Mindfulness

Sat, 30 Oct 2004 18:27:45 GMT

Mindfulness - what does it mean? I know what it means for me - it means focusing the mind on the fullness of the moment, the present, the Now. When you are fully awake to the present moment, you will see that no matter what is currently happening, it will fill your awareness. It will fill the moment.

Too often, however, we allow the moment to be filled with past and future, we lose the moment by filling it with something that no longer and may never exist. Past regrets, hurts, incompleted scenarios. Future worries, plans, what if's. There is so much baggage there, how on earth can we find room to be present? We can't. Any thought, any moment that focuses on past or future is nullified, because past and future simply do not exist other than as thought forms. The only thing you can experience is the moment.

Does that mean we can't look at our past and try to grow from our mistakes? Does it mean we should never plan anything? Of course not. The key is to remain aware of the moment as you reach into the past or future, to be aware of your Self who is loooking at this - your self being who you are NOW, not who you were or who you will be.

I think that is the key to remaining mindful to the present. We observe who we were who we may become, but always remain aware of who we are right now. Too often during these forays into the past or future, we lose the sense of our Self in the present. We literally travel back in time or forward into the future and associate ourself with that past self who was hurt, we feel the hurt all over again, experience the mistakes, identify with them. Or we fantasize what we will be, or fear what we might become, again falling into the identification of that fictional "I" rather than remaining focused on who we ARE.

We are not our past. It may have brought us to where we are now, but the past is gone, it doesn't exist except in the energy we give it right now. We are not our future - our future is chosen within each present moment, it is a projection of that moment, but in itself does not yet exist.

Only Now exists. The rest is illusion.

Mindfulness: to be in present time, to mind the fullness of the present moment.

It's all in how you look at it

Tue, 26 Oct 2004 20:25:12 GMT

It's all in how you see...

I've worn corrective lenses since I was 11 years old. First glasses, then contact lenses, and finally the past years, back to glasses.

What I like about the glasses is that they give me a choice of seeing clearly - or not. Sometimes a fuzzy world can be comforting. Take off my glasses and everything around me goes soft. Night time, outside, can be particularly enjoyable - distant pinpoints of light are transformed into soft round globes, one blending into another. Precision is lost, and replaced with a world where all edges are gone. The world becomes a gentle place. As long as you don't try to navigate through the haze.

Most of the time I prefer the precision. While short periods of fuzziness can be relaxing, I'd still rather see my way through this thing called Life.

Life is very simple. You're born, you live, then you die. You don't have any control over the first part, and most of us do not have a choice in the last part. But the middle, ah, the middle part. That is where we do have choices. Choices about how we see the events that unfold before us.

Fuzzy? Or Clear?

It's all in how you look at it.

It's all in how you see...

-judee

just judee

Mindfulness

It's all in how you look at it