How to be Wisely Positive...

    A student in my meditation class said that she strived to always be positive and struggled with thinking about life’s negativities.  Her remark alluded to, what I suspect, is many people’s coping strategy in a world that is increasingly overrun by outspoken negativity and discord, and outlandish fear.  But is it wise to willfully blinder our full view of life?

   Without a doubt, an optimistic outlook is an extremely good habit to develop.  Thinking positively and filling our hearts and minds with a cheerful attitude is beneficial to our overall well-being: we feel happier, calmer, and more peaceful.   And if you ARE going to think, then it is certainly a wiser use of time to supplant rumination, recrimination, and resentment with thoughts of forgiveness, tolerance, and kindness. This is the aim of meditation practices.

     Believing, however, that a positive mind state is achieved by avoiding life’s unpleasant or painful experiences is diametrically opposite to both life and meditation’s goals -- to awaken and cut through ignorance. In other words, in life and meditation we are training the mind to grow wise and skillful in dealing with life situations.  Why then do we struggle to openly face all of life’s experiences?

     Our unconscious habit is to shift away from discomfort and to gravitate towards comfort. 

     When I awoke this morning, the house temperature was around 58 degrees Fahrenheit or 12 degrees Celsius.  I turned on the tap, and I felt ice cold water hit my cupped hands.  Without a thought, I turned the handle towards the hot water side.  We do these kinds of actions constantly throughout our day: if we are cold, we turn on the heat or add layers; if we are hungry, we immediately reach for a snack; if our body tightens up sitting in one position, we shift our weight; if we have an itch, we scratch it.   This is not to say we should not enjoy life’s pleasures or make ourselves comfortable.  The point is our tendency is to only want pleasant experiences and to avoid unpleasant ones.  

    We are constantly judging and challenging our experiences:  thinking that a situation is wrong or shouldn’t be happening causes us to suffer and be stressed out.  We try to prevent unwanted experiences from occurring by scheming, worrying, and resisting, but they occur nevertheless.

    Life has good and bad experiences.

    We can’t control what arises, but we can control how we think about it.  We are empowered when we acknowledge the things we struggle with, because the willingness and ability to clearly see the issue at hand prepares us to deal with it.  When we know, we can’t be broadsided.  Moreover, it is only in actually forging through a challenge that we discover our resilience and strength. 

     A genuinely positive mindset is the result of being aware of life’s pain and being able to skillfully deal with it. 

     

We train the mind to be optimistic and simultaneously clear-seeing:

·       By observing our own mind.  With a gentle gaze, we attend to our own challenging unpleasant habits.  Pay attention to the arising of unbidden feelings and thoughts such as resentment, jealousy, fear, greed, and their effect on our mood.  

·         Sitting meditation provides the space to begin to notice emotions and thoughts that habitually rattle around in us, but may be overlooked because we are constantly busy.

 ·         Meditative reflection allows us to witness the fleeting nature of our emotions and thoughts.  Seeing their transience, we are empowered to persevere, to be humorous, to strongly face the challenge, and to be vigilant for when they next surface. 

     Acknowledgement and acceptance of the good and bad in life cultivates mental and emotional stability and lessens our judgmental mindset.  Experiencing life in all its complexity from a centered, open perspective is the wisest, most genuinely positive way to live a happy, peaceful life.

     May you see clearly with a positive mind and heart.

Creating Stillness of Heart & Mind

     It’s a new year.  And time for resolutions. 

     My resolution is -- to be quiet.

     As a talkative person who began speaking before the age of one, this is going to be quite the challenge.  For months now I’ve been feeling the need for greater stillness and silence in my life, but it’s not been easy to break this habit of chatting.  

     However, there’s nothing like a strong incentive!  And I just received a spur to silence.

     A friend and I were on the phone discussing our group of friend’s aborted New Year plans.  In the run up to this holiday trip, I had become the de facto liaison between the various parties.  In the relay back and forth of people’s wishes, desires and wants people became upset.  I find myself in the unenviable position of being blamed for plans falling apart.

     So I can delay no longer.  It's time to honour the yearning for stillness!

     To break a habit, we have to establish new ground rules or failing that, create some distance from the things and situations that encourage our habit.   Support systems quite naturally coalesce around our habits and ensure their perpetuation.  For instance, at social gatherings, especially with family and friends, our habits are nourished because we all unconsciously role-play our designated parts. In my case, because I’m gregarious, quiet people tend to rely on me to carry on conversations and keep the “party going”.  

     So it becomes imperative when trying to make changes that we examine our lives and lifestyles to determine the existing support systems that keep us playing the roles we no longer want to maintain.  Forging a new habit will necessarily require new ways of engaging or less frequent engagements.

     The advantages to being silent are manifold.

    Silence enhances our senses.  A few months ago I went on my first trip to Hawaii.  On the first morning there, I noticed something I hadn’t realized I’d unconsciously been paying attention to. After meditating, I began my other practices which I had typed on paper.  As I picked up the pages, I was struck by their muted sound.  In Hawaii’s humid air, the papers had absorbed so much moisture that their characteristic hard crackling sound was completely transformed. Not only was the sound of the paper different, its texture had changed too; it felt soft and velvety and almost leathery in my hands. 

    In stillness - stillness of the mind, body and speech - the mind becomes attentive to such subtleties.   When the mouth stops moving, our sensory consciousnesses expand.

     A very important benefit to speaking less is that it creates the space to notice our thoughts and bodily feelings.  We are constantly receiving signals of what’s going on mentally and emotionally for us, but because our attention is turned outward in conversation, we often miss them.

     Listening to our thoughts and feelings helps us interact skillfully both socially and with ourselves.  This mindful attention to our thoughts and feelings calms the nervous system, and helps us be present and non judgmental. 

     To maintain this new habit of being silent, ask yourself the following questions before speaking:

1.       Am I going to improve the silence by speaking?

     2.      What of value am I contributing by sharing now?

      If you can’t refrain from commenting, then write out your feelings and thoughts instead of speaking them.  When you calm down, go back and read what you wrote; it will reveal how much wiser it was to be silent. 
     Journaling is a powerful way of processing our emotions and thoughts.  It can also provide helpful kinder ways of sharing our feelings. 

     I think I’ve given myself and hopefully you too enough reason to speak less and thereby increase your inner peace and calm.

     May your 2018 be filled with love, happiness and stillness of heart and mind.