The felt sense of our experience. That social gaff you just made; that embarassing moment when you tripped and others saw you; the raw engagement of another living being when your gazes meet.  What is the essence of each experience?  What do you feel in your belly, in your chest, in the soft tissues of your torso, in the jaw. I would guess that if you looked felt deeply and contacted these experiences directly you would find expansion and contraction occurring, either simultaneously or one after the other.  There is a hardening and softening, there is a tensing and loosening, there is fixation and letting go.  This is the natural rhythm of life. I have the most problems with my life when I am stuck in this process, or I am blocking this natural rhythm. When I refuse to let go, or I am not bringing awareness where there should be some. I make things solid where they need to flow. Both need to happen – this requires both surrender and full and total awareness and engagement…and this is life… full experience of what we are living, but not inhibiting the flow….we can experience without damming the energy of our life force.  As our heart beats, as each moment comes and goes contraction to manifestation, expansion to emptiness, we live our lives moment to moment.  The miracle of this is that it all happens on its own if we are simply awake.

Often, there are interruptions to our practice, or at least our formal practice.

Interruption, does not mean we have to throw away the whole practice, or castigate ourselves. It is an unhelpful habit to think that ‘I am a failure’, and to somehow feel negatively towards ourselves because our formal practice has fallen away. Of course if this thought comes up, we can choose to let it go, rather than indulge it and show some self-compassion. We can pick up again at any time, whether this means practice of mindfulness meditation on the cushion/chair, or ‘practice in life.’

At any moment we can pick up again our chosen practice and give it our wholehearted effort, even if it has been 3 days, a week, a month or 10 years since we last practiced. In the Buddhist tradition there is a concept of Merit. Merit is accumulated as we practice and does not diminish over time. Our ability to sit with ourselves and all of our experiences and the spiritual strength we have developed will still be there when we come back to our old or new friend, mindfulness meditation.

Fresh start is a particular and very useful technique taught to me by one of my teachers from the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. When we sit and things become chaotic, our thoughts are wild and out of control, our body hurts, we feel we are unable to attend to our breath for even a moment, we can just stop everything. As she would say ‘drop the whole project.’ Change your posture, relax, unfurl the legs, open the eyes look outward and just be. When we feel ready we can resume without any guilt, self-criticism and judgement. Using this technique is like hitting the reset button. We start all over again and only what is happening in the present is real, and that is what we choose to relate to.

Fresh start is a great perspective for life. At any moment we can just drop the whole project, letting go of fear, hatred, bored, excitement, worry, grief, guilty, anxiety, or any other experience. We don’t need to cling so tight. Just open the eyes and the senses, take in the outer world, your present experience and start again and again. Each moment arises and passes away.

How can we come to know ourselves, accept ourselves, and ultimately show non-conditional love towards ourselves? These are elements of self-compassion or to use the term from Tibetan Buddhism ‘Maitri’ or unconditional friendliness towards ourselves (and others.) When learning to love, forgive, and cultivate compassion it is only possible to do this if we start with ourselves. Otherwise what we try to give to others and are not authentically giving to ourselves will have a sense of hollowness or inauthenticity. Often we become drained, emotionally exhausted, and resentful when we give to others what we have not given ourselves. In this state of depletion and often anger and frustration we are of no use to anyone, including ourselves. To become whole, aware, and compassionate (the basic goals of mindfulness meditation) we need to start with ourselves. I have found that as I work on developing myself through mindfulness practice that the inner qualities it cultivates automatically begin to become infused in my relationship with others. As we embody more peace, more unconditional acceptance, more awareness, more embodiment, more compassion, we simply carry this into all of our engagements with the outside world.

All of this begins with an intention – to allow for ourselves to be just as we are right now. Sitting/practicing with full engagement with our feelings, thoughts, or whatever our chosen object of meditation shows this dedication and acceptance to ourselves. We are putting forth our own best effort for that amount of time we have set aside to just simply be, without judgment with our moment to moment experience. Whether it is 5 minutes or 4 hours, we are sowing the seeds of compassion, unconditional acceptance and love for ourselves and ultimately all beings.

Another self-love exercise that can be very provocative (and beneficial) for most people is just sitting quietly in front of a mirror for say 3-5 minutes and every two or three breaths saying internally or externally if the situation allows ‘I love myself unconditionally.’ Then noticing what comes up around this. Many people experience emotional pain around this as they have experienced either from family circumstances or through their life experiences the seeds of self-hatred. If you experience this, you are not alone….self-hatred is one of the cores issues that causes suffering in our culture and is rampant. Many of us have convinced ourselves that we are not good enough due to messages we received from our family or the culture at large. We have convinced ourselves that we are not ok as we are and continue to chase some fleeting image of perfection that is pure fantasy. It is better to drop that project all together and to begin to cultivate love for yourself as you are in this moment. Whatever your state in this moment, it is acceptable and worthy of love. This exercise, if you are able to just allow whatever comes up to arise, and just continue repeating that phrase to ourselves every 3 to 5 breaths then resting and noticing what comes up and repeating that for 3-5 minutes, can begin to create a foundation for inner warmth, compassion and love towards ourselves. Give it a try and see what happens for you.

Disclaimer: If you experience unbearable feelings, thoughts etc. during this exercise please discontinue and seek out the guidance of a counselor/psychotherapist to assist you. Sometimes we need to learn strategies for safely encountering powerful emotions before we can let them go and begin to heal.

Sometimes mindfulness meditation feels pleasurable, we enter into deep states of stillness or we encounter body sensations of peace and a sense of groundedness. Other times it feels very difficult, encountering anxiety, restlessness, sadness, frustration, anger/rage, or any other type of intense sensory experience that can be accompanied by compelling and painful thoughts. At these times we are essentially, as one of my teachers puts it, ‘punching the time card.’ We are doing our time on the cushion and trying the best we can stay with our object of meditation whether that might be the breath, mantra, body sensations, etc. It is important not to be too hard on yourself and to just do the practice. We may feel we will never have a ‘good meditation’ again. Usually this means a quiet or peaceful state. In my opinion the ‘good’ meditation is the one we do. The only ‘bad’ meditation is the one we don’t do. So it is important to persist here and attempt to stay with the object of the meditation and sit or practice (if you are doing an alternative practice) for the time we have committed to. Over time and with practice this difficulty will arise and pass away and we will be more familiar with our own experience. We may feel that nothing is happening as we practice and find ourselves swept up in thought or emotion/sensation. There is a very subtle process at work here that will allow us to become more concentrated and centered as we simply allow ourselves to sit engage with our experience with an unconditional attitude of acceptance. Don’t just take my word for it, check this out and ‘do your time’ on the cushion or with whatever practice you have chosen. Whether it is for 5, 10, 20, 45 minutes – stay with a regular practice over time and see what you notice….

A useful question in day to day life. One of my meditation teachers often had us ask this question to ourselves once or twice a day, perhaps setting an alarm at random on our watch and engaging in this contemplative inquiry at that time the alarm rang.

When we ask ourselves ‘What is this?’ we are moving out of our assumptions about who we are and what we are doing int he world. It is an invitation to open the senses and feel, touch, hear, smell, taste the moment and the experience we are engaged in.

As you read this now, why not try? Close your eyes…breath….feel your body the myriad of physical and emotional sensations, the touch of our clothes against our skin, the sounds inside and out, opening with full awarness and receptivity to the nature of our experience. Beyond our concepts ‘I am walking, I am driving, I am reading the blog.’ These concepts are reductionistic and take away from the richness of our moment-to-moment experience.

A wonderful mindfulness practice in life is to ask yourself ‘What is this?’ throughout the day and deeply listen, feel, hear, touch, and see into your mind-body experience and into your encounters with the external world.

This practice is an invitation to experience your self and the world in the present. You might be surprised at what you find.

I’ve posted a letter from Jack Kornfield, Ram Dass, and Sharon Salzberg asking for financial assistance for Stephen and Ondrea Levine. Both have serious medical concerns and find themselves in need of help. They have dedicated their lives as both Meditation teachers and educators around mindful relationship, and have done seminal work around the issue of death and dying/grief.

Stephen and Ondrea’s work has been life changing for many and very influential with many practitioners of Vipassana. Please read this and consider helping in whatever way you can.

Dear Friends,

We are writing to ask your support for two beloved friends of ours, Stephen and Ondrea Levine. They are currently facing significant difficulty. After a life-time of giving, they are now at a time to receive from those of us whose lives have been touched by their presence and teaching.

Their greatest needs are financial. Ondrea has Leukemia and the costs of her insurance and treatment have used up their savings. Stephen’s health is not good either, and he is too frail to travel or teach. When we heard about this, we felt moved to contribute to a fund set up for them, and to encourage others to do the same.

Stephen and Ondrea have been among our generation’s most important teachers, demonstrating and encouraging others to embrace the power of love and generosity. For three years, they ran a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week free phone line for those dying or in need of support. When the phone bills got too high, they sold their house to keep the project going. For decades they regularly corresponded with thousands people who were seeking spiritual guidance, giving freely to those in need, many of whom were sick or in the final years of their life.

The circle has now come around, allowing us the opportunity to give to these two life-long givers. We hope to raise several hundred thousand dollars in small and large donations to help them through this time.

Caring for friends and teachers is an essential part of any spiritual life. As we age, spiritual friends are more important than ever. Stephen and Ondrea have been dear spiritual friends to us and to thousands of others through their books, workshops, and correspondence.

If you are one of these people and are moved to give, below are three ways to donate to the Levine Fund at Bread for the Journey. Bread for the Journey informs us that donations are tax deductible.

With gratitude and love,
Jack Kornfield, Ram Dass, and Sharon Salzberg

Mail: Send to: Bread for the Journey, 267 Miller Ave., Mill Valley, California 94941. In the letter, please enclose a note indicating that your gift is for the Stephen and Ondrea Levine Fund and in the note section of your check write “Levine Fund.” In honor of the immeasurable gifts Stephen and Ondrea have given to the family of the earth, Bread for the Journey has generously offered to manage the fund with 100% of your donation going to the Levine Fund.

Online: click here and designate the donation to the Levine Fund: http://www.justgive.org/giving/donate.jsp?charityId=3583&isRecurring=&

Phone: call 415-383-4600 with a credit card number.

For questions and other means of giving, contact SorenGordhamer@gmail.com.
* Please feel free to post this letter on blogs or forward it to individuals or groups you know who may wish to hear news of Stephen and Ondrea.

I don’t know how many times I’ve heard the phrase from people that I feel like I am a bad person.  Let’s correct that languaging error.  “I feel like I am a bad person” is a thought, not a feeling.  To be accurrate we would say “I think that I am a bad person” and simultaneously we are, most likely, having a feeling in our body that is uncomfortable in some way.

Mindfulness practice offers the technology to begin discern between a thought and a feeling.  Thoughts generally occur in the spatial region of our head. Visual thoughts and images tend to occurr towards the from of our head and may even seem to be directly in front of or behind our closed eyes.

Don’t just take my word for it, check it out. Think of your the face of your wife, or lover, your dog…notice with closed eyes where that image seems to occur.  Verbal thoughts tend to occur near the back of the head or directly between the ears. Check this out as well. An interesting way to test this is to say a phrase internally or your own name.

Next time you feel “like you are not good enough,” or that “I am the worst person in the world” or some other negative thought or belief, notice where you are telling yourself that…and also notice that it is a thought.  Check it out.

Mindfulness practice offers us a non-judgmental attention that we will use to both notice the negative thought and the feeling in the body.  That is where feelings live– in our body. Also check that out. If we feel sad, we are often thinking that ‘I am sad’ and we are also feeling a sensation or a constellation of  sensations in the soft tissue, usually in the front of our body from the abdomen to the neck.  Most of us have a few spots where we feel things the most. For me, I experience feelings most often in the stomach and the center of my chest.

Next time something strong comes up for you emotionally. Notice what you are feeling….don’t just conceptualize it by saying ‘I am sad because….’ or ‘I am angry because…’ Move out of the spatial area of your head and really encounter that feeling. Surround it gently with your awareness, holding it and accepting, it even loving it if you can muster that feeling.  Breathing into and around the senation….noticing how it changes, if it does change and what the specific qualities of the sensation are. It might be hot, cold, numb, tingly, tight, squeezing, expansive, etc….just notice it and stay with the feeling for a few breaths or a few minutes if you are able to tolerate it.

There may be thoughts coming up and you may even catch yourself thinking about how you are feeling.  The goal of mindfulness is to be in the moment to moment experiences of our life. Emotions and feelings occurr in the moment in our bodies.  Our thoughts tell us a story that takes us out of the moment. We can encounter the truth of our experience by contacting our feelings directly in our body, as I have described, rather than conceptualizing them with our minds. This use of our conceptual mind takes us out of our direct experience of life.  I ask you to try this out, begin to take to your life back. Check it out.

Shamatha or Samatha (Pali) translates to calm abiding. In the Buddhist meditation traditions this is a form of meditation that involves concentration narrowed to one object.  Most frequently this is the breath.  Mindfulness of breath is another name for this.  The instructions are simple.

• Find an upright and relaxed posture, either sitting on the floor or in a straight backed chair
• Close your eyes, or keep them open and unfocused gazing softly 2 to 3 feet in front of you
• Go inward
• Become aware of your breath (traditional points are at the nose, at the chest, or abdomen)
• If you find your mind wandering go back to the breath
• come back again and again

Not only is this relaxing, but it also builds a level of concentration that we can apply to the many areas of our life.  We really can be focused on one thing at a time without our minds spinning out into the many threads of distraction, and the body responding with tension and anxiety.

Anxiety in particular can respond to this type of concentration training, because when we are fully concentrated on something now it is impossible to go to the future. Anxiety by definition is future oriented. It is a worry, fear, or uncomfortable fantasy about a future event or situation coupled with uncomfortable sensations in the body.    Often the abilities to focus on an object in the present will short circuit the thoughts and body sensations associated with anxiety, bringing increased relaxation and groundedness in the present moment.

What is required to build this concentration?  Samatha meditation over a period of months and years will help you to acquire these benefits and much much more. In the spirit of the Buddha: try it and see for yourself.

One of the lessons of Mindfulness practice is a kind of letting go or surrender.  As we relate to our body-mind experience there will initially be some effort to build concentration, attention, and equanimity.  Once we are ‘over the hump’ so to speak we may find ourselves falling into experience.  Becoming completely immersed in the flow of sensory experience, present and moving along with precise and powerful awareness.  At these times it is important to let ourselves go, to allow ourselves to be present with the moment to moment changes in our experiences.

For some this may be terrifying, for others liberating.  At a deep level, when we encounter and allow ourselves to enter a state of ‘being with’ our experience, rather than ‘doing to’  our experience. We have  become aware of a great truth.   Things are changing all the time.  Our life and our experience of life is not as solid and substantial as we like to think.

Allowing ourselves to let to go into life, into our direct experience is an admonition of mortality.  We can no longer live under the illusion that we will last forever, as we have seen and felt in our experience that everything changes, nothing is permanent.  It follows that as living dynamic beings that we are also changing and will some day pass into non-existance, as do all phenomena in this world.

Learning to let go, to surrender to our experience of ourselves and life can be the ultimate lesson in living and dying. Every moment becomes precious as we realize that each is unique and will never arise in the same way once again.  Our lives become more satisfying as our mindfulness grows stronger and we can encounter and immerse ourselves in each moment more deeply.

We have talked about the essential components of Mindfulness:

Presence, Attention and Concentration combined with an attitude of gentleness, patience and nurturance towards the self. Coming back again and again from the past, the future, wherever we drift to the present moment. What is cultivated by our intention to bring Mindfulness to our lives?

Shinzen Young, one of my primary teachers explains it this way:

“When you do mindfulness training, you practice formal procedures that alter your consciousness in two ways…

• They increase your baseline clarity.
• They increase your baseline equanimity.

…The goal of mindfulness training is not to achieve a temporary state of clarity and equanimity that is present when you meditate and then vanishes during the rest of the day. The goal of mindfulness training is to gradually increase your baseline of clarity and equanimity throughout the day. In other words, the purpose of mindfulness is not to create certain temporary states in consciousness, but rather to develop certain abiding traits in consciousness.”

What is equanimity you may ask? Well Shinzen Young also offers a very clear article on that. That article, the one above, and many other useful articles are available from Shinzen here.

Gil Fronsdal, the guiding teacher of the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA also gives a nice talk on Equanimity that is available (for free) as a podcast through iTunes. Many other amazing talks by Gil and guest teachers are also available at that site or by (free) subscription through ITunes. The podcast is called Audio Dharma.

In brief, equanimity is a capacity to be with a quality of mind, a quality of body, emotion, thoughts, physical pain, etc. without needing to suppress or repress it in some way, or completely identify with it, or fixate on it. Most of us humans tend to take one of these avenues (suppression or fixation) over the other when we experience things, or perhaps a combination of the two. Mindfulness offers another way of relating to experience.

“Between suppression on one side and identification on the other lies a third possibility, the balanced state of non-self-interference…equanimity.” (Shinzen Young, 2006)

For instance, a client of mine, we will call him ‘George’ (a young man in his late-thirties), who has been working with his fear of public speaking. Through our therapeutic work he has identified a re-occurring thought that ‘They are all against me.’ This thought comes up for him whenever he is in a group and his discomfort becomes particularly strong when he has to speak in class or give a presentation at work.

After doing some investigation we found that his discomfort and distress occur on both a mental level and a physical level.

Mentally there is the thought ‘ They are all against me’ as well as a general tension in the mind. George has found that his thoughts travel in only one direction once he has been caught by this thought. His body responds with tension.

Physically the emotion starts as a tightness in his chest that seems habitual in nature..arising and spreading across his chest and shoulders, and neck. Sometimes to the point of full on panic.

His general stragtegy, before therapy, was to stuff these feelings and thoughts down and keep going.

Using a mindful approach. Which involved both guided mindfulness practice in our sessions and his 3-4x a week practice on his own we were able to identify the content of his negative belief (‘They are all against me’) and the physical sensations in detail. Prior to doing our work George had just described his feeling as ‘bad.’

This is the clarity piece of the puzzle. The equanimity piece comes in when forming a relationship to the feelings. We all want our bad feelings to go away right? So it makes perfect sense to do everything we can to distract our selves from them, stuff them down, think of something else.

Unfortunately, in the long-term, and probably even in the short term, after a moment of relief, this strategy doesn’t work.

George and I used mindfulness to help him relate to the feeling and thought components of his experience. Over the months (about 3) it took to develop this kind of relationship to these emotions George has now found that he can sit with both the negative thoughts and physical sensations without a problem. As he related to them he found that they would not kill him…which was another underlying belief he had about the physical discomfort he experienced.

George has also found that the feelings have decreased in their severity as he has been willing to feel them and tolerate them. If he takes a short break during a social event or before speaking to ‘sit with’ these feeling he has found that sometimes they become stronger for a few minutes and then begin to subside as he brings his awareness to them. He has said that it feels as if he has more space inside of him. He knows that there is more than the feelings there, and that they will pass, given some time with his mindfulness practice.

This feeling of ‘having more space’ is exactly how the equanimity feels in action. Over time of relating to discomfort or any type of physical,mental, or emotional phenomena with mindfulness we are able to not be so identified with the experience. Over time of working with this type of mindfulness practice most of my clients have reported marked decreases in the power of their negative thoughts and feelings over them. These effects are cumulative, the more you use mindfulness to relate to the component parts of an experience the less of a trigger or a fixation they become.

When the ‘they are all against me’ belief comes up now, George has reported it has about as much effect on him as the sound of a fly buzzing.

The approach we used had a few steps.

1) Use mindfulness to identify, with clarity and precision
a. The Thought/Beliefs

b. The body sensations
(Shinzen Young would call this the divide and conquer technique. Beginning to use our awareness to break up the experience into its component parts can immediately defuse much our distress and identification with a particular experience).

2) Use Mindfulness to relate to the experience
a. Qualities of heat, light, pressure, tension, specific wording (for thoughts), size, shape, solidity, movement.

b. Allow your self to stay with these qualities, and details of the experience by surrounding the experience with awareness (the attitude of gentleness and nurturance towards self is vital here) .

Over time and regular practice mindfulness will yield significant symptom reduction and significant increase in life satisfaction through first clarity (Oh I see what is happening here) and second equanimity (I see it I feel it, but I don’t react to it, there is more space…I am not this feeling, thought, experience).

Note to Therapists: Sound clinical judgement is necessary for treatment choices. Mindfulness interventions are not always recommended for issues of anxiety, though I have found them to be very effective. Any supportive therapies that can help to decrease the client’s discomfort are always recommended. In this case I also used EMDR and Cognitive behavioral techniques respectively to deal with past memories/experiences of performance anxiety and to deal with the erroneous belief systems. Pharmaceutical interventions are also sometimes recommended, depending on the severity of the case.

It may be that our experience does not change, though often it does by just placing our sustained Mindfulness (attention, concentration and gentle attitude) on our sensory experience. We can generally expect one of three things to happen as we become mindful of a body-mind experiences.

1. It becomes stronger
2. It becomes less strong (or disappears)
3. It stays the same

After a certain period of time all experiences fade away. As surely as phenomena arise they will just as assuredly cease to exist. This is the law of life and another valuable piece of awareness that can be gained from Mindfulness practice.

Impermanence will be the subject of my next post.

Metta,

David