There seems to be a lot of talk about being mindful these days, but what are we supposed to be mindful about, you may ask? From the start it is good to admit that mindfulness comes from the Buddhist religion, and is a way of being "heartful or compassionate." There is a lot more to mindfulness in the Buddhist tradition, and my guess is that it has to do with perceiving reality into a Buddhist mindset. However mindfulness has become secularised or made comprehensible to those who might not be Buddhist. I had a conversation with someone today, and as I reflect on my own ideas of mindfulness, I caught myself saying that many religions have of form of awareness similar to mindfulness, but their practitioners might just nor be aware of it. I don't want to steal an idea from someone else, so I will leave that thought to ruminate.
What I will talk about is what it is that we are supposed to be mindful of. My answer is our lives, basically our existence. Sometimes we forget that we are alive. We get so caught up in the story we are telling ourselves about ourselves, that we become unaware of the present moment. The question I would like to ask is; How can we get so caught up in our jobs, our roles in our community, our roles at home, that we forget to be mindful of our own existence. The presence of pain is not an indication that things are going well. Always the presence of pain is an indication that something needs to change, it doesn't mean that because we are so caught up in the problem that we resign from the way of life that brings us true joy, and happiness.
When we live our lives, mindless of our own satisfaction and our own path, the inevitable result is that we get sucked into other peoples problems and instead of spending our time and our talents trying to solve our own problems, we fail at that because we are no longer mindful of our own lives. The path that leads us further and further away from feeling a sense of peace in our lives, is the path that ignores our own pain and suffering to the point that we become dull at looking at our own pain, and ignore it, because we feel like we will be of more value in the world if we suffer. When we make ourselves the victim, and yes our pain is real, we will tend to over compensate to make others in this world feel like they are excepted because we ourselves feel like the world has rejected us. Our feelings of being rejected have not yet been dealt with because we have been too busy at making others feel like they are loved, and they are accepted by us.
By ignoring our own feelings, we compound the original feeling that made us feel rejected in the first place. In a way, it's like covering up a deep wound and not giving it time to heal. Yes, we don't have to try to completely eradicate all suffering from our lives, because the idea of living in reality or the present moment, leaves room for uncertainty, and what we can never be certain of is, is will we suffer in the future? What makes our suffering worse is mindlessness. We can never be truly 100% mindful all the time, but when we are faced with challenges that seen too big, we need not run from them, because they are a part of our lives and we would not have them if we weren't alive.
The idea here is not to run away from our problems, but it is fair to say that there are times when it is ok to hide from them. Hiding from someone who has injured you, is ok, provided that person still has an evil intention to hurt you! The wisest choice to make in that situation is to keep yourself safe, but what we resist persists, meaning the hurt feeling we are feeling about that situation will still make us feel threatened untill we let it go. Part of letting go is not running away, but running to. We run to ourselves ideally and what we feel is the right next choice in our process of healing/life. I personally believe life is like a school or at least it should be. There is something exciting at the idea that there is always something new to learn, if we are available to learn it. Some might say, there is nothing new under the sun, it is true that human experience is similar, but experience is different every day. To avoid hedonistic pleasures would be wise for the person who is trying to 'better' their soul, so in that way there are new things to learn and new things to experience.
We are part of a living history of human experience, and we have a library of knowledge to look back on and learn from and to add to. To be stuck only in the present moment, leaves you mindful of that moment alone. I don't think that's what being mindful is about, but it can be to a certain degree. We all need to remember our past. The more we remember our past, the more collective knowledge we will have, and the reason why that is good is because it will relieve current emotional suffering. How? By looking to the past, and not doing what our ancestors did that caused the collective humanity at that time to suffer. This is Mike.
What I will talk about is what it is that we are supposed to be mindful of. My answer is our lives, basically our existence. Sometimes we forget that we are alive. We get so caught up in the story we are telling ourselves about ourselves, that we become unaware of the present moment. The question I would like to ask is; How can we get so caught up in our jobs, our roles in our community, our roles at home, that we forget to be mindful of our own existence. The presence of pain is not an indication that things are going well. Always the presence of pain is an indication that something needs to change, it doesn't mean that because we are so caught up in the problem that we resign from the way of life that brings us true joy, and happiness.
When we live our lives, mindless of our own satisfaction and our own path, the inevitable result is that we get sucked into other peoples problems and instead of spending our time and our talents trying to solve our own problems, we fail at that because we are no longer mindful of our own lives. The path that leads us further and further away from feeling a sense of peace in our lives, is the path that ignores our own pain and suffering to the point that we become dull at looking at our own pain, and ignore it, because we feel like we will be of more value in the world if we suffer. When we make ourselves the victim, and yes our pain is real, we will tend to over compensate to make others in this world feel like they are excepted because we ourselves feel like the world has rejected us. Our feelings of being rejected have not yet been dealt with because we have been too busy at making others feel like they are loved, and they are accepted by us.
By ignoring our own feelings, we compound the original feeling that made us feel rejected in the first place. In a way, it's like covering up a deep wound and not giving it time to heal. Yes, we don't have to try to completely eradicate all suffering from our lives, because the idea of living in reality or the present moment, leaves room for uncertainty, and what we can never be certain of is, is will we suffer in the future? What makes our suffering worse is mindlessness. We can never be truly 100% mindful all the time, but when we are faced with challenges that seen too big, we need not run from them, because they are a part of our lives and we would not have them if we weren't alive.
The idea here is not to run away from our problems, but it is fair to say that there are times when it is ok to hide from them. Hiding from someone who has injured you, is ok, provided that person still has an evil intention to hurt you! The wisest choice to make in that situation is to keep yourself safe, but what we resist persists, meaning the hurt feeling we are feeling about that situation will still make us feel threatened untill we let it go. Part of letting go is not running away, but running to. We run to ourselves ideally and what we feel is the right next choice in our process of healing/life. I personally believe life is like a school or at least it should be. There is something exciting at the idea that there is always something new to learn, if we are available to learn it. Some might say, there is nothing new under the sun, it is true that human experience is similar, but experience is different every day. To avoid hedonistic pleasures would be wise for the person who is trying to 'better' their soul, so in that way there are new things to learn and new things to experience.
We are part of a living history of human experience, and we have a library of knowledge to look back on and learn from and to add to. To be stuck only in the present moment, leaves you mindful of that moment alone. I don't think that's what being mindful is about, but it can be to a certain degree. We all need to remember our past. The more we remember our past, the more collective knowledge we will have, and the reason why that is good is because it will relieve current emotional suffering. How? By looking to the past, and not doing what our ancestors did that caused the collective humanity at that time to suffer. This is Mike.
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