“A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.”
Henry David Thoreau
Take a moment to imagine your own personal little ‘happy me’. Your own, one of a kind, internal representation of the success you’re striving for in life. Most of us have some idea of how we’re going to look once we’ve achieved some level of success in our life. Maybe you have one image, or a handful, take a second here to actually look at them objectively, or as objectively as possible.
When we imagine the stereotypical ‘happy me’ walking down the street, basking in the glory of our own joy… whats so different about that person in your imagination?
Does happy me have a stronger body? more hair?
Maybe you can’t see it in the picture but does happy me have a college PhD? or some kind of fancy new business title to be pleased about?
what is it about this happiness idol in your mind that differenciates them from you? and will that thing really make you happy?
Mindfulness and Happiness
How much of your own potential happiness that your experiencing RIGHT NOW goes unnoticed, while you unconsciously derive a little burst of motivation from imagining someone else your going to be in the future. We stoke little flames of delusion that keep us going and give us an excuse for our lack of presence right now. We have to do more than understand intellectually, we need to deeply realize for ourselves that the past is over, and the future can’t be dealt with in any meaningful way until it becomes the present.
What does it mean to do something consciously as opposed to unconsciously.
I think its important to always remember that mindfulness as a concept or idea is really just the base state of human satisfaction.
Think about, when your dwelling on something someone said, or something that might happen in the future, by the very nature of your actions your declaring that you aren’t interested or don’t want to be in this moment. Your investing your mental energy entirely in the future or the past and the present moment goes by in a sleepy, unintentional haze.
The times in every day human life when we are naturally focused on the present moment always goes hand in hand with the sensation of being deeply grateful or deeply satisfied. Seeing your children after a long day at work, the post coital glow of making love, the sense of absorption some of us feel when doing a job we love.
It only makes sense that learning to shut off your internal chatter would leave you in a non-comparing state of mind, which by its very nature must be a satisfied state of mind. Try to remember in the coming days the importance of staying in the moment and focusing on what is in front of you. Not just so you can bring your total energy and awareness to the task at hand, but also because letting go of the past and future means finding the joy that is already present in the now.
ìYou see a pile of stones and fail to see the mountains. The marvelous thing about miniature landscape gardens is that they are imitations of mountains and streams. The base is made to look flowing waves and the cliffs are made to seem covered with vegetation. Sometimes you can see miniature gnarled pine or knobby plum. You might see unusual blossoms or strange new shoots from their trimmed branches.îÖ ìThese stones then, just a number of inches tall, and this tray roughly a foot across, they are nothing short of a mountainous island rising from the sea! Jade-green peaks penetrate the clouds and are encircled by them. A blue-green barrier, immersed in water, is standing straight up. There are caves as if carved in the cliff sides to hide saints and immortals. Jetties and spits flat enough and long enough for fishermen. The paths and roads are narrow and confined, yet woodcutters can pass along them. There are lagoons deep and dark enough to hide dragons.î
An excerpt from the rhyme prose that sums up the philosophy of Bonsai as well as a mindful perspective one can take when dealing with daily life. Today I was thinking of the garden weíre building in our front yard, Iím really looking forward to the chance to get my hands into the dirt, and take the time to converse with plants, bring vegetables out of the soil, and contemplate our exchange. In the past Iíve only been able to grow cacti, their perseverance constantly amazes me, their ability to adapt to my temperate backyard, often rainy or frosty, springing back to life for our parched summers. As far as vegetables, or temperamental flowers Iím at a loss. I canít wait to learn.
I remember as a kid walking with my mom, littler brother and dog, down to the victory garden near our house, people tending their small, twine parceled plots, the garden itself was built by the city during World War 2 to improve morale and conserve veggies for the troops. I remember the care and precision people would put into a four by four square of dirt, little rows, tiny trellises, the slow progression from vine to bean.
Now bonsai gardening is a far cry from vegetable in your front yard, but in reality it’s only as different as you want it to be. The same physical needs of the plant apply. In fact gardening is not so different from mindfulness practice in general. Growing as a human being, growing in emotional and physical awareness is similar to the fruition of fruit. Neither will be attained without patient intent. A flower will wither and never bloom without water and sun, the blossom is not inherent in the stem. The same is true for people, although the potential for mindful awareness exist it doesnít come to the surface without patient intent.
There are some easy to incorporate ways to use a garden to cultivate mindfulness, even a potted cactus.
When you look at your plants, take notice of whether they are simply surviving, or if they thrive under your diligent care. We can ask ourselves this same question at this time.
We can see an all together too hot day or frosty morning and learn to accept things that we canít control, like the weather, but appreciate how it is those same random variables that make our lives and the live of our plants possible.
When you are elbow deep in the soil, pulling weeds or harvesting, and your face in buried in some aromatic leaves purely by proximity, think on your breathing, remember that you and the plant are engaged in an exchange. You breath out, your green buddy breaths in.
We water and till and weed for the sight and smell of their flowers, and the nourishment and taste of their fruit. take the time to think about this exchange, and the lives lead by our plants and ourselves.
In a wonderful book by my one of my literary and philosophical heroes, Kurt Vonnegut, his reoccurring failed sci/fi writer character Kilgore Trout finds an ontological question scrawled crudely on a bathroom wall, ìWhat is the purpose of life?î, Trout replies as if the answer was as obvious to everyone, ìTo be the eyes and ears and conscience of the creator, you fool!î
I think about that fictitious piece of graffiti from time to time and wondering about its meaning. Vonnegut, being an atheist and a humanist, probably did not mean creator in the traditional sense. When I hear creator, I think creation, the splendor of the universe, and everything. You may have your own definition. Carl Sagan, another well known humanist, used to say something to the effect of we are all made up of ëstar stuffí. And itís true, we are made from the same constituents as the stars, flung out into the universe from the fiery hearts of super novae. More organized, but essentially the same as the rest of the cosmos, part of it.
In those terms, according to Kilgore Trout, we are the universes senses both physical and intellectual. We are, undeniably, those things, and more. In a materialist sense we, as an inseparable part of everything, are the universe experiencing itself. As conscious beings we have an obligation to perceive on behalf of the universe, along with everything else we have to do. So it goes.
How do we best fulfill such a lofty job description?
Thich Nhat Hanh puts it into a mindful context in a talk he gave at the 2002 Peace Walk, ìThe first function of mindfulness is to recognize what is there, positive or negative. The second function of mindfulness is to embrace it and to get deeply in touch with it. If it is a positive thing like a blue sky or the beautiful face of a child, that becomes something very nourishing, very healing for us. And if it is something negative, like hatred or fear, we should be able to embrace it and bring relief to it.î
I take this to mean, we are here to be here. Mindfulness, as clichÈ as it may sound, is a tool that enables us to be present in the here and now, in a world that is increasingly distracting, at a time when time itself seems to be speeding up. If we remember that this is our first obligation, to recognize what is and take a moment to be in the moment, the distractions get less distracting although the pace of the world may not slow down, for a couple minutes or a couple hours we can, and just fulfill our obligation to creation.
Happy National Meditation Month everyone. May is national meditation month and a great time to start or update you meditation habit. Spring has begun and as new green leaves sprout from bare twigs, waking from winter, so to can we awaken, allow our mind to branch out in new directions, sink our roots deeper, ground ourselves.
So take advantage of National Meditation Month pick a new technique you have never tried before, ask your friends for theirs and start the discussion. I’m not saying go out and preach the mindfulness gospel and convert twenty people, just live it.
Here’s a little technique i came across the other day and enjoyed. A visual meditation by Virginia Fitton
If You’ve ever been up late watching T.V. you have probably seen five or six commercials for different sleep aids. Forty million people in America alone are reported to have chronic sleep disorders. Thirty million more report intermittent sleep difficulties. Itís not all surprising that so many people are affected, between all the thoughts circling around in our heads from work and our personal life. The general pace the outside word is moving at has made it difficult to slow our brains down at the end of the day and convince them it is time for sleep.
However, using awareness techniques you can get great sleep every night, and even fall asleep on long flights or when your neighbors are having a raging party and you have to be at work at six in the morning. Here is one technique for easy sleep, an easy self hypnosis technique, popularized by Milton H. Erickson, actually invented by his wife Betty.[singlepic id=37 w=320 h=240 float=right]
-Lay in your bed/ plane seat / boring lecture. Focus on three things in your field of vision. Shift your awareness as fully as you can from one to the other, take in one fully, and slowly move on to the next.
-Focus on three things you can hear, listen to each one, experience the sound and shift your hearing to another.
-Now concentrate on things you can feel in your body. Remember to divert your focus as much as possible from your external senses and feel individual sensation from within.
-Move through the series again with only two visual, auditory, and tactile.
-Next concentrate on only one thing you can see, one thing you can hear and only one thing you feel
-Close your eyes.
-Imaging a visual images concentrate on it, see it fully. Now imagine a sound, imagine a sensation in your body concentrate on it.
-Now two imagined visual, two imagined sounds, and two imagined sensations.
-if you are still awake at this point, i.e. the party next door goes critical, you can proceed to three visual, three auditory, and three tactile imagined sensations but it almost never takes a third round. There are many meditative/self hypnosis techniques that will work as well or better then pills, with no side effects or dependency and they are all 100% free.[singlepic id=36 w=320 h=240 float=right]
Sweet Dreams
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