Tag: Present moment

Bowing to our experience today

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Mindfulness is a kind of attention. It is a non-judging, receptive awareness, a kind of respectful awareness. Unfortunately most of the time we don’t attend in this way. Instead we react, judging whether we like, dislike or can ignore this what is happening. Or we measure our experience against our expectation. we evaluate ourselves and others with a constant stream of commentary or criticism. But …we can put aside these weapons of judgment. When we are mindful it is as if we can bow to our experience, without judgment or expectation. In Suzuki Roshi’s words: “We pay attention with respect and interest, not in order to manipulate, but to understand what is true. And seeing what is true, the heart becomes free”

Jack Kornfield, Bringing home the Dharma

Becoming a friendly audience to your experience

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Here’s a definition of mindfulness: it’s a strengthening of your concentration so that you can be more precise and clear in recognizing your experience. It’s also a strengthening of your equanimity—your ability to be relaxed and open in the face of your experience. The concentration part of mindfulness is a little like drinking a cup of coffee; it kind of wakes you up. It’s like the straight spine of arousal or awareness. The equanimity part is like the relaxed limbs of the body. The spine is straight, and the limbs are relaxed. This relaxation part is a receptivity and acceptance to things as they are. It’s a kind of “friendly audience” to your own experience; a sort of “Hello. Wow! OK.” attitude—a gentle, matter-of-fact awareness of your experience, rather than a reactive pulling back. All mindfulness practices cultivate both of those, the concentration and the equanimity, so that you can be clearer, more precise and more relaxed in the face of whatever is happening to you—whether it’s loud noises coming in from a jackhammer running in the next building, or a pain in your knee, or your emotions about your spouse.

Polly Young-Eisendrath, Jungian Analyst, Personality Type in Depth

Trusting the deeper wisdom

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Whatever form of meditation you practice, it is in essence simply a method for detaching yourself from thinking (which tends to reinforce the egoic process) long enough for you to begin to trust this other, deeper intelligence moving inside you. It provides you with another way to think: from “beyond the mind” — which, incidentally, is what the word metanoia, usually translated as “repentance,” actually means.

 Cynthia Bourgeault,  Mystical Hope

Our true nature

Karl Duffy1 Comment

Yoga is the settling of the mind into silence.

When the mind has settled, we are
established in our essential nature, which is unbounded consciousness.

Our essential nature is usually overshadowed by the activity of the mind.

Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

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