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It was just a short while ago that mindfulness seemed so illusive.   Actually it was hard.    Sitting down for meditation was a challenge, and I found it hard to get into the groove.  Distractions were sticky, powerful and difficult to allow to fade away.   My mind wandered rather freely on its own.   I wrestled it back into the groove again and again.

I guess that the groove has gotten worn into me a bit, because mindfulness now seems so simple.   My body seems to remember what it feels like, and I just have to  remind myself what mindfulness feels like.

I still go for long periods of time during the day when I no longer remember the experience of mindfulness.    My body and my mind wander.    I forget to pay attention, even though it is so simple to be attentive.   I also get distracted very easy, but the distractions pass by only if I remember not to hold on to them.    It is really quite simple, if I remember to relax and pay attention.

Even though I may only sit for ten to fifteen minutes, meditation is rather simple and not a chore.    It certainly is not a big fight to stay focused or to pay attention.    My  mind often wanders and wants to explore.   However, once I realize my mind is exploring, my body brings my attention back to what is happening here and now.   I am sitting.   Nothing else.   It is really quite simple.

I am not sure I can even explain what this is like to any one.    Mindfulness is such a personal thing, based on experience.     I’m obviously basing my thoughts about mindfulness and meditation on what I have experienced.    I got some guidance and advice.     But I really had to explore and figure it out for myself.    I found and made my own simple groove.   That has made it simple.

With time and practice, that groove gets more stable and deep.    It’s really quite simple.

Too much emphasis is placed on making good choices.   My basic choice is to pay attention, and not much else matters.   I want to be aware.     If I am aware, all the rest will follow.

Many people have debated for a long time whether humans have a free will.   Heroes of mine, such as Brian Greene, simply deny that humans have free will.    I’m wondering if it even makes any difference.  I’m beginning to think that I actually don’t have a choosing power that is totally free, but I have a different perspective than a cosmologist like Brian.   I think what what appears to be a free-will choice of mine is simply a rational follow-up to what my mind has perceived.

I don’t put much effort into making decisions.    What I really want to do is pay closer attention.   That’s a decision that may mean something.

Sometimes, I simply need to pay attention for a longer time.    Rushed decisions are often logical decisions, but they are made on  limited, often faulty information.    If I have allowed  my data gathering to take its own sweet time, I am more likely to make decisions that I won’t want to change later on.

Part of the faulty data gathering is often not so much factual, just incomplete. Faulty data often means that I have been paying too much attention to my feelings.   My feelings put the spotlight on and highlight specific pieces of information.    Based on my feelings, I pay too much attention to those pieces of information.   Anxiety and fear often precede and shape rushed decisions.    These and other feelings rush me into actions that are based on faulty data or limited information.

I especially want to pay attention to my feelings and be aware of how they are influencing my attention.

I also seem to be more satisfied with the outcome when I take my time to make decisions, to choose a course of action.   Decisions made with a speck of information are actually not free decisions.   My decisions become free by allowing myself enough time to gather information, absorb the whole reality, immerse myself in an intimate awareness.    Appropriate action follows focused awareness.   In effect, the decision becomes no decision.     The action naturally follows awareness.

My choices are all about choosing to pay attention.    All else will follow, naturally.

I sit in these Earth Science classes at the U of M and I listen to countless stories of how living creatures have evolved.   These are stories of success.   Right now it’s about dinosaur and flowering plants.    My thoughts frequently drift off to human consciousness and I think about how consciousness might have evolved in humans.   How did we humans ever evolve to have a body that can support our level of consciousness.

What puzzles me most is the question of how and why did consciousness make it more possible for humans to spread their consciousness-supporting genes into the next generation.    What evolutionary advantage did consciousness offer that made it more likely that it would be supported in the future gene pool.   Consciousness does not seem to follow evolutionary principles.     It may even seem to work against evolution.

Arguably, a trait has to give an organism some advantage if it is going to spread in future generations.   I don’t readily see how human consciousness makes it more likely that human genes would be passed forward.    I don’t see how more consciousness would be encouraged and therefore emerge.

It seems to me that the very emotions and drives that consciousness  attempts to mitigate are the very traits that have made humans such successful survivors and breeders.  We have been successful in moving our genes into ever-burgeoning populations because of traits related to aggression, aversion and grasping.    These are traits that consciousness seems to restrict, not promote.

Yet it seems that these same traits have made us successful breeders, and made those who possess them most likely to succeed in passing on their genes.   “If you are a star, they let you do it” is not a unique or novel notion.    The genes of Genghis Kahn are identified all over Asia today.   The genes of the Buddha seem untraceable.

I actually think that these dominating traits may have been temporarily successful, but will lead to the ultimate demise of humans as we know them today.   I don’t understand how they have been favored by the forces of evolution, but I also think they have taken humans down an evolutionary dead end.

Perhaps I am looking at a moment of time, a period of time that is just too short.   I am simply living in one of nature’s mistakes.    The time of human civilization is only about 10,000 years long.    In evolutionary terms, that is but a brief moment, ample time for a misadventure that will ultimately collapse.   I may be part of an experiment of nature that isn’t going to prevail.    10,000 years hardly even shows up on any kind of evolutionary record or time-line.

I think that the consciousness that has arisen in humans is not an evolutionary driving force, but it does offer us a way out.    Perhaps, it is an aspect of human development that follows some kind of unknown, undiscovered evolutionary principle.   It may give humans an advantage, if only if we choose to use it.    We will have to knowingly step outside of the known evolutionary guidelines and principles and discover a new way to evolve.

Consciousness is a natural aspect of all things, most easily recognized in living beings.   Humans have a great biological platform for consciousness.    I wonder if we will use this trait that gives us a kind of worm-hole through the naturally evolving  universe.

I think some of us will step outside the known laws of evolution and find a new way of evolving.   Right now, dominance by those who follow the brutal laws of evolution seems to be prevailing.     I am hoping for an awakening of the few who will find a way to survive.    The “fittest” will be those who have recognized and use the advantages of their evolved consciousness.

 

It has taken me many years to finally wake up and become somewhat aware.       I’m now only starting to realize what it feels like to be aware of flowers, of people, of food, of rocks.    It is a connection I never before realized was possible.

I’ve always been able to pay attention.    Being aware is more like being conscious that I am paying attention.    I am learning to be an engaged observer.   Until now, I barely scratched the surface of what it means to be aware of anything, of everything.    It is like being joined with everything, sharing the same time and space.    And I know I’m doing it.

I have no  idea just where this consciousness of mine  resides.    Certainly, it is not my brain.    It has already been a couple of years since I discovered that awareness is experienced with my whole body.    My brain plays an important role, but the kind of awareness I’m learning extends through my whole presence.   All converging conditions seem to be aligned in a new way and I am able to be intimately aware with all of me.

Now I’m unsure what “all of me” actually includes.    I am  learning how I have this symbiotic relationship with all the life forms living within me, the bacteria and fungi in my gut, on my skin, in my whole body.

The individual cells of my human body, the bacteria at work throughout my body, the living organism on my skin are all engaged in energy and material exchanges that converge to make me function.     I am all these life forms.    My awareness rises from the activity of everything that functions and acts as one form.

I am a convergence of many forms that I once regarded as separate, but now I wonder if we are not all actually one.   This causes me to ask:  do we share the same consciousness?   I have learned that many illusions have shaped the way I have lived my life    Perhaps the illusion of a separate self is one of those illusions.

I further wonder if this experience is unique to humans like me.    I wonder if the bacteria living within me, that are a living part of me, are also part of the consciousness I experience.    Do we “all” share the same awareness?   I really am not sure just where “my” body ends and “they” begin, so would the same ambiguity apply to awareness as well.   Converging causes and conditions have formed everything.   Perhaps a separate self just doesn’t make sense, or at least doesn’t matter.

What about the tree just outside my window and the rocks in my garden.   Are they aware of what it means to be alive as a tree or be immersed in the soil as a patient rock.

I  know that most people would say that a tree or rock could not be aware.    But what a terrible mistake it would be if they were wrong.   What if a tree were aware as a tree, a rock aware as a rock, and a human aware as a human.

As for me, I will continue to talk to the trees as I pass by and the rocks as I move them about.    I’m convinced that in that moment we probably share the experience of what it means to be aware.   We intimately share and merge who we are.

I have long recognized that the concepts we have of a God are a reflection of ourselves.    Most of my notions of a God were fashioned in an imagined images of myself.    This is not especially unusual because so much of the world I create around me is  a reflection of what is present in my imagination.

What my eyes perceive is built on top of a life of experience.  The tree I see is  largely a reflection of what is present in my memory of what a tree is like.  My reference to being able to experience the tree is, regrettably , often a reflection of my self.   Most of the time, the tree is out there, I am in here.

It takes a developed skill to learn to be aware of what a tree in front of actually is.    It takes being able to enter into the tree and becomes intimate with it.   It requires me to put aside notions of self, and forget that there is the other.

If there is no self, then there will be no reflection of self in how I regard the world.   There will be scant reflection of self when  any awakened individual regards the world.    An awakened individual would experience a vastness in which they are intimately present..    There is no self.    There is no personification.

I wonder if this is what individuals like John of the Cross experienced when they felt the dark night of the soul.    He talks of the abandonment.    There was absolute aloneness.     Perhaps, having let go of the notions of self, there was no longer a personification of God.    Without a sense of his own person, he no longer had a notion of the person of a God.

Perhaps he had broken through the mirrored illusion.   There was only emptiness.   Then, the story goes, there was intimacy, bliss, ecstasy.

 

Emptiness comes and goes.    It sometimes falls across the text I am reading on the page of a book, and I fall into the text.  I do not hasten to return.

Sometimes emptiness follows me as I walk down the stairs and overtakes me as I reach the last few steps.  There is no bottom.

My mouth opens to receive food, and my lips close around the unformed void.    There is nothing I would rather savor.

The path in my garden is becoming worn by the vibrant emptiness that accompanies me on my walks.   My plants lean into my moving aura.

The skin of my hands passing through the air has become accustomed to the touch of the emptiness all around me.

There is only emptiness.

In the West, there is a nebulous arena identified as the world of mystics.   Mystics  like John of the Cross, Theresa of Avila, Francis of Assisi, and Clare are considered unique, a bit odd and far outside what most of us consider normal human beings.   I think my meditation practice and experience of mindfulness is touching on the outside edges of the world of mystics.

I’m not sure what the experience of others might be, but my own experience is plunging me into a deeper reality that can hardly be explained except by metaphor.   “It is like…..” is about all I seem able to say.    I do think that my experience is not the normal experience of most people around me.    In many ways, I have had to abandon the normal, be ready to experience something altogether different.

New insight is often subtle, but it is a genuine awakening to an untouchable and unseen reality.    I’m not sure I can adequately express it, and I think it must be experienced to be understood.   I have read some of what John of the Cross has written, and he makes sense to me if I remove the personification of God.   It is easy to get lost in the God-metaphors and never get to the reality of the John of the Cross experience.

I appreciate some of the intellectual framework of both western and eastern science.  But the reality is present in the experience.    Science is a wonderful guide, but the insight comes to an open and unformed mind.    The “Aah hah” moment must be directly experienced, not just understood.

For me, it works when I can let go with my intellect and be totally receptive to whatever appears.    My intellect is helpful sometimes in pushing back the illusions that my imagination is so willing to provide.   I often find myself either staring or falling into an immense emptiness.   It is such a wholesome place to be.

I wonder about the ‘dark night of the soul’ that western mystics like John of the Cross experience. I think it may have been an essential step along the way to insight, to awakening.    The total loss of a personal relationship, the total feeling of abandonment by a personal God were perhaps opening the mystic to awareness and essential union.

Once the personification of divinity was abandoned, once the illusion of a personal connection with the divine was surrendered, only then was there peace, bliss, ecstasy .   If John of the Cross were an eastern mystic, he would have called it nirvana.

I have tried to understand what the eastern writers mean by the illusion of the self.    I have begun to embrace some of what it feels like to let go of the sense of self.    The disappearance of the self is perhaps a passage through which I must go.    I wonder if I will see the footprints of western mystics along the way.

 

 

There is something not right about the idea of winning.    All my life, the notion of winning has been part of my routine.   Coming out on top, overcoming problems, finishing the puzzle have all been attractive and motivating.   I finally have to admit that there is very little that’s satisfying about winning.

Im noticing that I have less intent to win.   I am learning to yield, to bend to forces outside and inside of me.  Even the bugs eating away at my plants are a little less of a challenge than they use to be.   My intent is more to understand, and all else will follow.

There are two statements from Mark Nunberg that keep coming back to mind.    The first is something I heard from him a couple of years ago: “This is how it feels.”    For me, that is the golden key for my meditation and the awareness I carry with me through the day.

Meditation, after all, is just practice.     I put myself in a somewhat controlled condition, I relax, and I pay attention to what is happening.    The candle is lit, the incense has been burning, the bell has rung and I am sitting on my cushion wrapped in my fleece cape.   I remember “this is how it feels” and slide into an almost instant experience of being relaxed and attentive.

My body knows what to do, and my mind is part of what my body does.  I am quickly aware of a whole experience of being relaxed and knowing a vast emptiness.   I am aware of a body / mind falling into nothingness.   The sensation is one of remembering what this is like.    I easily know that this is how it feels.    This is is how I intend that it feel.

This experience, repeated day after day, has left a lasting impression.    It borders on being a habit.   My awareness knows that “this is how it feels” any time I ask it to pay attention to what I am experiencing.     My body / mind knows how to cooperate with what it has been trained to do:   relax and be alert.    Then I can be aware.

I can be aware in an instant about what is going on, what I am able to experience.    Sometimes my awareness is directed to what I see or touch.   It could be my watching someone get on the bus, it could be my looking at a blooming plant.  Sometimes my awareness is focused on something I am trying to figure out, a problem being solved    Sometimes my awareness is simply being drawn into the world of my imagination.

The words Mark gave me, “This is how it feels,” may not be there, but the memory and the message is often present and clear.     I can go there to that relaxed and alert place because it is familiar, I’ve been here many times before.    What I experienced on my cushion I am able to experience on the bus and on my garden path.

The other statement I took from Mark is not so much a part of my daily habit.    It is more of a tool that I use when I get stuck or jammed up.   I simply fill in the blank when I can’t quite get on track:   “_______is being known.”

I use it when I get distracted when I intend to be meditating.    My distraction is being known.    If my leg is hurting, my hurting leg is being known.   If I start thinking about what I want to do this morning, planning is being known.    If I feel disconnected from someone, feeling disconnected is being known.   If I feel anxious, being anxious is being known.

Mark’s words are a handy, effective tool of making a distraction an object of my awareness.    For me, it is an expression of self acceptance and compassion.    Oh, this is what is happening.

The tool gives me instant control over my awareness and allows me to focus it where I choose.    It deepens my ability to guide my awareness every time I apply the words, ” _____is being known.”

It also gives me greater insight and understanding of how my mind works.    I recognize and appreciate the power of my habits of thinking.    Being aware of how my mind is working allows me to direct its awesome  powers to where I want it to help me be more aware of my world.   I see what my mind is up to, and it doesn’t get to be lazy or misguided.

For me, one of the most satisfying results is becoming connected.   Being able to use all the focusing power of my mind in an aware and knowing way allows me to become connected.    When I am aware how I am experiencing my world or my imagination, I am connected with my world or imagination in a most intimate way.

With this tool, I both see and remember the connection.   The separation, the distinctions, the uniqueness disappear and I am connected in being aware that we are one.

These two quotes from Mark, “This is how it feels” and “______is being known” make him one my great teachers.     Of course, there is much more.

 

It is not easy to explain why I meditate.    It seems easier to explain why I like to be in my garden than to explain why I like to plop down on the floor and shut my eyes for ten or fifteen minutes.

For me, it is a time to really be connected.    More than anything else, I feel connected to my body.    It is more than just being aware of my body.   I know that I am aware.   It is an intimacy I never felt before I took the time to sit and enter intensely into paying attention.

Once I have plunged into being connected, I begin to feel part of a vast void.   Strangely, that void has all the feeling of being everything, and I am connected to it.    It is a place I get to go a couple times a day.   I am very relaxed and very alert.

Meditation for me is a time to learn what it feels like to be connected to my body and connected to that vast void.   I am at home, and the contentment is full of energy.

It is an experience that doesn’t simply show up.    I have to invite it.   When I meditate,  I learn how to invite the experience more easily by doing it again and again.   Ah, this is what it is like.

What I learn in mediation follows me through the day.    Any time I pause and remember what it feels like to be connected, that same feeling of being connected returns.   My body and mind simply position themselves to be open to whatever is around me.     I have a relaxed experience of being connected.

It could be a quick touch of the door frame as I pass it.    The door frame and I are instantly connected.    It could be watching the people getting on the bus.    Each of them suddenly becomes more than an object of awareness.    I know them as someone I am connected to.

When I remember to pause when eating, the food I am putting into my mouth becomes an experience of intimacy.   Taste and texture are being known.  I am connected with the food by more than texture and taste.  I experience it with my whole body.   We are connected.

Being connected doesn’t make an awareness  itself more pleasant.   The bathroom floor is still chilly, the bus people are still noisy and rude, the food is too bland or too spicy.    However, the intimacy itself, the way I experience the awareness can usually be enjoyable.    Something about accepting and being intimate with the way things are becomes a source of enjoyment and contentment.

Meditation teaches me how to be connected.     Even when it is difficult, meditation is usually a source of enjoyment.    However, meditation is also practice, a warmup for what is yet to come.    The real payoff is when I take what meditation teaches me and use it to be connected through the day.   Then I discover what it feels like to live connected and how enjoyable the day can really be.