Mindfulness: The Cure For The Optional Suffering Of Life

It is a common expectation amongst those engaged in any form of mindfulness practice; meditation, contemplation, prayer, asanas, mantras, etc., that with practice they will achieve a permanent “zen like” state, and from that point on experience nothing but bliss.

Forget about this idea. It is not true and there is precious little evidence that any saint, sage, messiah or yogi has ever achieved such a enduring state.

If you are breathing, you are human. Part of being human is experiencing pain, real physical, emotional and spiritual pain.

However where a good mindfulness practice can make a huge difference, is in limiting the amount of optional suffering we needlessly add to the mandatory pain of life.

It is the nature of the human mind to want to resist and control change. Yet change is the one constant in life. Sometimes change brings pain.  A good mindfulness practice can provide many opportunities and teachings to better accept and learn from the pain of life.

Mindfulness practices also provide many powerful tools to help you limit the amount of optional suffering the human mind will tend to add to any of life’s painful moments. Simply, do not expect the mind to stop resisting change.  Do not expect the mind to cease its compulsion to obsess over any perceived thread. That’s its thing. That’s what it does. Your power is found, and peace is restored, by remembering you can always choose what to put your attention on. 

When the pain of life comes, and the mind responds by going wild with excessive anticipation, planning, contingencies, judgements, resistance, remorse, etc. – simply choose, over and over again, not to feed this suffering with attention, identity or belief.

Put your attention on your: breath, body, prayer, asana, nature, etc, really anything that is here, now. And should you find your attention drifting back to the suffering, simply do not buy the inevitable thought, “you can’t do this”, “this doesn’t work for me”, etc.

Rather, take your attention off that thought too, again and again. It all gets easier with practice.

Coach Steve

The Tyranny Of Doing

Have you ever tried to take a little time out from one of your typical busy days, and sit quietly, doing nothing?

I am not talking about when you collapse on the sofa at the end of the day exhausted. Nor when you stop working on one particular job only to shift your attention to the next thing that needs to be done, or even to your favorite hobby. Rather, I am asking you if you have ever paid attention to the internal dialogue that happens, when you simply attempt to refrain from doing anything. 

I attempt this regularly and am always amazed at how much conditioning I have to move on to the next task, accomplish something else, or generally keep moving and productive. My mind is quite unsettled at the prospect of doing nothing, and puts up a very good fight.  There is no end of ideas that come to mind regarding what I might do next, what I might want more of, what I might not want to happen later, etc.  And if I manage to ignore all those thoughts auditioning for attention, there can come some judgement thoughts about being lazy, or even some anxiety feeling that I might be somehow wasting my time or falling behind the rest of the world.  

The point is, we are highly conditioned organisms. At an early age we are taught the importance of delaying gratification. We dutifully learn how to focus on the task at hand, study hard, compete, accomplish, produce, acquire, achieve, etc.  Our sense of self and social status is often deeply defined by what we do, and we take pride in how much we can accomplish in any particular, day, month, or year.  After a few decades of practice we become world champion doers. Doing is us.  And along the way, we forget how to be.

Can you even remember a few moments where you enjoyed the complete simplicity and wonder of your childhood, before “doing” became a religion? Playing with your favorite toy? Splashing in the bathtub? Enjoying an ice-cream cone? Staring at the clouds or stars?

You are not a human doing. You are in fact a human being.  Being is not something you want to dip a toe into occasionally, when time permits.  It is the ocean you want to dive into. Indeed it is where you want to live from.  It is who you are.

Forget this and life turns into an endless treadmill of unsatisfying accomplishment.

Remember this, and you can reconnect with the source of all vitality, and you can still function as necessary in the world of doing. 

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