A new tact for encouraging things to go the way you want in life

"A traveller to a small Greek island once watched as a yound boy tried to perusade the family donkey to move. The boy had vegetables to deliver and he'd carefully loaded up the animals's panniers. But the donkey wasn't in the mood for moving. The boy became more and more agitated and started to raise his voice at the donkey, standing in front of him and pulling hard on the rope. The donkey dug in its hooves firmly. Very firmly.

The tug of war might have gone on for a long time if it wasn't for the boy's grandfather. Hearing the commotion, he came out of the hourse and took in the familiar scene at a glance - the unequal battle between donkey and human. Gently, he took the rope from his grandson. Smiling, he said, 'When he's in this mood, try it this way: take the rope loosely in your hand like this, then stand very close beside him, and look down the track in the direction you want to go. Then wait.'

The boy did as his grandfather had bade him, and after a few moments, the donkey started to walk forward. The boy giggled with delight, and the traveller watched as animal and boy trotted off happily, side by side, down the track and round the far bend."

Pg 111-2 Mark Williams, Mindfulness: Finding Peace in a Frantic World

All Things Pass - Lessons in Heartbreak

During a meditation retreat, I crawled out of bed at 6.30 to attend the mornings meditation and as my mind woke up, it was slowly overwhelmed by the loss of a great love. I felt very sad. I sat to meditate and let the feeling sit with me, trying to focus on my breathe. Tears rolled down my face as I breathed. I gave myself a 'break' and just let it all be and at the end of the meditation - the teacher read out this poem. I chuckled to myself at its poignancy - the timing was perfect. Heartbreak is hard but all things pass.

All Things Pass - Lao Tzu

All things pass
A sunrise does not last all morning
All things pass
A cloudburst does not last all day
All things pass
Nor a sunset all night
All things pass

What always changes?
Earth...sky...thunder...mountain...water...wind...fire...lake

Do man's visions last?
Do man's illusions?

Take things as they come.

All things pass.

When 'pain' becomes part of our identity

I have been doing some research this week about learning to deal with feelings of emotional pain. It seems to me to be very difficult to deal with pain in a 'mindful' way (letting it be, watching, accepting) because it is so overwhelming and seems to take over the mind and the body.

I came across this quote from Eckhart Tolle. It could apply to physical pain too:

"As long as you make an identity for yourself out of the pain, you cannot become free from it. As long as part of your sense of self is invested in your emotional pain, you will unconsciously resist or sabotage every attempt that you make to heal that pain. Why? Quite simply because you want to keep yourself intact, and the pain has become an essential part of you. This is an unconscious process, and the only way to overcome it is to make it conscious." 'The Power of Now', E. Tolle (pg 140) 

In many ways I can completely see what Tolle is talking about here. It makes sense, I think, that we can be in danger of creating an identity out of that pain. It can become our way of defining ourselves and we can become attached to it - as something familiar. But would we really resist or sabotage attempts to heal the pain? This seems absurd! 

At the same time, there is something quite optimistic about this in that it is something that we have the power to change. And it is an interesting challenge about how much we are letting pain become who we are....

Hmm...the big question for me is - will quotes like this make dealing with pain any easier in practice? Let's see!

Lessons from Tolle: Being enough as you are

Do you ever have the feeling of not being enough as you are? Or feeling like there is something missing? Do those thoughts affect what you buy, what you wear, what you choose to do with your time - how many qualifications you get, the job/professional success and recognition you seek, the relationships you get into?

Eckhart Tolle says:

"Another aspect of the emotional pain that is an intrinsic part of the egoic mind is a deep-seated send of lack or incompleteness, of not being whole. In some people this is conscious, in others unconscious. If it is conscious, it manifests as the unsettling and constant feeling of not being worthy or good enough. If it is unconscious, it will only be felt indirectly as an intense craving, wanting and needing. In either case, people will often enter into a compulsive pursuit of ego-gratification and things to identify with in order to fill this hole they feel. So they strive after possessions, money, success, power, recognition, or a special relationship, basically so that they can feel better about themselves, feel more complete. But even when they attain all these things, they soon find that the hole in still there, that it is bottomless. They they are really in trouble, because they cannot delude themselves anymore." The Power of Now', Eckhart Tolle, pg 37

I don't think that this means that it is not good to be successful, learn things or engage in special relationships. Instead it is more about the intention you have behind this. Is it with an aim of trying to feel complete, better about yourself, fill a 'hole' or is it genuine curiosity and desire to learn and experience things?

Through mindfulness, the intention is to just be and for that to be enough and to spot and be aware of when the mind has other plans. I find this very interesting and will blog more about this and related themes in the future....

Mindulness in Relationships

Research Post Only:

Some of my posts like this one - are just for me to store and share some links and resources to various themes around mindfulness. I won't have time to write about all of the links and resources but if you are interested in researching these areas further then hopefully these links will help. I will keep adding to this post as I find things.

• Article on PsychCentral website, July, 2012: http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2012/07/30/how-mindfulness-can-improve-your-relationship/  
• Book - http://www.shambhala.com/how-to-be-an-adult-in-relationships.html
• Website - Mindful: http://www.mindful.org/in-love-and-relationships/intimate-relationships
• Website with articles: http://susanpiver.com/works/work-type/articles/
• A note about communication/dialogue: http://secularbuddhism.org/2013/10/09/some-notes-on-mindful-dialogue/

Thich Naht Hahn has mantras which he feels can help relationships. I will explore this in the future but here is the essence of it:

1. Being there for your partner - being truly present. Not preoccupied. 'How can you love if you are not there?'

2. Know that the other person is there and recognise the presence of the other one. You recognise how precious that is. Recognise that they exist.

3. When your loved one suffers, make sure that they know that you acknowledge their suffering and you are there for them.

4. When you suffer - potentially because of something your partner has said or done - try your best to acknowledge your suffering and share how you feel with your partner. Ask them to help you with your suffering. 

Turning towards instead of away from difficulties - The Case of the Annoying Customer Service Girl

One of the key learnings of mindfulness is turning towards rather than away from our reality - whether it be good or bad. So, for example, books on mindfulness often talk about 'pain'. If we are in pain - then be in pain. Be aware of the pain. Watch it. Perhaps it will shift in nature - sometimes it may be stronger, sometimes less painful. Rather than trying to distract ourselves from it, ignore it or get frustrated or angry - wishing things could be different, face it.

I was interested in how this idea of 'turning towards' reality could be applied to other aspects of life. And today I had a good opportunity to practice this learning point.

Every morning I go to the gym and recently there has been a new girl behind reception. So I arrive at 7.30 - slightly dozey and not up for speaking to anyone and I get greeted with. "Good morning!  How are you today?". Same every day. I don't know her. We have never had a conversation and I feel terrible for saying this but I find this level of niceness very annoying! Then she started to use my name too - 'How are you today Paula? Like something out of a text book customer service training manual. Ugh.

I pondered what to do. Should I say something? But then what would I say? She isn't doing anything wrong and if I did say something I would certainly offend her and make her feel uncomfortable around me and then I would feel bad so that didn't sound like a good idea either. Ducking into the gym without seeing her was also not an option.

So this morning on the way to the gym, I was thinking about this idea of turning towards reality and not fighting it or turning my back on it. I wondered what 'acceptance' would look like in this case. I realised that one way to accept my reality was to engage more with her rather than try and engage less.

So, I walked into the gym and immediately said, 'Hey, how are you? How was your Christmas? Did you have a break?' From this, we had our first actual normal conversation and it was quite nice! The issue for me was mainly that I find it annoying when people are overly nice as part of customer service. But it felt fine once I opened myself up to actually having a normal conversation with her and crossing over into more communication rather than trying to reduce the amount of words that we shared.

With mindfulness often comes insight and a new way of thinking about things. It was a funny bit of karma too as I had forgotten my gym card and the policy is that if you forget your card then you can't get in. Perhaps because of our nice chat, she let me in anyway. So - even if things are hard and we want to push them away, perhaps there is benefit in turning towards them and some good can even come of it!

What else are we missing?

"It is easy not to spot the the small changes because you already know what to expect. Did you spot the second 'the' in the previous sentence?" (Teaching Mindfulness)

Most of us are well versed in the key to communication being listening and we talk about it in courses on management and relationship building. What we don't necessarily talk about is the way our minds work and the effect they have on our ability to be fully present and aware. Our minds often make judgements about what is being said which can lead to an internal dialogue. They tend to move into the future - thinking about what to say next or move into the past, thinking about what was said before and not what is being said now.

The act of listening is also an act of quietening our own minds - lessening the internal chatter and making space for whatever is being communicated to us - verbally and non-verbally. From this, we widen our understanding of the other person, we gain new insight into what they are communicating - picking up on subtleties, and we can respond more spontaneously.

This takes practice and the first step is perhaps just noticing the judgements as they arise and/or noticing whether we are drifting into thoughts about the future or past as someone speaks. Once we have, we can then tune into what is actually being said and spot the difference.

photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/catnipcat/7157542418/">Catnip Cat by Jeff Hoyle</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/">cc</a>