Being is a beautiful thing ...

As a person with monkish-type tendencies I've always found it difficult to relate to worldly imperatives and values especially where the world of work is concerned, or to take it very seriously beyond putting in my four hours of bread labour, as Tolstoy would have called it. Nowadays it seems that not only are we all supposed to find meaningful forms of employ, but there is considerable pressure also to strive for stardom in one form or another. 

I say give it a rest already!

I view all this with a deeply skeptical eye because for me fulfillment is found solely in the practice of mindfulness. And let me be clear--not the sort of mindfulness that is used as a quick fix, or mindfulness as an afterthought, if there happens to be time (which there won't), but mindfulness as the core around which the rest of my life orbits.

If mindfulness practice is not made central, all other endeavours will be rendered insubstantial and of questionable value. Busy work is not the point in life. Neither are accolades, purpose, success, legacies or any of the other conventional markers of a life well-lived. They may be nice to experience and/or have their role to play, but they are not where real sustenance in life is derived from.

Trophies can be taken away from us, businesses fail, accolades can easily turn into heckling, a sense of purpose, as we imagine it, may fail to take shape. 

What I mean to say, is that we could spend our whole lives waiting to turn a corner in these areas and if we do, we will have missed the only deeply real, source of nourishment and sustenance readily available to us in some form of mindfulness practice. 

These other endeavours I have mentioned may bear relevance and importance in our lives, but never as much relevance and importance as the simple act of being alive to what is in front of us here, now. 

There is no more deeply satisfying source of nourishment, as I say, than being present to the simple gifts and graces of life. If we miss that, we will have missed an opportunity for experiencing the poetry and passionate vitality that sustain us. 

Owning our own business isn't going to save our lives, enjoying the accolades of unknown others isn't either. However, engaging in a soulful, sincere and heartfelt way with our lives in moments of mindfulness will. 

Spend five minutes, spend 50--the main point is to show up in a committed, engaged way for those five minutes, really experiencing the texture and flavour of life in the moment. 

Moments are timeless. This is in part why mindfulness is such a powerful practice. In a timeless realm there is nothing to strive for, nothing to re-coil from, nothing to worry about. It is a simple act of being.

And being, in a world of relentless and aggressive doing, is a beautiful, magical thing. Check it out.

Holding Things Lightly - The essential spiritual practice of creating space, breathing room.

I think one of the traps of any spiritual practice is the habit of clinging to newly discovered ‘truths’. We learn something new, have an epiphany or revelation that leads us to a deeper understanding of our life and reality, and we solidify it into a belief—the potential beginning of spiritual dogma.

It is, therefore, important to hold our experiences lightly, gently, giving them room to move, to re-shape themselves and reveal even greater depth and complexity. Truth is most often relative, so it is vital that we maintain this sort of openness.

All of which is to say, I confess, that anytime I have found myself discovering what are arguably liberating truths about my own nature, or the nature of the universe of which I am a part, I also notice a tendency to cling to said truths like a life-preserver.

I do at times, in other words, take a bit of a desperate choke-hold that can only squeeze the life out of said liberating bit of newly discovered vitality.

Knowing this about myself, I now try to catch myself in the act and back off.  I enjoy my moment of ‘enlightenment’, but don’t treat it as though that is all there is to know, or be aware of. This requires facing my fear of the unknown, and any insecurities I may feel in the face of this vast Uncertainty in which we all have membership.

Holding things lightly I think for me, especially means lightening up mentally and emotionally. It is all too easy to get bogged down in the weighty nature of philosophical and spiritual inquiry, which, then, generally misses the whole point of bothering to inquire at all.

And the point of such inquiry, as I see it, is to locate maps to life’s sweet spot—the center from which we function with the greatest degree of relative equanimity, sanity and vitality.

I do not ever expect to remain perfectly centered. I don’t think the nature of the universe, composed as it is of all things dark and light, supports that expectation. So, the ability to hold things lightly is particularly important for it allows me to ride the waves, the inevitable ups and downs, with greater skill and ease than is possible if I’m clinging desperately to some liberating notion that provides only one small view of a much larger and complex picture.

Holding things lightly, in other words, allows for mental and emotional breathing room—the ground for relative equanimity, sanity and vitality.

Spiritual Ambition - on being vs. doing.

“If there is to be any peace it will come through being, not having.” –Henry Miller

I think this is a key tenant of any authentic spiritual practice—essentially that our primary job consists not in the doing that leads to having, but in being. Being the love we wish to see in the world, being peace, etc. And yet what I see many times in the published articles of ‘spiritual’ blogs is a disturbing reflection of the larger culture’s tendency towards doing and acquiring.

Still being promulgated is the notion that if we but attain a certain measure of enlightenment, whether by means of meditating, figuring out how we want to feel and pursuing that ideal, or by pursuing a more sanctified diet, we will have, at last, arrived. Presumably, just on the other side of attaining such ideals, we can finally relax and be.

Contentment gets short shrift in a life that is based on the acquisition of more, whether that is more of our preferred feeling states, preferred food choices, or preferred experiences in contemplation.

However, a pervasive peace and happiness will never be possible if we are but trading in our more secular ambitions for more ‘spiritual’ ones. Ambition is ambition no matter how you dress it up and is often fueled by a dissatisfaction that needs to be closely scrutinized before reaching ambitiously for our favourite spiritual opiate (veganism, three favourite soul desires, meditation, whatever … ).

Peace only comes through being and being requires keeping company with what is in any given moment in time, including our less desired feeling states, less than perfect food choices or distracted mental states of mind.

These uncomfortable states play an important role in our spiritual growth—they deepen our awareness, they flex our heart muscle, and they transform us in ways that our ‘spiritual’ ambitions often promise, but are never really able to deliver on.

Any spiritual practice that is built on high-grading our experiences lacks maturity, sophistication and depth of understanding, so it will, therefore, also inevitably lack substance, stability and vitality.

There is no substitute for walking through the fire—for being love and being peace. And being lies in direct opposition to doing. It is harder, requires more faith, more personal strength of character and more patience as we move through all the diversity of experience that life bestows, and any uncomfortable feelings that accompany it.

Our only real job, then, is to let life work on us. We need to listen more closely, more discerningly, as life speaks to us without rushing to conclusions and/or making rash decisions to ‘fix’ anything. Just be.

That way whatever course of action we may eventually take, stands a much better chance of being synchronized with the natural rhythms of life in all their shimmering dark and light aspects. 

How 'Smart' are Your Heart and Mind?

“A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination.” – Nelson Mandela

I spend a lot of time reading, thinking and being pensive. Part of this is just in my nature, but part of it is also a deliberate quest to educate my heart and my mind for the very reasons stated above. What do I mean by educating heart and mind?

Well, the heart is the means by which we sense the qualities of our direct experience of life—we feel stuff. The mind, wrapped up in the brain, helps us to organize and understand that material. And when the heart and the mind are in productive, internal dialogue with each other, depth of understanding and meaning are made. At least in some simplified, basic sense.

Educating the heart and mind are therefore very important, as productive dialogues only occur between the well-informed heart and the well-informed mind.

As I say, I read a lot and am choosy about what I read. I try to be equally discerning when it comes to films, stuff from the web, people, places and even things, understanding that these impact my heart and mind in much the same way as the food I choose to eat impacts my body.

Essentially, I am aiming to nourish my system with experiences based in a reverence for life.

Then there is the essential dialogue between the heart and mind, facilitated best, in my experience, by way of the contemplative arts. Things like meditation, journaling, long distance running, open-water swimming, knitting—basically anything that takes me into a quieter, more spacious sense of internal awareness.

Somewhere in the soft, focused awareness that those experiences provide, arises an organic processing that leads to authentic transformation—something I don’t need to will into being or force into existence, just make room for feeling, noticing and observing without my usual tendency to judge it. This is the heart of any contemplative practice, as I’ve come to know them and is a powerful medium for lasting change.

A good head and a good heart are what get us through life in tact. Together they make possible intelligent acts of courage and compassion that help re-shape the world in favourable and badly needed ways. 

Their education is basic and necessary.