Stopping Thoughts
"You can naturally stop your thoughts if you focus your attention fully on your in-breath and your out-breath. After one or two minutes of practice, the quality of your in-breath and out-breath will improve. Your breath will become deeper, slower, and more harmonious and peaceful, whether you are lying down, sitting or walking. By practicing mindful breathing, we bring the elements of harmony and peace into our body." Thich Nhat Hanh, Your True Home
Yesterdays Tears
"The tears that I shed yesterday have become rain"
Thich Nhat Hanh
And rain makes things grow.
Everything transforms. What today looks 'bad' may tomorrow evolve as good fortune.
Don't label your feelings with causes and stories, and 'badness'. Don't deny what you actually feel either. Just accept what is actually there in the moment, without any added drama.
Say Yes to Life
Say Yes and embrace our entire imperfect and messy life.
(Paraphrasing Tara Brach)
That means be honest with ourselves with how we are really feeling at any given moment.
We can’t change what is already here inside us in this moment. Even if we think we should not be feeling that way, thus making us feel even worse about where we are. Stop right there!
Don’t make up stories about why we feel this way; who did what; “I’m so crap at this”; and all the other BS the little thinking voice in our heads invents out of nowhere.
Just be present. Acknowledge the feeling, BUT ONLY the feeling. We are humans after all.
We will find that the feeling starts to soften when we pay attention to it, with our deep awareness – not with thoughts. Peace starts to embrace the moment.
So if something is getting on your wick right now - Say Yes, and ‘deepen the trust in in the gold of your intrinsically open-hearted awareness. You strengthen the confidence that you can meet what ever arises <and> embrace your entire imperfect and messy life!’ Tara Brach
Real life is where real growth in present moment awareness can be honed.
Tara Brach has written a great little book, “Trusting the Gold”. Full of wee gems for those trying to be a little better at being present. She's also all over social media if you want to look her up.
Surrender
Frustration, stress, anxiety all arise when we want things to be other than they actually are.
Some want to control things so that everything stays how we want it to be, in our comfort zone, they resist change, and get very agitated when things go wrong - “That wasn’t in the plan!!” They wish things would just stay as we knew them before. They want to stop the unstoppable. But day turns to night, summer gives way to autumn, the years roll by, we all get older, then suddenly some of us are no longer here.
Others want this period in their life to be over, so they can get on with a future, better one. And maybe that special moment, that holiday, that new house, was good for a short while. But then that pales, and we are dreaming about the next one, and purposely ignoring what is going on right now, “now is so boring!” But one day there isn’t going to be anymore future moments. Will we then look back and wonder what it was all about?
When we surrender to what is, then we get to actually enjoy the ride. If we choose.
Surrender means welcoming uncertainty. It means paying attention to the signals and seeming serendipitous moments, that give us the clues about what life has in store for us next.
Surrender seems an anathema to most of us. It means giving up our need to control, our need to know in advance, our incessant need to plan everything in advance.
Death
In the past year I lost both parents after lengthy illnesses. They both knew their time was short. There was no point in dreading what was to come. All we could do was treasure the interactions that we could have, and remember some of the good times. It’s important not to burden loved ones with our grief or fears about death, despite the fact that their mortality points up our own.
Thich Nhat Hanh, who passed away recently at 95, said this:
“I don’t see why we have to say ‘I will die’, because I can already see myself in you, in other people, and in future generations. Even when the cloud is not there, it continues as snow or rain. It is impossible for a cloud to die. It can become rain or ice, but it cannot become nothing. The cloud does not need to have a soul in order to continue. There’s no beginning and no end. I will never die. There will be a dissolution of this body, but that does not mean my death. I will continue always.”
There is a certain comfort and peace knowing that death is really an illusion. And then there is no reason to live in fear of the future. Instead as Thich Nhat Hanh said,
“Mindfulness allows you to live deeply every moment that is given you to live.”
If you would like to discuss these concepts, and maybe would like to learn how to make the ‘little voice’ shut up, then please book a session with me.