “right” thing –  at the exclusion of something else –  just sets the wheel in motion again. There is a kind of consciousness that assists slowing down. If you can honestly assess what is true in your life, looking at it with objectivity and intelligence, this is getting closer.

Practically speaking, if we would spend as much time being alert and aware as we do worrying, we would be out of any mess fairly soon. When you stop fighting your situation, you just have the situation but no longer the struggle to cope with. Generally one can endure that. This is to cease wounding yourself on the jailhouse bars of reality —  to stop complaining about what is.

Robert Johnson

A pilgrimage to our own life

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Since everything is sacred, staying close to what is sacred is a matter of presence and attention more than travel to some secret place. In essence, staying close is a pilgrimage to the heart of where we are. Since it is we who lose our directness of living, our task is often to restore that freshness of being alive….How do we stray on and off the path of what matters? How do we befriend the life of obstacles? How do we find a home between suffering and loving the world? How do help each other respond to the invitation to grow?

Mark Nepo

Sunday Quote: When we do not appreciate what we have

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You cannot avoid paradise.

You can only avoid seeing it.

Charlotte Joko Beck