Tag: mindfullness

Beneath the Deep Blue Sea.

“If only I had…”

Oh, my goodness – how often have we all muttered these words? Looking to add a condition to happiness, rather than embracing this world just as it is.

It’s a means for us to cope, or to withstand – these subtle ‘gaps’ within our mindfulness practice.

Likewise, it can become one our greatest stumbling blocks to inner peace.

When I first started my meditation practice, I resisted the urge to reflect on these thoughts and emotions. I had convinced myself that they were contrary to my purpose, and – as such, did my very best to push them away.

Though, in retrospect I suppose I had yet to understand – that, the pain of seeing what was in my heart was simply too great.

Dave Barry once wrote, “There’s nothing wrong with enjoying looking at the surface of the ocean itself, except that when you finally see what goes on underwater, you realize…that you’ve been missing the whole point of the ocean.”

Mindfulness practice is much like the ocean. At first, we are contented simply looking at the waves – until that moment when mist touches cheek, and we realize… we must go deeper still.

Mindfulness is an *opening* of senses, my darlings – a deep breath, or taking in, of this – the fullest aspect of our experience. Or, as Thich Nhat Hanh so eloquently shared, it is “the continuous practice of touching life deeply in every moment of daily life.”

“Mindfulness is the energy that helps us recognize the conditions of happiness that are already present in our lives,” he continues. “You don’t have to wait ten years to experience this happiness. It is present in every moment of your daily life.”

In looking deeper, we open ourselves fully to the everyday experiences of this life. In doing so, we are final liberated from our fear, our apprehension, our troubles – and we can partake fully in the magnificence that exists just beneath the deep blue ‘sea’.

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The Art of Bodhisattva Listening.

[blockquote source=”Mark Nepo”]”“The exquisite risk is a doorway that lets us experience the extraordinary in the ordinary.”[/blockquote]

In his book, The Exquisite Risk, Mark Nepo tells the story of a dear friend who began to slowly lose her sense of hearing. With each conversation she found herself straining to hear all the words, until one day – she began to ‘listen’ in an entirely new way. Leaning in, she could see the subtle changes in body movement and gesture, the delightful warmth of those ‘smiling eyes’ – and, more importantly, she began to see the ‘face behind the face.’

Suddenly, a whole new world revealed itself to her – and, through the guise, and blessing, of this ‘disability.’

Ironically, it was through the loss of her senses that she ultimately gained awareness.

There’s an important question to be asked here, that is – how do we remain open to our pain, “to make our way through the drama of our bleeding to the stripping of our will, through the tensions of our suffering to the humility of surrender where we might learn the ordinary art of living at the pace of what is real.”

In other words, how do we begin to listen to that which truly matters? To slow down, and experience this life at the pace at which it was intended?

“We don’t have to go far to know this,” Nepo observes. “For our suffering quickly breaks down what we think we know and have to say into a more authentic and humble taste of being and feeling.”

Whether through illness or injury or the myriad of life’s circumstances—inevitably, we will face our greatest challenge yet:

To struggle through complacency or risk being new.

“For being human, we remember and forget. We stray and return, fall down and get up, and cling and let go, again and again. But it is this straying and returning that makes life interesting, this clinging and letting go—damned as it is—that exercises the heart.” – Mark Nepo

Indeed, it is only through this exercise of heart—that we may begin awaken that which has been with us all along; that is, the true spirit of the bodhisattva warrior.

And, did you know that when you’re still enough you can finally hear that heart whisper?