C.M. Barrett's Blog, page 5

Mindfulness and Suffering

Does being mindful end suffering? Not that I’ve noticed. It can, however, change the nature of suffering.

In The Mindfulness Backlash, I wrote about the speed with which mindfulness is being marketed as a cure-all, which it is not. Mindfulness will not get you a new car, a better car, or a great relationship.

It also will not erase moments or longer time spans of suffering from your life. This sometimes seems unfair. If you can be serene, accepting each moment as it unfolds, surely, just as correct sanitation creates an environment in which germs don’t thrive, negativity should feel unwelcome in your mind.

However that thought reveals an inherent resistance. When I think it, I’m saying, “I don’t want negativity.” The statement that what we resist persists may be over-used, but that doesn’t make it less true.

It is often said that resistance is the source of all mental and physical pain. Take a moment to check out your body: neck, back, shoulders, wherever you may experience tension and pain. Think about some of the classic phrases related to physical pain and discomfort: “Pain in the neck,” “Don’t expect me to swallow that,” “I can’t stomach it.” Hear the resistance in these statements.

Imagine instead, waking up with a physical pain and surrendering to it, saying, “OK, pain, you win.” Some people ask what the pain wants to tell them, and this is an approach that can work for many varieties of suffering.

That person at work you can’t stand? (And how are your legs and feet doing?) Becoming mindful and going within may bring up a memory of someone of whom that person reminds you. Now you have an opportunity for release.

A situation that frightens you may represent the past intruding into the present moment and projecting into the future. A very common example involves people who are terrified about the idea of public speaking and who remember that when they were children, they suffered a humiliating experience in school. Suffering, when it operates in the background of consciousness, persists.

This is why the Zen Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, advises us to make good use of our suffering, to embrace it as a teacher, to understand that in suffering lies the key to its resolution and healing.

Yes, it takes courage and commitment—and mindfulness. When I can allow whatever is happening in the present moment, I may not suddenly become happy, but in the acceptance that I’m not in control of the situation, I can surrender to it and invite it to teach me. It’s not my fault; it’s not anyone’s fault; it is.

And that’s the beginning of peace.

The Mindfulness Backlash?

Mindfulness is certainly in the news. I get Google Alerts on the subject, and every day, a long listing of articles comes to my inbox.

We have mindfulness coloring books, apps. We are told that mindfulness can help us lose weight, cure depression, assist us in concentration, productivity, and profit, and teach children to learn better.

The above claims are probably potentially true, but I see a danger—actually, several dangers—in what appears to be a growing mindfulness craze.

“Girlfriend left you? Try a little mindfulness.”

“Need a better job? Meditate for success.”

“Kids bothering you? Send them to mindfulness school.”

People are beginning to see mindfulness as a cure-all, just as other segments of the population see pharmaceutical drugs. Given a choice, I’d prefer that parents send their kids to mindfulness school rather than drug them up. What makes me nervous is the possibility that it will be seen as a quick fix.

Since it isn’t, people will become disappointed and check it off as one more New Age hype that didn’t deliver.

This would be unfortunate, since mindfulness does have so much to offer anyone who approaches it in a different way. Instead of thinking, “I will do this thing in order to achieve X,” we do better to say, “I choose to live my life this way because each mindful moment and act gives its own reward.” Not tomorrow, not next month when you look at your stock dividends or your kid’s report card, but NOW.

Because mindfulness is about now. When it’s practiced that way, it will never disappoint. When it’s seen as a means to an end, disappointment is inevitable.

Mindfulness and Laughter

Where I live, it’s winter, and though snow came late to the party, it didn’t neglect to arise. In the Northeast, we are approaching the time traditionally known as that of cabin fever. This period is characterized by restlessness, irritability, and the desire to see something green.

It’s a time when a good laugh can make a difference. Laughter is mindful. It puts us completely in the moment. Past and future fade away as we enjoy the hilarity of the present moment.

With this in mind, I invite you to visit the following web site:

The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest

The URL will take you to the winning entries for the 2015 Bulwer-Lytton contest. Bulwer-Lytton was the author of the classic phrase, “It was a dark and stormy night,” and the contest challenges entrants to compose bad opening sentences to imaginary novels. Many are so bad that they’re very good.

Since the contest is completely about shameless bad writing, I have no hesitation in stating that I won a runner-up award in 2005 in the Fantasy category. Here's my entry:

?The dragon cast his wet, rheumy eyes, heavy-lidded with misery, over his kingdom – a malodorous, rot-ridden swamp, with moss cloaking brooding, gloomy cypresses, tree trunks like decayed teeth rising from stagnant ponds, creatures with mildewed fur and scales whom the meanest roadside zoo would have rejected – and hoped the antidepressants would kick in soon."

In a very different form, this entry became the basis for Big Dragons Don't Cry, the first book of A Dragon's Guide to Destiny. You can see the link to the right for more information.

This kind of humor may not be for you, in which case, I invite you to search on YouTube for one of Jimmy Fallon’s impersonations of famous singers. Or get a Laughing Buddha and contemplate why he's laughing.

One Word for the New Year

While I’m aware that the New Year has been around long enough for even me to remember that I have to write 2016 on checks, it’s not to late to envision and mentally shape the future.

For 15+ years, I’ve been part of a writing group that meets online. For this week’s chat, the chat leader gave us the challenge of coming up with one word to describe how we plan to focus on whatever dreams and aspirations we have for 2016.

Her inspiration for this idea came from the web site below:

One Word 365

Their concept is that one word can replace a long list of New Year’s resolutions. I don’t think they’re the only one with this idea, as I saw a number of other sites with the phrase “One Word” in the title, but it’s a good starting point. You can see who else has chosen your word and join their tribe. You can also get help in picking out a word.

Without further ado, my word is “Presence.” This means I intend to be present to the moment, instead of being caught up in the past or the future.

If you like this idea, and you want to post your word, please do.

For a Mindful New Year

I work part-time as a freelance editor. Recently I was editing a chapter about goal setting. While actually editing, I gave attention to my work, but later I realized that the content made me uneasy. Why? Because I don’t set goals with anything near the precision recommended in the chapter.

My inner guidance was telling me that I now needed to do this. The call to action awakened all of my resistance. Lists and discipline weren’t creative and spontaneous; they were boring. I felt like a child stuck in school on a sunny day.

The truth, though, was that lack of accomplishment was frustrating me. Since inner guidance was speaking to me, I asked it how I could reconcile the desire to accomplish goals in a systematic way with the desire for creativity and spontaneity.

The answer I got was that sometimes mindfulness means having a list and giving one’s full attention to its items, one at a time, and that in a given moment there is one thing to do. The practical analogy was that I didn’t wait for inspiration to wash the dishes, but that with a clean sink and counter area, I had lots of space to create an imaginative and delicious meal. And when I brought mindfulness to both the dishes and the cooking, I could get equal satisfaction from both tasks.

My inner guide wasn’t done with me, though. It also reminded me that for over a year, I’ve been moving from crisis to crisis. I have successfully handled all of them, but I felt as if I was constantly deflecting curveballs from the universe. I didn’t feel as if I were initiating plans of actions. I was responding to each new crisis that wreaked havoc with my plans.

The law of attraction states that whatever you focus on will grow. In retrospect, I see that I was focusing on crisis. No wonder they increased. I found crisis management easier than consciously taking command of my life and moving forward.

I’m not beating myself up for this. Humans do these things. However, now that it’s 2016, I intend to mend my ways, and this is the method I’m following.

Discover your most important dream.

List the steps needed to accomplish.

Get specific and break these steps into smaller steps.

Whenever I accomplish even the smallest step, I will pause to congratulate myself and celebrate my achievement.

To make this stronger, I’m going to state my intentions here. I have two goals in mind. I may end up choosing one over the other. That’s part of the plan.

My first goal is to make more money from my writing. I haven’t finalized my financial goal; that will be part of the process.

My second goal is to launch a career as an EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) coach.

I am going to break down each of these goals into steps. I am going to assess my progress weekly. I am going to celebrate all accomplishments, no matter how small.

And I am going to report my progress here. By the way, in writing this post, I accomplished one of my small goals.

I welcome anyone who so chooses to list his or her goals as comments. You have my full support.

And Happy New Year. May it be an enlightening and mindful one for all and one in which you fulfill your most heartfelt dreams.

The Gift of Being Different

Robert May, a Canadian man, was facing the worst Christmas of his life. Sitting in a small, drafty apartment, with his wife dying of cancer, and his four-year-old daughter crying on his lap, he faced her question: Why couldn't her mother come home? Why wasn't she like other mothers?

Bob's life had always been difficult. As a child, he'd been frequently bullied by other boys. He'd been too small to compete in sports. He was often called terrible names. He was always different. He never seemed to fit in.

After completing college, he found his life greatly improved. He got a job as a copywriter for the T Eaton Stores. He married a woman named Evelyn, and they had a little girl. His brief period of happiness, though, ended with Evelyn's cancer, which took away their savings.

Now he and his little daughter lived in a two-room apartment in a poor area of Toronto. His wife died days before Christmas in 1938. He couldn't afford a present for his little girl, but he was determined to give her something. So he made a story book, his autobiography in disguised form.

This was the story of a reindeer who was laughed at by all the other reindeer for his big shiny nose.

Bob finished the story in time to give it to his daughter on Christmas Day.

The general manager of the store where he worked heard about the storybook and gave Bob a nominal fee to buy the rights to print it. "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was distributed to children visiting Santa Clause in the T. Eaton stores. By 1946 they'd distributed more than 6 million copies.

A major publisher asked to buy the rights to print an updated version. The CEO of Eaton's returned all the rights to Bob, and the book became a best seller. Bob, remarried with a growing family became wealthy.

Then his brother-in-law, Johnny Marks, made a song adaptation to the story. Gene Autry, the singing cowboy, recorded it, and it was released in 1949. The song sold more records than any Christmas song but "White Christmas."

Bob, the misfit, who in an act of love, created a gift from his heart for his little girl, found that gift returning to him again and again. And he learned that, just as Rudolph did, that being different can be a blessing.

He shared that lesson with the world. And every one of us can celebrate our differences. Thanks, Bob. Your gift continues to give.

Holly: The Bach Flower Remedy for Love

Unconditional love, the positive energy expressed by the Holly Bach Remedy, is the most natural emotion. Your animal companions know that; they express forgiveness and forgetting with every breath of their beings. Humans, however, find this more difficult. Part of our problem is that we learn early on that no one will forgive our anger.

As children, we are punished for the spontaneous expression of anger (did you ever tell your parents that you hated them?). Schools reinforce the lesson, and by the time we're adults, we're convinced that anger has the danger potential of volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, and other natural disasters.

If anger is violent, destructive, and self-destructive, it’s usually because we’ve held it in for too long. That’s why it’s important to express.

When someone’s spent a long time being depressed, feeling and expressing anger is a giant step on the road of recovery. When we're angry, energy is moving, and sometimes this emotion washes away blockages and resistance and leads to healing.

I believe in accepting anger, learning to handle it, and allowing it.

FIGHT

Pretend you have a friend, Sam, who continually talks about himself and never wants to hear about your life. You’ve known him a long time, and you think that tuning him out can preserve your friendship (and, despite this issue, you do have one). Sometimes an evening with him leaves you angry, and you may wait a while before seeing him again.

Your anger accumulates, and you tell other friends that you can hardly bear to be around Sam. Finally, after a day when everything went wrong, you have dinner with him. He begins to tell you what a terrible day he had, and you explode. You never speak to him after that, but who needs that kind of friendship?

If you’d acknowledged the anger sooner and decided to address it, could have handled the situation in a way that was less hurtful both to you and to Sam.

ANGER AND LOVE

From the time we told our parents we hated them (or didn't tell them but thought it), most of us have used anger to shield ourselves from our disappointment, hurt, and vulnerability.

The spirit guide, Seth (channeled by the late Jane Roberts) said that anger can bring us back to love. Have you ever had a fight with someone you loved that resulted in a tearful reconciliation and the feeling that you loved this person more than ever? Your decision not to hold onto your anger was a statement that you wanted reconciliation.

To make sure that the person doesn’t hear the anger, you need to speak the love—and strongly.

THE HEART OF LOVE

I can best deal with my anger when I realize that my main problem isn’t how others treat me but how I treat myself. When I’m cut off from the source of love, which is myself, it's easy to find evidence in the external world that others love me imperfectly.

I also take Holly. All of us can benefit from its healing energies. In its positive state, Holly represents being in harmony with oneself and others, taking joy in the happiness of others, and being an expression of unconditional love.

Dr. Bach said: "Holly protects us from everything that is not Universal Love. Holly opens the heart and unites us with Divine Love."

Many people bring the holly plant indoors during the Christmas season to symbolize Christ's rebirth. We need not be Christian to honor the Holly flower as a means for resurrecting in each of us the spirit of love and divine communion, which is our birthright.

This blog post is excerpted from Bach Flower Remedies: A User-friendly Guide. You can click on the cover to the left for more information. It’s available at Amazon.

Being Mindful about Love

When I was a child, my father habitually manipulated his children to feel sorry for him. As a complementary activity, he subtly coerced us to behave in certain ways that he claimed would make him happier. The tagline was, “If you love me, you’ll . . .”

My training was that when you loved people, you did things that you didn’t necessarily want to do, things that you, in some dim but emerging awareness, knew violated your integrity and sense of self.

As an adult who learned a thing or two about psychology, I came to realize that his behavior was that of a self-proclaimed victim who used this role to dominate others. I learned to spot specimens of that type and refused to give in to their strategies.

Recently, though, someone made some classic Victim-as-Dominator moves on me on the false premise that I had wronged him. The stakes were very high. Either I gave in, or our friendship would be over.

When an acquaintance attempts to dominate you, the cost of refusal is relatively low. This, however, was someone who meant a lot to me, someone I loved and whom I thought loved me.

After a certain amount of anguish, I turned to meditation and mindful contemplation. I came to understand that for the sake of my integrity I needed to turn down the invitation to be dominated and coerced by him. To be untrue to myself for the sake of friendship would render the friendship meaningless.

My decision put my feet on high moral ground, but my heart was in tatters. I needed to heal it with something more effective than the bandage of “You did the right thing.”

I’m not a regular Bible reader, but I remembered a famous Biblical passage about love and looked it up. This verse in Corinthians 13:4-8 says as much to me about love as anything I’ve read.

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.”

When I read it, I found my cure. I recognized that what I thought was love on his part was the familiar “I will love you if . . .” Though the relationship had had many high points, his demand had no element of love in it. It isn’t what I want to either give or receive in my life.

In the end, this experience is a gift. I’ve removed a toxic relationship from my life and received clarity. My New Year’s resolution is to shine that clear light on all of my relationships—because I want to live a life in which I experience and share love.

Have you had a positive experience in letting go of a damaging relationship? I’d love to hear about it.

Losing Things

In November I took a workshop. During the course of the two days, I lost things.

I lose and misplace things from time to time, but this was an extravaganza.

On Saturday night, I was back home, getting things out of the car, and I couldn’t find my water bottle. I told myself not to make this a big deal, went into the house, and made it a big deal. By the time I decided to look in the car again, the bottle had turned into a sacred chalice.

I left the house, and my cat, Pangur, ran outside for the first time since she joined me six months ago. This was probably a “I’ll show you you’re not the only one who can leave,” commando action, but I was beginning to feel that the universe was conspiring against me.

It was dark outside, she’s a black cat, and she cleverly dove into the bushes and became invisible. This was definitely a big deal. I’d never find her; she’d get hit by a car; and I’d suffer for the rest of my life. I recovered long enough to go back inside for a bag of treats, which I took outside and rattled. She forgot that she was punishing me and ran back into the house.

The next morning in the workshop room, I found the water bottle on the table where I’d left it. After lunch, though, I couldn’t find my purse. I fled the workshop and went downstairs to the hotel front desk, where no purse had been turned in. This was a BIG deal. Not only was my life over, but I wouldn’t even be able to drive home.

I went back upstairs, looked on the floor, and then for no particular reason, looked up at the coat rack. The purse was sitting on top. Apparently, someone put it there.

Why? I asked myself when the workshop was over. Was I losing my mind?

Yes. During the course of the workshop’s intensive exercises, I’d lost beliefs that were old friends, maybe not the best friends to have, but they’d provided the illusion of security. I was there for the purpose of losing them, so I thought I couldn’t mourn about that. Instead, I transferred my panic to a water bottle, cat, and purse.

I learned an important lesson from this: that the casting away of core beliefs, habits, and other structures I’ve built to keep myself supposedly safe IS A BIG DEAL. If I don’t acknowledge that it can be frightening, I’m going to frighten myself in other ways because the emotions, whether they be fear, grief, or massive insecurity, need to be expressed.

Mindfulness means attentiveness to my emotional state. When I’m tuning into myself, I can take the necessary precautions against the results of inner chaos. I can deliberately notice where the water bottle, the purse, and the cat are. More important, I put myself in training to be aware of my outer world, too. In such a state, each moment matters.

I don’t know if I’ve completely learned the lesson, but I’m sure I’m getting closer.

The workshop, by the way, was called Matrix Reimprinting, and it was pretty great. If you ever take it, though, hang on to your stuff—your physical stuff. Let the rest go, but be sure to wave good-bye.

Giving Thanks Mindfully

I don't always do this, but this Thanksgiving I'm going to make a list of the many things for which I'm thankful.

Among these things are the many examples of seen of people who have risen above the limitations of prejudice and bigotry to welcome those who need who need new homes and communities and to offer support to those who have been the victims of vandalism and hatred. 7-year-old Jack Swanson is a shining example.

A Small Boy's Generosity is Unexpectedly Rewarded.

We can also take comfort in seeing how animals don't see themselves as separated by species.

A Cat, a Fawn, and Louis Armstrong's Wonderful World.

If you celebrate Thanksgiving, I wish you a blessed day and reasons every day to feel blessed.