C.M. Barrett's Blog, page 3

Mindfulness and Independence

On this weekend that celebrates U.S. independence, I’m thinking about the foundation for true independence, a condition of much deeper freedom.

Mindfulness, I believe, is that foundation. When we allow ourselves to be mindful, to observe what goes on both within and without, we declare independence from the ego, who wants to tell us what we should notice.

The ego has a declaration of dependence in that its survival depends on noticing only what threatens or enhances its survival. It filters its observations through a thick veil of fear: that it won’t win, won't come out at top. It fears that it will land at the bottom. It fears its extinction.

Some observe that the ego acts like a child, a child who has lost its innocence, who has learned the adults it counted on for survival are also vulnerable and fearful. This child has also learned that to relax, to be in the present, to see without survival filters, is dangerous.

As a result, early attempts at reaching a state of mindfulness may, instead, bring up resistance from the ego, who doesn’t want us to see beyond it to the childhood experiences and decisions that created it.

Thich Nhat Hanh often says to smile at negative emotions. “I smile to my anger. I embrace my anger as if it were a crying baby.”

The first step in a declaration of independence from the past is to smile to our resistance. When we do this, it softens, little by little, and when we are ready to know the answers about how we became who we are, our deepest truth will speak.

The practice of mindfulness is a journey, and each step gives us a greater level of independence. This is true cause for fireworks.

Adventures in Mindfulness

My friends think I’m very adventurous because in June 2015 I moved from upstate NY to western Massachusetts. Although I had two close friends here, I basically had to get out and meet people—and I am an introvert.

Now, a year later, I’ve met many people, got involved in some major group activities, and am becoming integrated into life here. In addition, I’ve explored the area and know my way around. I did, however, avoid one adventure: going to the BIG MALL, the kind that has hundreds of stores and miles of parking lots.

This week, that opportunity, out of necessity, came to me. My Apple desktop started to make unpleasant sounds. After a phone call to Applecare yielded no results, I had to take it to the Apple Store at the big mall 20 miles away. This involved highway driving, which I’ve largely not done, to an unknown and quite possibly confusing destination.

I planned for it with mindfulness, looking up the best route, locating the Apple Store on the map of the mall, and telling myself that thousands of people have found this mall. I have read no reports of someone becoming lost forever there. Secretly, though, I thought I might be the first.

Before I left, I took time to meditate and center. I realized that—maybe—I could shift the energy of anxiety into that of excitement. I would be doing something new. I would be expanding my boundaries. I would be having an adventure. By no means was I sure about this, but I at least managed to make some space for it amidst the worry.

I got lost on the way there, ending up at a reservoir. There, I flagged down some nice people who told me how to get to the mall, a mere half-mile away. Huge as I had imagined it to be, the mall had three levels of both stores and parking.

To my surprise and relief, shopping carts abounded in the lot. This made the job of hauling the desktop to the Apple Store a lot easier. I was about to take a cart when a young woman walked by and offered to lift the computer into it. I so appreciated this kind act. (When you become a senior citizen, you learn how nice people can be.)

The guy at the Genius Bar was knowledgeable and explained everything he was doing. Though I was sad to have to leave the computer there for diagnostic work and repair of a failed hard drive, I felt it was in good hands.

When I got home, I saw one of the repair people from the complex where I live. He said that if I ever needed help carrying anything heavy, I should call him. He’d be glad to help.

Instead of a disaster, I had an adventure. I learned that I could find and negotiate the big mall and met friendly and helpful people.

Most importantly, I expanded both my geographical and mental boundaries. Am I ready for more adventures? Well, next month I’m invited to two picnics in unknown areas, and at one of them I don’t expect to know too many people. I’ll be there.

Orlando, Mindfulness, and Love

Since Sunday, June 12, a day that will be remembered and memorialized for a very long time, I’ve followed links to remarks by famous people, videos of vigils, and countless other sources. Although I began in a state of despair, my intention was to find hope. Before long, I recognized a personal and collective shift to understanding and the determination that those who were murdered shall not have died in vain.

I saw signs of hope in the global LGBTQ refusal to allow the tragedy and the community to become pawns in right-wing anti-Muslim hate campaigns. I saw that community shelter and defend its Muslim members. In these acts, I saw deep mindfulness of what’s really important. And I saw leaders in the Muslim community express their solidarity with the gay community.

The Greatest of These is Love

Constantly, whether the speaker was Staceyann Chin, a black Jamaican lesbian, or Stephen Colbert, TV superstar, this message was raised: the murders were directed against a community that claims the right to love. When you are attacked for expressing that right, the only response is to love more.

Stephen Colbert said, “Love is a verb. To love is to act.”

Staceyann Chin said, “I DARE you to love.”

Love is Remembering

My first awareness of the tragedy came after I’d spent a weekend at a Quaker retreat. During that retreat, I heard this statement:

“When we’re afraid, we’ve forgotten who we are, and we’ve forgotten who God is.”

The Opposite of Love Isn’t Hatred; It’s Fear

Without this awareness, this mindfulness, we are in danger of hating the haters. Fear that the unknown is life-threatening transforms into hatred, which in turn gives rise to the urge to fight back in what is perceived as self defense.

When we realize that we harbor our own fears, we open the door to compassion. We recognize that it takes courage to expand our boundaries and become open to people who seem not like ourselves, whose ways of living seem to threaten our fragile security about how we live.

Until we can make the brave decision to no longer allow fear to dominate us, we can neither love or truly live.

Those who will not learn will go the way of the dinosaurs. Deep down inside, they know this, but fear turns their vision outward and convinces them that if they could only eradicate what threatens them, they’d feel safe. If we reach instead, for love, it will tell us that we’re already safe.

And so, much as I love the statement I heard at the retreat, I feel the need to add to it.

“When we’re afraid, we’ve forgotten who we are, and we’ve forgotten who God is. And we’ve forgotten to let the power of love direct and move us.”

We must remember—in the names of the dead and of the living.

Sources

Staceyann Chin’s speech

Stephen Colbert’s remarks

Mental Carpentry and Mindfulness

I want to nail those doors shut against the temptation to re-open them. I am learning that the most effective carpentry technique is to get to the source of why, despite all my best resolutions, I want to go back.

An example: I am currently addressing a temptation to blame others for what goes wrong (and “wrong” is my interpretation) in my life. I have made many vows. I have made conscious decisions that I no longer wanted to participate in the negative thinking lurking behind that door.

It was like a New Year’s resolution. You probably know how well these go. That virtuous conviction that feels so good when you first commit to whatever major change you’re absolutely going to make deflates like a New Year’s Eve party balloon no later than January 2.

I think that’s because the temptation has such a powerful pull. In my case, blaming people is easy. It absolves me of taking responsibility for my feelings, thoughts, and actions. As surely as someone who self-medicates with alcohol or drugs, I surrender personal responsibility.

In other words, escape lies behind that door, and sometimes escape seems irresistible.

Understanding Why

We forget that the behaviors we’ve shoved behind that door once served a purpose. We evolved them to solve a problem. In my case, I experienced some major upsets in a short period of time.

Like all (or most) people, when something goes wrong, I want to know why so that I can keep it from happening again. This is very necessary survival behavior for all species. The deer learns that a human carrying a long piece of metal represents great danger and may develop the ability to sense the threat before its life is endangered.

Humans are hampered by tangled emotions and thoughts directed by an ego with an agenda. This agenda often involves deciding who’s to blame. Survival behavior can be either to avoid this person forever or to fight back.

I was doing the latter—but only in my mind. The low-key chorus in the background sang, “He’s ruined my life, which is hopeless because of him. I want revenge.” And on and on. And I thought I was actually hurting someone other than myself.

Listening at Low Volume

I’m learning to let the chorus sing without getting caught up in its dramatic arias. That means being mindful. It’s owning a feeling without shame. In its ultimate form, it’s unconditional self-love.

And that, I believe, is where we want to be. In that state (I think; I’ll let you know when I’m there), all the doors to past emotions and behaviors can be swinging wide open, but they offer no temptation. We have experienced and accepted their existence. We have faced their darkness, and that allows in the light.

Mindfulness and Harambe the Gorilla

A western lowland gorilla—not Harambe

As you most likely know, over Memorial Day weekend (2016), a four-year-old boy fell into the gorilla enclosure at the Cincinnati Zoo. The incident resulted in the killing of Harambe, a 17-year-old male western lowland gorilla—and in worldwide outrage.

Among those blamed are the parents, the zookeepers for misinterpreting the gorilla’s motives (with sharp disagreement among experts), and all the people whose screaming probably upset Harambe.

Other voices, however, make a different claim: that the ultimate crime is the existence of zoos. To me, this is the most mindful—and compassionate—point of view.

A few decades ago I went to San Diego for a New Age trade show. I had one free day, which I decided to spend at the San Diego Zoo, reputedly the best in the country. Perhaps it was, but the experience convinced me that best isn’t nearly good enough and that the captivity of wild animals is a crime. I resolved never to go to a zoo again.

The Life Imprisonment of Harambe

Many humans would be outraged if a child born in jail were kept there for his or her entire life, but this is exactly what happened to Harambe. Born in captivity, he never experienced the freedom of the wild, the life a gorilla is meant to live. Instead, he lived in a cell under the constant scrutiny of humans.

Certainly, gorillas aren’t the only victims. Imagine a cheetah, the fastest animal in the world, confined to a tiny space, or a bird designed to soar in the sky stuck in a cage. How can this be justified?

Do Zoos Educate?

People who admit to uneasiness about zoos sometimes offer this justification. You can read sharply contrasting viewpoints, but even a study of 6,000 zoo visitors by the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums only showed a 5% increase in understanding the importance of biodiversity—and no corresponding intention to take action.

Many experts believe that movies, videos, and books that depict animals’ lives in the wild can do a far better job of promoting appreciation, understanding, and involvement. Far more important, the animals have their freedom, and humans are not endangered.

Conservationists have pointed out that for a fraction of the cost of keeping an animal such as a gorilla in captivity, the fight against the poaching of these animals could be made far more effective.

What Zoos DO Teach

They teach us, especially impressionable children, that the differences between “animals” and humans is so great that it’s ok to imprison the “animals” in small enclosures for the entertainment of humans. They teach us to shut off natural compassion and a sense of oneness and open the way for separation and cruelty. Their existence diminishes the human spirit.

Mindfulness, in contrast, opens us to the realization that we must extend our notion of brotherhood and sisterhood to include all species of life. It teaches us to experience and appreciate the oneness of all life, not in an academic or intellectual way but in a tangible, heart-felt sense.

Our brother, Harambe, has fallen. May his death give us the inspiration to call for the end of the prisons called zoos. In that act, may our spirits know greater freedom.

Image courtesy of M - Pics at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Mindfulness and the 12 Laws of Karma

I write a lot of words here. Since U.S. residents are currently recovering from a long holiday weekend, I'm replacing text with an on-target video. Here’s one I enjoyed about the 12 laws of karma. (For your reference, I don't know if there are 3, 6, 12, or 24 laws of karma.) For the time-pressed, this video is 1:28 minutes long. Watch it here.

Mindfulness and the Seth Material

Many people come to their awareness about the importance of the present moment through Buddhism. I am not one of them.

In recent years, books by Thich Nhat Hanh have helped me to use some new approaches for focusing on mindfulness, but my initial awareness of its importance came from The Nature of Personal Reality by Jane Roberts, who channeled the nonphysical entity, Seth.

To believe that such beings existed and that their information had value was my first challenge. However, once I started the book, that doubt vanished. My overwhelming sense was that not only was this information true but that I was being reawakened to something I’d always known.

Here is the essence of Seth’s message.

“The truth is this: You form your reality now, through the intersection of soul in flesh, and the present is your point of power.”

Seth goes on to explain that only the present moment has reality. We create both our past and our future within the present.

Rewriting the Past and the Future

The idea that we can change the past can challenge us. Here’s an example. A few days ago, I was having an episode of feeling sorry for myself because I felt abandoned by someone. When I thought about my past, I remembered all the times, from early childhood on, when I had felt abandoned.

I was seeing myself as a victim. Seth views this differently, saying, “You get what you concentrate on. There is no other main rule.”

If I concentrate on abandonment, I reorganize and rewrite the past so that this condition dominates my experience of it. To say I’ve always been abandoned implies that this pattern will continue in the future. This is really an energetic directive whose essence is: “It’s familiar; keep it coming.”

The future plays out according to my instructions. This confirms my belief, and I say, “See, I was right. Everyone abandons me.” Past, present, and future become a closed loop, invisible to mindfulness and awareness.

Let’s Not Rub Out Emotions

I’m not advocating repression of or resistance to emotions. Our emotions exist to tell us where we need to focus healing in the present moment.

If I’m feeling abandoned, I want and need to be mindful of that feeling. I will say, “Yes, I accept that I feel this way in this moment.” I will go a step further by tracing this emotion to my emotions regarding past events, and I will apply energetic healing methods (mostly meridian tapping) to them.

I will also remind myself about experiences when I felt included and loved. I will bring the feeling of those experiences into the present moment and concentrate on them.

Above all, I commit to being aware of what I’m thinking and feeling in the present moment. I choose to respect the immense power of the Now, which is my power.

And it is yours.

The point of power is in the present.

If you practice mindfulness in a Buddhist tradition, you might find it useful to explore the Seth perspective. The following link will take you to an article on sethnet.org, where you will find some valuable descriptions of the Seth Material.

To read Thich Nhat Hanh’s perspective on the present moment, see Our Appointment with Life: Sutra on Knowing the Better Way to Live Alone.

Fight, Flight, or Mindfulness?

Have you ever found yourself in a situation in which someone was pressuring you to make a decision, possibly a very important one?

Example: Your spouse tells you he’s been offered a job across the country. He wants the job, and he wants you to go along with his decision.

That’s a lot of pressure, and people never make their best decisions when they’re under pressure. That state activates the primitive brain, where the basic decisions consist of fight or flight. When your future as a live being depends on whether to fight or to flee, this fast-moving part of the brain is your friend. It will tell you what to do about the noise that sounds like a large, hungry animal and whether you should flee from or fight the stranger on your path.

We often have more complex decisions to make now, but the anxiety they arouse triggers our instinct to revert to the fight-or-flight mode of decision making. This doesn’t serve us in most situations. We can make decisions in our best interests, by consciously getting into a mindful state.

Steps Towards Mindfulness

First, breathe deeply. This takes awareness because our tendency in fight-or-flight moments is to engage in shallow breathing, which deprives our brains of oxygen, which further panics us.

Inhale and exhale for as long as necessary. You can enhance this process by placing both hands lightly on your solar plexus.

After that, you may want to meditate, do yoga, or chi kung. If you practice Reiki, you can give yourself a treatment.

One of the best things I’ve done for myself in a high-pressure situation is to use EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique). This consists of tapping on specific acupressure points while repeating statements (which will vary according to the situation). Research has shown that tapping can calm the primitive brain and restore calm and mindfulness to the mental processes. (For more information on EFT, you can go here.Once you feel more calm, consider the urgency of the decision. Do you really have to decide right away? By really, I mean 6 other people want the apartment, UPS has to pick up the package tomorrow, or your spouse has to decide about the job within 48 hours.

Consider—it may not be true, but consider it, anyway—that if a clear “Yes” or “No” aren’t coming up for you, “No” is often the best fall-back answer. This may lead to discussion, like “Why did you apply for a job 3000 miles away without asking me if I’d be willing to move?” This question could lead to an interesting conversation.

Sidestep Power Plays

Also consider that for many people, applying pressure on another is a form of exercising power over them. Recognize those who play such games, and walk off the court.

Play by your own rules. It’s your life and your decision to make.

I’d love to hear how you’ve mindfully handled a tough decision in your life. Please feel free to post below.

Mindfulness and Alice in Wonderland

Children's books are often rightly attacked for perpetuating dominant cultural modes: the white families of “Dick, Jane, and Sally,” the world of happy housewives, and countless other stereotypes.

For the many books that attempt to subdue rebellious impulses, there are at least a few that broadcast, whether consciously or unconsciously, subversive messages.

Recently I reread Alice in Wonderland, a favorite of mine in my childhood (mainly because of the cat). In this rereading, I found the book to be highly subversive in a way that I like.

For those who are unfamiliar with or who have forgotten the story, Alice falls asleep one summer afternoon and dreams that she’s in a very strange place with unusual beings of both the human and animal variety. She ultimately becomes involved in a croquet match involving flamingos as mallets, hedgehogs as balls, and playing cards as hoops.

The Queen of Hearts, who changes her mind about what she wants every few minutes, takes a strong dislike for Alice and decides that she must die, shouting, “Off with her head!” In the middle of this dream, Alice comes to awareness and realizes that the Queen’s army is nothing but a pack of playing cards. She knocks them all down and wakes up.

As a kid, I didn’t get the deeper meaning of this. I knew that dreams and waking reality were different. Only with age and some small degree of wisdom have I come to realize that waking reality isn’t all that real.

In our conceptions of our lives, we may have created details as bizarre as Cheshire Cats and Mad Hatters and feel that life is shouting, “Off with her head!”

Imagine a world in which you can be tall and proud when you think about your children and small and weak when you contemplate changing your career. No drugs are required in either situation.

Imagine believing you’re not as good as someone else—or better than someone.

Imagine thinking that you exist for any other reason than to realize your full potential and making a difference in the world.

Imagine waking up to the reality that such beliefs are nothing more than a pack of playing cards.

Another subversive children’s writer, Dr. Seuss, has this to say: “Why fit in when you were born to stand out?”

Can you think of one good reason?

Mindfulness and Delusions

When I was in high school, my family travelled from New Jersey to Wyoming, where we visited Yellowstone Park. While there, we had an incident with a mother bear and her cub.

In discussing it years later, we realized that none of our memories matched exactly. Two siblings said the bear chased us. One said “It was just there.” Another said it “followed” us. I remembered being chased, but I had forgotten that the bear chased or followed us all the way to our car and reared over it, giving us an excellent close-up view.

I tell this story to illustrate the deceptive nature of memory. How I remembered the bear had no major effect on my life. Memories, however, become significant when we assign a meaning to what we think is true and make decisions for the future based on our beliefs about the past.

We can use mindfulness to disrupt patterns based on false memories and interpretations. This process begins when we become aware that what we remember isn’t always true.

NO ONE KNOWS BEST

Being mindful is especially important with childhood memories.

You may have read or heard the notion that would-be parents should be required to pass a test at least as rigorous as a driving test. I agree. In many ways, we are the people our parents created. However, we have a potential choice about who we are. We exercise this choice when we question the truth of our memories.

We can discover and mindfully examine our childhood memories, especially those that don’t match what we learned was ideal family behavior. When I was growing up, the US media, especially TV shows, presented happy families. Things might go wrong, but these cheerful people made everything right again without even arguing about whose fault it was.

Where, I wondered, was my happy family?

I didn’t realize that the parent who never yelled, hit, acted stupid, who was sometimes vulnerable, and sometimes looked at you as if wishing to return to a childless state did not exist. I only knew that my parents didn’t meet televised standards.

Since then, I’ve come to a rational understanding of the cultural propaganda that encouraged me to believe that I lived in a psychotic setting (and, again, I realize that some people did), but I didn’t feel that maybe the comparison wasn’t serving me. If I felt it, I would have to forgive them and, even worse, let go of it being their fault that my life wasn’t perfect.

Because I avoided bringing mindfulness to my memories, they flourished in a fantasy land from which they governed significant aspects of how I viewed my life. As I worked on renovating Fantasy Land, it looked like a different place.

Mindful Memory Practices The more positive and especially curious you can be about this, the better results you’ll get. See yourself as a treasure hunter. Once these gems come to the surface, their reflected shine will lighten you. It can be difficult to admit that one was wrong. I ask myself, “Would I rather be right or be happy?” Don’t force it. Sometimes the search is more about noticing what shows up in your life. Maybe you get invited to the wedding of a hated relative. That could be fun. If at any point, reality is shifting too quickly, and you feel really uncomfortable, stop. Come back when you feel strong, or if you want to explore the subject but feel you need assistance, call a coach or counselor. Keep a journal. It makes good reading. Remember that it’s a project that never ends. New discoveries are always waiting to be unearthed.