by Jamesscotthenson | Feb 13, 2017 | Blog
Think about what it might be like to be a brick.
Or an engine block.
Or a tube of lipstick.
A game controller.
A glass jar.
A chess piece.
A grain of salt.
If you are playing fairly and not imbuing these things with
human characteristics, you will see that being one of these things isn’t like
anything at all. There’s nothing there.
The experience of consciousness is profound by itself, yet
we somehow think that we need to add things to it for it to be worthwhile or
enjoyable.
We think we get to pick and choose and make demands on
consciousness, that we get to complain if it doesn’t measure up.
This is such an odd concept. There is this thing that
is everything that we are, this thing that allows the very experiencing of
anything in the first place, and we are arrogant enough to complain about what
it offers us sometimes. The character has the nerve to criticize the story that
gives him his existence in the first place. The thing being illuminated, drawn
out of darkness, has the nerve to complain about the quality of the of the
light.
Existence is a gift. Consciousness is a privilege.
What would life look like if we truly believed this?
Try it right now.
Drop your ideas of how things need to be or are supposed to
be or should be.
Drop comparisons, criticisms, complaints and what ifs.
Make a conscious decision to embrace your experience for the
next few minutes, whatever it may look like.
Make a conscious decision to believe things are exactly as
they should be.
Now.
Notice what you are seeing.
What does everything around you look like without all the
stories your mind has to offer? Notice the colors, the textures, how you can
differentiate one object from the next.
Pretend you don’t know what the objects around you are or
what they do. What do they look like without your preconceived ideas?
Listen to the sounds around you in the same way. What do
they sound like without the stories your mind tells? Study how you can sort out
one sound from another. Be aware of them as neutral, not good or bad. Just
there.
What does to feel like to have a body?
Notice how you can shift your attention consciously, how you
can choose to experience one part of your body more than another. Let yourself
experience places of pain or sickness without judgement or wishing they were
different.
Resting in experience rather than the stories our minds tell
us allows us peace in discomfort and calm in the midst of chaos. It kills
boredom.
Stepping away from all the criticisms and judgments and
comparisons allows us to simply be present with what is happening instead of in
opposition to it.
No matter what happens to us today, at least we are here to
experience it.
by Jamesscotthenson | Feb 12, 2017 | Blog
I honestly dislike using the word mindfulness at this point
because it seems to carry all these connotations for people, when we are really
just talking about paying attention to our experience and understanding it is
just that: our experience.
Reality is simply happening, but we stain it in different
ways depending on what we dwell on. What we think about matters, what we see
matters, what we watch matters, what we hear matters. Everything that we put
into our mind and memory, consciously or unconsciously, has some kind of
impact.
I do not always do a good job of being mindful of what I
consume.
I think it has shifted for the better over the years, and I
am always trying to be more intentional with it, but I slip into dwelling on
negative and harmful things sometimes. And it always has an impact.
Think of the different media available to us now, and how
constantly it is available to us. A majority of the people I see under the age
of 45 have little white cords dangling down their chest or those big fat
Princess Leia looking headphones clamped on their ears. Their music is always
with them. We can watch YouTube videos and Netflix anywhere we can get
cellphone reception, and a majority of the young men I speak with play video
games for hours each day. Don’t even get me started on porn.
This isn’t to bash or criticize any of these forms of media,
but we do need to evaluate the content of what we are consuming.
Everything we put in our mind stains it just a little, and
things can get dark pretty quickly.
Personally, I am more concerned about the callousness and
indifference I see in so much of our media than I am about the violence and
sex, though these are issues as well. It rare for someone to pick up an axe and
attack their neighbor and misconceptions about sex can be worked out, but the
overwhelming narcissism and lack of empathy I see in people is troubling.
It is, however, a logical outcome of mindlessly bombarding
our experience with stimuli. I don’t see how we can really expect anything
different. Put different flavors in water and it starts to taste like them. Put
different colors in white paint and it becomes those colors.
Personally, I am trying to change what I put in my mind. I
actually turned off a new series a lot of people had recommended to me because
it was impacting me negatively. I hardly listen to music at all anymore, not
because there’s no good music, but because I love podcasts and audiobooks. When
I do listen to music, I try to make sure it is something that puts me in a
positive mindset. I am even adjusting what video games I play, moving away from
the GTA’s and showing Max the old Zelda series and Minecraft.
Changing the input has changed the output. My anxiety is
lower, my anger less. It’s easier to maintain a positive view of people and the
world, and this is more important right now than it has been in a long time.
Mindfulness is about being present, right here, right now,
without judgment. Everything we consume with our mind affects our ability to do
this – staining something infuses it in every way.
It is impossible for us not to be stained by what we dwell
on. If we dwell on negativity and darkness, our ability to accept things as
they are and avoid judgment will diminish, and our present experience will be
stained a little darker. If we dwell on positive things and stay in the light,
our ability to accept the present and embrace things as they are will expand,
and our present experience will be stained a little lighter.
Ultimately, the goal is probably to be as unstained as
possible, but this is difficult in a world and culture of constant media
engagement. The best we can do might be to choose the content of what we
consume, and do so mindfully.
What we consume becomes what we think, what we think becomes
who we are.
What are you soaking yourself in on a daily basis?
What are the things you consume telling about the world?
About other people?
About yourself?
Are these things helpful?
Just try to be aware of what you put in your mind today.
Notice how many messages you are receiving, both overt and more subtly. See
what happens if you consciously shift to something more positive and
life-affirming.
Thanks for reading.
by Jamesscotthenson | Feb 11, 2017 | Blog
I like to ask people about their priorities.
The answers are inevitably similar:
God
Family
Job
or
Family
School
Career
or
Family
Friends
Church
A lot of overlap, and the answers are pretty standard.
We say what we are supposed to say, we state our priorities
as they “should” be.
The thing is, these are pretty much always untrue. We can
see what our priorities are by how we spend our time. When I ask people to keep
a time log, or even just pay attention to how they actually spend their time
the answers are much different.
Watching Netflix
Playing on my phone
Pornography
Drinking
Texting with people
Smoking weed
Playing video games
Watching sports
Things like this. Not all as noble or healthy or socially
acceptable, but much more honest.
An unavoidable part of a mindful lifestyle is being
conscious and intentional with how we spend our time.
It’s easy to waste time these days, we live in a society and
consumer culture that not only encourages it, but creates newer and better and
more interesting ways to do it constantly. We also pile our lives up with
meaningless tasks, so that suddenly shirking everything and binging The Office
for 6 hours seems overwhelmingly appealing.
Every moment matters, and if we can approach them with a
mindful awareness and compassion, we can make even the most unpleasant or
mundane task worthwhile.
But first, we have to be aware of what we are doing at all.
How often do you snub the person in the room with you by
engaging others through your phone or tablet?
How much time do you spend mindlessly scrolling Facebook or
Instagram or Reddit?
How much of your time goes toward getting intoxicated,
including the process of acquiring the intoxicants and recovering from them?
If you were to create a minute-by-minute log of how you
spend your time, how much of it would be intentional? What would someone who
read this log say your priorities are?
None of these are meant to be criticisms or judgments, we
all waste time and lose intentionality. They are tough questions, but questions
worth answering.
Once we look at how much time we are wasting, we can ask
ourselves why. I find there is often something missing in our lives when we are
driven to distraction and idleness, and that is where the real value of being
mindful with our time comes in.
Try to be mindful of how you spend your time today.
It’s limited, and all of it is irreplaceable.
Have a great day, thank you for reading.
by Jamesscotthenson | Feb 10, 2017 | Blog
This is one of my primary sources of unhappiness with
myself. The words we speak matter, how we talk to other people matters and our
discourse as a people matters. Apart from the last one, which I’ve only
recently managed to get under control, I fail at being mindful constantly.
Our words relay our thoughts, but there also seems to be
this mechanism in there where our words escape before our thoughts have a
chance to check them. It’s odd, but it’s there.
Part of a mindful lifestyle is being in control of what we
say and how we say it.
Instant, non-face-to-face communication has not been helpful
in this regard, and neither has the internet and its capacity to connect
everyone. Let’s look at all three things mentioned above.
I used to not believe there are such things as “bad” words.
I still kind of don’t. On the surface it seems like a stupid concept. Yet, that
being said, it is a concept widely accepted by the society I live in, so people
are going to perceive me a certain way when I use certain words. It may affect
my ability to help them. Beyond this, I think these words affect how I see
myself and how I feel if I am honest. I have never gotten less angry from
swearing. More than anything though, apart from when I intentionally use these
words, my mouth represents a place of mindlessness, and this makes it worth
addressing.
As I said, getting accustomed to non-face-to-face
communication, especially the anonymity of the internet, has led us to a place
where how we speak to each other is a problem. There is a part of me that
thinks we lost something when we removed the consequences that one can incur by
saying something about someone else to their face. How we speak to others
influences how we see them, and tells us something about ourselves. We then
take these perceptions and feed them back into how we act, creating a
reinforcing loop.
How we speak to others matters.
Our public discourse is the saddest part of how we speak
right now. I don’t care which side of the political divide you find yourself
on, the discourse has become so toxic that it doesn’t seem fixable at this
point. This applies from internet news magazines feeling comfortable telling
elected members of the government to “eat shit” to people feeling comfortable
calling each other cuck and fascist and libtard and white supremacist based on
a difference of opinion. When we look at this in context of the reinforcing
loop it creates, it becomes a scary situation. In this regard I’ve found it
might simply be best to learn to keep my mouth shut.
How mindful are you of how you speak to others?
This doesn’t just apply to strangers and members of our
community, but our spouses and children and co-workers. Even the annoying ones.
What would your speech sound like if you were mindful of it
at every moment?
by Jamesscotthenson | Feb 9, 2017 | Blog
I watch the documentary “Happy People: A Year in the Taiga”
a few times a year and I have yet to reach a place of being unimpressed with
what the people on the movie are capable of. Watching someone make
cross-country skis from a tree using a hatchet, a wedge and some fire is
amazing, as are the canoes and traps and cabins they build. It seems like magic
in our convenience-oriented modern way of doing things.
We live in a world that celebrates dabbling rather than
doing something deeply and with excellence.
Many of the things that are hobbies now used to be lifestyles,
and people used to be much better at them. Look back at how humans were able to
build cities and cathedrals and even just stay alive in harsh climates because
of the crafts they cultivated over lifetimes and passed down from generation to
generation.
I see this in the study of mind and working on mindfulness
as many people only want it for a certain situation or to help with a specific
issue, like anxiety or anger. We are a culture of dabblers, of people who jump
from one thing to the next to the next so rapidly that we know a little about a
lot of things. We are able to do less and less, yet we have less time than
people used to have to do what we want. It is rare that I meet someone with
deep knowledge of a field or a skillset. This is what so much convenience has
brought us.
So, with this is mind, I thought it might be good to push
the topics I had planned for this week back, and spend a full seven days
looking at different aspects of living mindfully. To be clear, I am not
claiming to have a deep knowledge of mindfulness or to be someone who
cultivates it as fully as I would like, but trying is something that dominates
my learning and my day-to-day life. I have also found that I write this blog
for myself as much as anyone else, so this week will help me come into a more
mindful way of being as well.
So, a few things to remember:
There is nothing special about being mindful, despite the
overtones so many try to assign it. It is about being present, about
experiencing your experience instead of judging and assessing it. Many would
argue it is more of a returning to our natural state than trying to do
something new – it is only new to us because we live in a state of distraction
and obsession with our thoughts about situations.
Nonjudgment and acceptance are key components of being
present. We are not experiencing situations when we judge them, but dealing
with them through our thoughts about them. I encourage people to go a
step beyond this and embrace things as they are, not wishing they were ever any
different.
It’s not about becoming passive or letting people walk all
over us. In fact, I believe it is a much more intentional and active engagement
with reality as we shift away from how we wish things to were to trying to deal
with them as they are. When we do need to address something with someone, we
can do it mindfully and with compassion rather than anger and hurt, and we are
more likely to actually address things with people when we are not deceiving
ourselves about how we feel about them.
It is a discipline. You will fail constantly. I fail
constantly. It’s about understanding that as soon as you realize you are
distracted, you have become mindful again. That is everything.
Begin today. Below is one of my favorite versions of a
mindfulness meditation, pulled from the book Dharma Punx by Noah Levine. Try it
out. There is a (very rough) guided meditation on the media page of this
website if that is more your speed, and there are hundreds on YouTube that will
be more polished than mine. However you do it, just do it.
See you tomorrow.
Find a comfortable place to sit, with the back straight, but
not rigid. Allowing the body to just breathe naturally, bring the attention to
the most noticeable point of touch where the breath makes contact as it enters
the nostrils.
Bring the awareness to the sense of touch of the air as it
passes in and passes out. Keep your attention at one precise point and note the
sensation that accompanies each breath as it flows in and flows out of the body
in the natural breathing process.
If the attention strays, bring it back to the point where
you notice the breath as it comes and at the nostrils. Noting “breathing in;
breathing out.” Not thinking about the breath. Not even visualizing it. Just
being with the sensation as it arises with the touch of the air passing in and
out of the nostrils.
Sounds arise. Thoughts arise. Other sensations arise. Let
them all be in the background, arising and passing away.
In the foreground is the moment-to-moment awareness of the
sensation of the breath coming and going. Not pushing anything away. Not
grasping at anything. Just clear, precise, gentle observation of the breath.
Mindfulness of breathing.
Sensations arise in the body. Thoughts arise in the mind.
They come and go like bubbles.
Each mind moment is allowed to arise and allowed to pass
away of its own momentum. No pushing away of the mind, no grasping at the
breath. Just gently returning awareness to the sensations always present with
the coming and the going of the breath. Gently returning.
The awareness of breath is foreground. In the background,
everything else is as it is.
Each breath is unique: sometimes deep, sometimes shallow,
always slightly changing. The whole breath felt going in, stopping, and coming
out; the whole breath experienced at the level of sensation, of touch.
Breathing just happening by itself. Awareness simply
watching. The whole body relaxed. Eyes soft. Face relaxed. Shoulders loose. The
belly full and easy. No holding anywhere. Just awareness and breathing.
Just consciousness and the object consciousness, arising and
passing away moment to moment in the vast space of mind.
Don’t get lost. If the mind pulls away, gently, with a soft,
non- judging, non-clinging awareness, return to the breath. Note the whole breath,
from its beginning to its end, precisely, clearly, from sensation to sensation.
The body breathes by itself. The mind thinks by itself.
Awareness simply observes the process without getting lost in the content.
Each breath is unique. Each moment is completely new.
If sensation should arise in the body, let the awareness
recognize it as sensation. Notice it coming and notice it going. Not thinking
of it as a body or as leg, as pain or as vibration. Simply noting it as
sensation and returning to the breath.
The whole process occurring by itself. Awareness observing,
moment-to-moment, the arising and passing away of experiences in the mind and
body. Moment-to-moment change.
Surrender to the present. Experience the breath. Don’t try
to get anything from the breath. Don’t even think of concentration. Just allow
awareness to penetrate to the level of sensations that arise of themselves and
by themselves.
The point of touch becoming more and more distinct, more
intense with the coming and going of each breath.
The mind becoming one-pointed on sensations that accompany
breathing.
If thoughts arise, clearly note their motion in mind, rising
and passing away like bubbles. Notice them, and return to the mindfulness of
the breathing.
If thought or feeling becomes predominant, with an open
awareness, softly note what is predominant as “feeling” or “thinking,” as
“hearing,” as “tasting,” as “smelling.” Then, gently return to the breath.
Don’t tarry with thought. Don’t identify contents. Just note
the experience of thought entering and passing away, of feeling, of any sense,
arising in the moment and passing away in the next moment.
Return to the even flow of the breath. Not grasping
anything. Not pushing anything away. Just a clear awareness of what predominates
in the mind or body as it arises.
Returning deeply to the intense point of sensation that
marks the passage of the air of each full breath.
The eyes soft. Shoulders soft. Belly soft. The awareness
crystal clear.
Subtler and subtler sensations become predominant. Thoughts
become predominant. Each one noted clearly within the concentrated awareness of
breathing.
Watch its motion, continual change from object to object,
breath to breath, sensation to sensation. Like a kaleidoscope, continual
change.
Moment-to-moment objects arise and pass away in the vast
space of mind, of body. An easy, open awareness simply observing the process of
arising and passing away. Awareness of whatever is predominant, returning to
the sensations of the breath.
Feelings arise. Thoughts arise. The “planning mind,” the
“judging mind.” Awareness experiences the process of their movement. It doesn’t
get lost in content. Observe thought passing through the vast space of mind.
These words arising from nothing, disappearing into nothing,
just open space in which the whole mind, the whole body, are experienced as
moment-to-moment change.
Sound arises and passes away. Feeling arises and passes
away. All of who we are, of what we think we are, moment to moment, coming and
going, bubbles in mind, arising, passing away in the vast, open space of mind.
Choiceless awareness. Moment- to-moment awareness of whatever arises, of
whatever exists.
All things that have the nature to arise have the nature to
pass away. Everything we think of as “me” is disappearing moment to moment.
Moment to moment, Knowing the truth of each experience.
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