In the past 20 years of practicing mindfulness, I have found that any issue can be addressed if I return to the basics of my practice. What are those basics?
I begin with, ‘my thoughts determine how I feel.’ If I change my thoughts, I change how I feel. In Buddhist thought, our ignorance is the cause of all of our suffering. If we don’t know what we don’t know, we are continually walking through a minefield and things can blow up in our face in an instant. As Adyashanti has said, “Suffering occurs when we believe in a thought that is at odds with what is, what was or what it will be.”
What exactly is mindfulness? It is the practice of bringing our awareness into the present moment, without judgment, and with compassion.
“Awareness is that part of us that perceives, observes and witnesses our thoughts, feelings, behaviours and body sensations. It can be quite transformative to realize you are not what you thought you were, that you are not your feelings, that you are not your beliefs, that you are not your personality and that you are not your ego. You are something other than that, something that resides on the inside, at the innermost core of your being. For the moment we are calling that something awareness itself.”
– Adyashanti
What is the present moment? It is being one with each heartbeat, each in-breath and each out-breath, from moment to moment.
What prevents us from being in the present moment? Our reactive thinking keeps us from being in the present moment. From our earliest life encounters, our reactive thoughts create storylines about our experiences. We bring our cognitive and emotional development, as young people, to our experiences of parents, family, and what love is or is not, as well as to our sense of safety, what we become afraid of and who we are.
Within these storylines, we come to conclusions about ourselves and our world. We make judgments about who we are and whether our needs and feelings are OK. Our inner critic is a creation of these story-line based conclusions we reach about who we are. We must acknowledge, again, that we are not thoughts, and that the conclusions about who we are that come from our inner critic are not true. They are lies.
When we are being run by our reactive thinking, we are filled with fear, ignorance, judgments, myths and interpretations about ourselves and others. From the storyline perspective, we are always incomplete and never good enough.
When we are in touch with our awareness, our thoughts reflect an insight, creativity and wisdom far beyond anything that our reactive mind can imagine. According to Jon Kabat-Zinn, “When we are truly present, in the now, our natural state of being is to be compassionate, to feel empathy with another person or living being.”
When we are in the now, we are present and aware, expressing empathy and compassion. By being who we are, we can address any issue, circumstance or person we come upon in life. Truly being present is a source of healing that can transform division and disregard for others with each breath that we take. Namaste.
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