Learning To Trust Life

Albert Einstein once said, “The most important decision you'll ever make is choosing whether you live in a friendly or hostile universe.”

Every life has its share of pain and tragedy, and so it is very easy to become afraid, close the heart, and live constantly on guard.  The mind takes over and life becomes an anxious game of strategy as we try to control what is essentially uncontrollable.  No matter how hard we work, no matter how much power and control we accumulate, no one can insulate themselves or their loved ones from life’s continuously changing circumstances.

What Einstein knew, and what all the spiritual masters teach, is the wisdom in embracing life, all of it.

In saying yes to whatever happens in life, even the stuff we see as negative, we stop resisting and fantasizing about how we would like things to be.  We stop shunting our precious energy into futile imaginings of how life should be, which gives us much more energy to work with and create from whatever is.

 In learning to embrace whatever shows up in life, we can begin to drop our defenses, open our heart, and come back more fully to the present moment, which is only place where all our choice, creativity, love, happiness and peace reside.

After all, life has given us so much, is it really fair to distrust it so much?

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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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Choosing Not To Mind The Mind

It is hard to pinpoint the moment that I began to seriously explore mindfulness. It was a couple of decades ago when I had a busy career and a young family. I began to notice that it was getting noisy inside my head. I began to notice that it was hard to turn off the cascade of thoughts at the end of the day. I noticed that even though some of the things I was thinking/planning/worrying about had a very low probability of actually occurring, it didn’t seem to impact the seemingly endless desire of my mind to chew away at them.

Sometimes I would notice I was thinking about work problems, while doing a household task, and silently reciting a song in my head, all at the same time. It was just getting all together too busy in there.

I first turned towards the world’s great religious traditions to seek the peace and compassion of the saints. I learned much, frequently became inspired, and yet it did little to quiet my mind.

I studied myth. Again, learned much, got a sense of the recurring themes in the life journey, but my mind was still noisy.

I started learning about meditation. It took a while to really understand how simple it was, and that it was not about achieving some amazing, transcending experience – even though I experienced a few remarkable states.  And whenever I meditated, it certainly quieted things down for a bit. A 10 out of 10 stress day would be reduced to 7 out of 10.  A 5 out of 10 stress day would be reduced to a 3.  But as soon as I stopped meditating the noise in my mind would begin to pick up again.

I got intrigued with yoga, thinking that maybe a movement centered practice would be a better fit for someone like me who did not really enjoy sitting still for too long.   This led to a pretty deep dive into yogic philosophy (some of the most comprehensive to be found), years of practice, study with many prominent teachers, and eventually a teacher training course and certification as a Registered Yoga Teacher. Yoga helped my flexibility and strength and taught me a great deal about the link between the body and the mind. However, it certainly did not deal a knockout blow to the noise in my head. When I do yoga I am centered with a quiet focused mind. When I stop, the mind slowly starts up again.

It was only when I almost gave up the search in frustration, and actually prayed to find the right teacher, path or practice, to get me to that more sustainably peaceful place that some deep part of me intuited existed, did I finally connect with the teaching I had been looking for.

How ridiculous. It turned out the part of me that was so intent on solving this problem, was the part of me that had no chance of succeeding. That part of me, the thinking, planning, getting-better-at-it mind, was indeed the main barrier to the deeper peace I was looking for.   And all I had to do is stop identify with it.  That’s it. (It may sound too simple. I know I would not have been satisfied with this answer if it was handed to me before I had exhausted myself seeking some way to figure it out.)

My mind is still here. It is part of my experience. It does useful things.  It also continues to do what human minds are wired to do; judge, resist, desire, fantasize, and generally want things to be different. 

The difference is I no longer plant my flag of identity solely with my thoughts or emotions. I watch them come and go, and every hour there is a new monologue.  I just keep taking my attention off them, and putting it on my breath, whatever else is present, or the source of attention itself. Starved of attention and belief, the mind usually quiets down. And sometimes it doesn’t.

It doesn’t matter, I simply choose to no longer mind the mind.  

Where to Shine The Flashlight of Attention?

Our human mind is powerful and wild. It is capable of helping us create the most elegant solutions to life’s most challenging problems, and also prone to wasting exorbitant amounts of time and energy; judging, comparing, resisting, desiring, fantasizing or otherwise driving you crazy.

It is a gift to even notice the mind’s wildness.

It is a gift to be called to explore and attempt to reign in some of the mind’s most outrageous flights of fancy.

It is a gift to notice that in any mind event, there is the mind and there is some part of your awareness witnessing it.

It is a gift to notice that while you may not be able to choose the thoughts, emotions or moods of the mind, you can at any time direct your attention where you want.

It is perhaps one of the most powerful teachings to coach your attention to rest with affection on your heart. Not your physical heart. Not your emotional center or simply the source of all emotion. Rather let you attention rest on the source of everything.

In other words, if your attention was like a flashlight, capable of shining on anything you are interested in, rather than letting it point outward towards, the endless stream of objects (thoughts, emotions, sensations, etc.)  Turn it inward, on the source of attention, and hold it there.

What do you notice?

A Great Spiritual Teaching From India

Joseph Campbell, who studied the myths and spiritual teachings of the world for over 40 years, once observed that the best direction he had found comes out of India.

One of the classic Indian works is the centuries old Avadhut Gita, written by the sage Dattatreya.

An Avadhut is a mystic who has found the knowledge who’s fragrance is wisdom, peace and bliss. Gita simply means “song of. ”  In this classic poem/teaching there is one stanza that I believe summarizes a great spiritual truth. It goes:

A yogi has no particular path;

He simply renounces imagining things,
His mind then ceases of its own accord,
And the perfect state just naturally occurs.

When Dattartreya refers to a yogi, he is not talking about someone in Lululemon gear who can wrap their leg around their head. Rather he is talking about someone who is called by Grace to find the truth of existence.

In speaking of renouncing imagining things, he talks of the voluntary removal of attention, belief and identity from all objects; things, thoughts, emotions, sensations, etc.

Whenever attention in turned inward, away from objects and towards its source, the volume and machinations of the mind subside into the background.

With nothing needing to be resisted, acquired or changed in any way, peace and contentment flourish. Without separation, between in and out, here and there, you and me, all differences dissolve into love.

The Avadhut directly realizes, at our essence, we are fundamental, unchanging, blissful, impersonal, all pervading, awareness. It is the same Self in all.

Steve

If At First.....

Making important changes in your life, career or business is not easy. Overcoming years of conditioning in your thoughts, emotions and behaviour requires time and a good deal of effort. It often requires more than one attempt.

Many change initiatives are abandoned at the first sign of back-sliding.  However big change is almost always harder than you expect it to be. There are many setbacks, many lessons on what doesn't work, and many times when you have to endure a good failure or two to learn the necessary lessons you require to finally push through to success. 

The more you prepare for a change, the more emotions you involve, the more support you line up to keep you on track or remind you why you are doing this - the greater your chances of success will be.

Some people believe it is better to try and fail, than it is to never try at all.  However, there is enough good science, best practices and professional support available, to potential changers these days, that if you are committed you can make the change. And if you are serious about making some important changes, don't let a few steps backwards deter you.