Surprise

I was alerted to this quote by mindfulbalance today (http://mindfulbalance.org/2016/01/07/surprising/).

“We need to practice waking up to surprise. I suggest using this simple question as a kind of alarm clock: “Isn’t this surprising?” “Yes, indeed!” will be the correct answer, no matter when and where and under what circumstances you ask this question. After all, isn’t it surprising that there is anything at all, rather than nothing? Ask yourself at least twice a day, “Isn’t this surprising?” and you will soon be more awake to the surprising world in which we live.” David Steindl-Rast, Awake, Aware and Alert

It reminded me or brought to light (and life) one of the attitudes cultivated with mindful awareness practices: the beginner’s mind.  How may we cultivate this attitude of openness and freshness in each moment of our being?  As one of our basic emotions, surprise often gets lost.  Just like in the movie Inside-Out, it didn’t make the line-up.  I found this an inspiring quote that brought freshness to that attitude of ‘beginner’s mind’ and how I may cultivate it in a conscious way.  Asking the question: Isn’t this surprising?  I may learn to expect and embrace uncertainty; decondition my wired brain that seeks out certainty at each turn. And be grateful for each moment experienced just as it is.  Time to try it and see!

 

 

The intention and attitude

Meditation is better than knowledge;

Yet even better than meditation is the release of attachment to the fruits of our efforts,

For peace immediately follows.

(Bhagavad Gita)

Each day I am learning from practice about perspectives, relationships and thought-framing and reframing.  There’s a balancing in life and meditation – effort and ease, discipline and liberation, light and dark, excitement and fear, noticing and letting go.

As I morning journal, I’ve learned that I have an automatic to-do list for the day. It is reamed off in my mind before I’m even aware that I am waking out of my slumber! So what if instead of waking with a list of to-dos or a list of ‘have tos’, I could have an attitude of appreciation with a list of ‘get tos’ instead. Rather than ‘I have to meditate, run, make that call, remember that email and on and on’ – I may remember that – I get to … meditate, run, make that call …. I wonder how that might be?

It reminds me of the guidance Tara Brach offers in meditation – to bring a smile to the corner of your eyes, your mind, your heart.  Feeling from the inside out. The act of the smile, the movement itself, is the antidote, the salve for the fight-flight auto-response. I get to have that experience, my choice to see what happens. I get to have that moment.

Remembering to embrace all

Mindfulness is the intentional, non-judgmental focus on the emotions, thoughts and sensations occurring in the present moment.

I planted some beautiful colourful flowers in the garden.  They’re not thriving in this spot. The image captured for me the essence of holding all of our experience – both the parts we like and the parts we do not like or want. There is light and shade. Life and death. Treat all with equal kindness and acceptance. Pay attention to what is needed to nurture and thrive in our environments.

Re/turning to intention: Compassionate being

This is the intention of mindfulness: cultivating a compassionate, attentive and fresh approach to my life experiences.  This is also the hard part, to remember to connect with the intention of kind attention and how my experience connects me with the rest of humanity.

Through mindfulness practice, we can become aware of the ebb and flow that is life. We begin to recognise that we have choices; and we can choose, with deliberate intention, responses to our life experiences that are kind and respectful of ourselves as valued and valuable human beings and also of all beings as valued and valuable.

We open to our common humanity: it is our natural pathway for social connection, responsiveness and responsibleness.  We allow ourselves to connect with our judgments, our denials and resistances and we connect with our shared experiences of imperfection, pain and suffering.

Meditations like loving kindness, kindly awareness and compassionate practices, specifically call our attention to our compassionate presence.  We open our awareness to painful emotions that arise due to difficult experiences; we practice accepting and taking a balanced approach so that these emotions are not exaggerated or denied.  We connect with the bigger picture of humanity: recognising that we are not alone in our experiences of pain and suffering as well as fun and joy.  In our practice, when we allow light to shine on the dark side of our being, perhaps noticing feelings of inadequacy, fear of failure, judging thoughts (self and others), we choose to respond with kindness and compassion. We practice being kind and gentle rather than aggressive and violent in our reactions, starting with ourselves and extending out to others.  And this is the broader ethical picture of value that may be cultivated through the practices of mindfulness meditation.

“[The intention of mindfulness is to] receive the inevitable imperfections we find in ourselves and our world, with humour, tenderness and goodwill.  [We’re] learning to hold our internal reactions to these disturbances in spacious. affectionate awareness”.  (Kristen Neff).

Some studies show that the compassionate body scan may be the most effective antidote to highly self-critical thinking. Try a compassionate body scan (see Kristen Neff) and see what arises, be curious about the thoughts, emotions and bodily sensations that come into your awareness. And remember to hold your experience with kindness.

Today inspired by Sharon Salzberg, Kristen Neff, Christopher Germer, Willem Kuyken and the Dalai Lama.

Responding to the 5 Classic Meditation Challenges

Tara Brach advises on the 5 classic challenges or hindrances; GAASD as I have chosen as a memory aid!:

1. Grasping – wanting more or something different
2. Aversion – pushing away, fear, anger
3. Agitation – restlessness, jumpy energy
4. Sloth – sleepy, sinking staes of mind and body
5. Doubt – this will never work

In and of themselves, these are simply energies, Brach advises.  Our human tendency to ignore, resist, judge and control them result in our experience of them as hindrances or challenges.

Yet these are also opportunities.

During meditation when they arise,

• I can name what i notice : ‘grasping, grasping’ or ‘fear, fear’ …
• I can choose to bring my attention to the sensations in my body, to my experience as it is happening;
• I can remember RAIN – I am recognising what is here, allowing what is arising, investigating what arises with kindness and  non-identifying with the arising thoughts and emotions, feeling that spaciousness of awareness.
• When it feels too much, I can choose to focus my attention on that which brings a sense of balance, safety and or/love.  For me this is connecting with the breath, grounding myself through attending to physical connection with the earth or offering some lovingkindness are options.
• I can choose to listen to sounds, focus my attention to places without tension, to discover space and resilience.

Be it physical or emotional pain and suffering, I offer the same intention: to attend with gentleness, noticing how the sensations in my body change.  I can allow the unpleasantness to float in awareness. Offering a spacious awareness.  In this way. I am discovering what allows me to find a sense of balance and spaciousness and then moving back to explore and investigate my immediate experience of discomfort, with kindness and openness. That is the intention at least!

Intentioning

This is my practice these days. Exploring my intentions with my mindfulness practice.

Intention is one of the key pillars in Mindfulness (attention and attitude being the other two).  I liked this definition as I explored my intentioning in mindfulness and meditation. The attitude part stood out for me.  What is my attitude towards my mindfulness practice?

Most of us come to mindfulness seeking to find a way to enjoy all aspects of living, to reduce our struggle and connect with our inner peace, happiness and others in our world.  And we learn that through mindfulness we let go of our goals, expectations and striving efforts.  We offer the intention to be with our experience as it is happening, to choose to return our focus of attention on our mindfulness of breath or sound, whatever is our focus, to accept our experience including our mind-wandering without judging but with a kindly acceptance and so we see what happens.  I wondered was I giving my practice enough intention and attention?

I read a distinction between goals and intentions – the former being external and the latter internal. (http://www.mindful.org/mindful-voices/the-examined-life/meditate-with-intention-not-goals) When we connect with our intention, we recognise we have that attitude as a seed within us. We accept the process, the pathway to making choices for a more satisfying life experience. When nothing much seems to be happening in our practice, we remember our intentions for meditating: to practice awareness and compassion, to be open to our experience whatever that may be, and to become more aware of our habitual patterns as best we can.  That is it. That is enough.  We learn to repeatedly let go of the struggle for our meditation practice to be a certain way, to yield certain outcomes. It has helped me to meditate on intention, to become aware of this consciously. To become aware of my habit of expectation. Knowing why I meditate, in each moment. And I have discovered  when the distinction has teetered over into the goal realm rather than intentional realm. I have come to discover automatic judging and disregarding that i was previously unaware of and I have also come to discover underlying emotions.

I have also come to practice setting a conscious intention, inspired by a buddhify meditation, when I wake in the morning I begin by

• Checking in with my body and breath at first.
• Then asking: What’s coming up today? Meetings? Calls? What emotions are here as I review what lies ahead for me in the day …
• Now moving on, I wonder what attitude would I like to cultivate today?  What would help me in these events over the day ahead? patience? kindness? generosity? compassion? trust? courage? Taking a few moments letting these thoughts come and go, noticing how my body reacts as it explores these aspects of my experiences ….
• And I make a choice:  to cultivate that quality or attitude today … whatever it is, I choose it, personally and I make it actionable …
• Having set the intention, what can I do to remind myself to live with that intention? How can I set my day up to support that intention? Maybe ways to schedule my time, maybe add a reminder to my phone to alert me to that word, put up notices somewhere, make it a screensaver on my computer … how can I follow through on my intention? …
• There is right effort, joyful discipline the ways I can support my intention through the day … how can I set myself up to live in line with my chosen intention today …
• Before finishing, I repeat my intention to myself 3 times …
• Then I connect with my breath, and rise to begin my day.
• At the end of the day, I can review how did that work out? without judging what happened, just noticing those few moments where I lived in line with my intention and tomorrow is a new day for a new intention or new opportunity to practice and cultivate that intention.

New Year, New Me