Pick a moment

Before learning more about yoga and meditation, I used to believe that all action begins in our minds. If I wanted to start or stop doing something, it was a matter of decision, not movement. But I have learned, slowly, that the three levels (body, breath and mind) directly influence our everyday actions.

The problem with relying solely on the mind is that it tends to wander off into the past or the future, turning us into day-dreamers and worry-ers. The ability to stay present in each moment is something you have to train your mind to do, by using your body and your breath, not by convincing your mind that you WILL stay put for the whole meditation practice. It begins by feeling grounded to the earth through your spine, connecting your breath to your belly and using it as a focus to harness the incessant chatter of the mind.

I have been planning a morning ritual for months, and couldn’t seem to get started because it consisted of merely thinking what I was going to do the next morning when I woke up, but I never gave myself a chance to dive into the action. Last night, at my first Zen meditation practice group, our teacher gave a powerful message in the form of an anecdote with a client. This woman had recently divorced and after a few sessions realized she was still overly obsessed with her ex-husband. This constant reminiscing and fantasising about what had been, what was, and what could still happen was preventing her from living a full and enriching life without him. She asked  her therapist how to stop obsessing about him, to which he answered ‘you pick a moment and stop’. It’s that easy. Pick a moment and do it. It sounds easy, but it involves training the mind to let go of thoughts and to accept the moment as it is, adding nothing.

So this morning, I woke up tired and groggy, having slept too little and feeling anxious about finding a job. I knew I had to give myself a chance to actually do what I said I would every morning, but all I wanted was a  hot cup of coffee and the Sydney Morning Herald in bed. But I resisted. Not with my mind, but with my body. I let go of the thought of coffee and curling up in bed with the paper, and focused on my movements and and even breath. First, bathroom to splash cold water on my face and brush my teeth. Next, kitchen for  a drink of cold water from the fridge. Then, three very painful but invigorating sun-salutations and finally 20 minutes of sitting quietly.

Picking a moment and doing something is powerful. It reminds us that we are not powerless, and don’t have to succumb to internal or external influences that may be damaging our Wise Intention. Whether you want to quit smoking, stop yourself from reaching for that cupcake, or walk away from a harmful relationship, just pick a moment and do it. Use your body to initiate action and the mind will follow, accordingly.

Flow and Happiness

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, originally from Fiume, Italy (now Rijeka, Croatia), is noted for his work in the study of happiness and creativity, but is best known for his studies on the notion of flow.

His theory states that people are happiest when they are in a state of flow— a state of concentration or complete absorption with the activity at hand and the situation. Being an optimal state of intrinsic motivation, it is characterized by complete engagement, fulfilment, and skill, it’s a time in which temporal concerns (such as sense-of-self, hunger, time) are typically ignored.

Csíkszentmihályi described flow as “being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost.”

Martin Seligman, former president of the American Psychological Association (1998), is a pioneer of “happiology,” not simply because he has a systematic theory about why happy people are happy, but because he uses the scientific method to explore it. He expands on his contemporary and colleague, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s work in the area of flow to explain that by being completely immersed in the moment of creation, you increase the sense of meaning in life and consequently achieve a greater sense of happiness. In the use of the term happiness, he is not referring to the hedonistic life, but rather what Aristotle coined ‘eudaimonia’ (the life well lived is one practical translation). If we do not explore the realm of meaning, if we don’t apply our unique strengths and skills and develop our virtues towards an end bigger than ourselves, we remain in a mundane, inauthentic, empty pursuit of pleasure.

Can practicing mindfulness and meditation enhance our experiences of flow? What do flow and mindfulness have in common? And can these two experiences help us, at an individual and collective level, to be happier? Can flow and mindfulness be two factors in mental health and well-being that have been overlooked in scientific studies and interventions for anxiety, depression, and addictions?

Mihaly Csikszentmihaly on Ted Talks

 

Martin Seligman on Ted Talks

The Path of Practice by Thich Nhat Hanh

The Path of Practice
Thich Nhat Hanh

Meditating on the nature of interdependence
Can transform delusion into enlightenment.
Samsara and suchness are not two.
They are one and the same.

Even while blooming, the flower is already in the compost,
And the compost is already in the flower.
Flower and compost are not two.
Delusion and enlightenment inter-are.

Don’t run away from birth and death.
Just look deeply into your mental formations.
When the true nature of interdependence is seen,
The truth of interbeing is realized.

Practice conscious breathing
To Water the seeds of Awakening.
Right view is a flower
Blooming in the field of mind consciousness.

When sunlight shines,
It helps all vegetation grow.
When mindfulness shines,
It transforms all mental formations

We recognize internal knots and latent tendencies
So we can transform them.
When our habit energies dissipate,
Transformation at the base is there.

The present moment Contains past and future.
The secret of transformation Is in the way we handle this very moment.
Transformation takes place In our daily life.
To make the work of transformation easy, Practice with a Sangha

Nothing is born, nothing dies.
Nothing to hold onto, nothing to release.
Samsara is nirvana. There is nothing to attain.

When we realize that afflictions are no other than enlightenment,
We can ride the waves of birth and death in peace,
Travelling in the boat of compassion on the ocean of delusion,
Smiling the smile of non-fear.”

From Transformation at the Base

I have been trying to practice meditation for years. I say trying, because I’m not consistent and full of excuses – I don’t have time, I don’t have space, I don’t have patience. See the pattern? I don’t have. But the practice of mindfulness doesn’t require us to have anything. On the contrary, it encourages non-attachment. I must learn to practice at every moment of my day, for there is nothing to hold on to, and nothing to release. In order to smile the smile of non-fear I must let the moment be, walking the path of acceptance.

A working definition of mind

Wikipedia’s definition of mind (pron.: /ˈmaɪnd/) is the complex of cognitive faculties that enables consciousness, thinking, reasoning, perception, and judgement—a characteristic of human beings, but which also may apply to other life forms.

Before we can use language, memory or solve a problem, we must be immersed in a stimuli-rich environment, and perceive with our bodies (through our senses) the world around us. How can we speak of the fine grains of sand warmed by the sun if we haven’t seen them or felt them slip through our fingers? How can we remember how much we enjoy Louis Armstrong if we’ve never heard how amazing he was at the trumpet? How can we decide to cook fish for dinner if we’ve never tasted baked red snapper?

It is fairly obvious that one cannot exist without the other, but we seem to forget this when speaking about mental health and well-being.

Daniel Siegel gives a working definition of mind that brings three dimensions of reality into one. He writes, ‘the human mind is a relational and embodied process that regulates the flow of energy and information’. Let’s dissect this into parts.

• The mind involves a flow of energy and information.

We can have an energy-filled sensation such as a gurgle in our stomach and assign a word to the sensation such as hunger. Or, we can become aware of a piece of information such as a sad face and then become motivated to do something about it.

• The mind is a regulatory process that monitors and modifies. 

The mind observes information and energy flow across time and then shapes it into unique thoughts, feelings, perceptions, memories, beliefs, and attitudes.

• The mind is embodied and relational.

The mind is embodied because the regulation of energy happens both in the brain, but also in the body, distributed through the nervous system which monitors and influences energy and information in the form of chemical signalling.

The mind is relational because energy and information flow between people; our minds are created within relationships (including the one we have with ourselves!).

The mind then is broader than the brain, and when we perceive our mind we sense something even more than our internal world or the world of others. We now have a definition that takes away the superficial boundaries that separate us and enables us to see that we are each part of an interconnected flow, a wider whole.

How can we use this working definition of mind to explore the factors that ultimately contribute to our individual and collective health, happiness, and well-being?

Siegel says it all comes down to integration. He goes on to give a detailed explanation of the different domains of integration and how they all come together to produce a healthy mind through self-organisation. It’s a fascinating read; you can buy it here.

The point I’m interested in making is that in search for a healthier society, especially when talking about ‘mental health’, the answers do not lie exclusively in the brain. There is a delicate interaction between our bodies, our brains, and our community. By practising mindfulness we can contribute to the mental health of ourselves and our community. By being aware of the present moment we learn to pay attention to our intentions, we become ‘attuned’ with ourselves, which helps us become balanced and regulated. You learn, through daily practice, that no matter how far your thoughts wander, you can always come back to your centre, you can always bring yourself back into balance. When we are able to observe our inner and outer worlds with acceptance and compassion, by looking directly at them and not running from them, we understand more and more that ‘we’ cannot be defined in terms of perceptions, or memories, or thoughts, or feelings; ‘we’ are part of something much much bigger, a universal consciousness, a complex system where the physical, the spiritual and the mental come together to create the whole human experience.

Sense-of-Self by Smith, R.

The sense-of-self is an attempt to make reality rail-safe. Reflecting upon what is occurring creates a time gap between the reflective idea about the moment and the actual event that is the moment.

It’s like trying to drive a car while staring through the rear view mirror. The deliberation causes a small hesitation as we assess the safety of the moment. We see what has been rather than what is, and the mind fills this pause with memories and projections. We see what we fear might happen or what we desire to happen in place of what is happening.

The present becomes confused with our feared or desired reality, and soon the unique and original presentation of this moment becomes blurred through our mental rearrangement.

The sense of being someone is supported by the conditioned world. We feel three-dimensional because memory ties the past moments together into a story, which gives us value, meaning, and purpose. We live life for the value we invest in it, but we will despair if the ideas we create are unreachable. The unconditioned universe is empty of separate content and void of meaning, but his absence of purpose is not meaningless or despairing. Because it is not going anywhere, every moment is complete. It just is, without any sense of self.

From Stepping out of self-deception by Rodney Smith