Ahhh, the trick is...

Going to Walden

It isn't very far as highways lie.
I might be back by nightfall, having seen
the rough pines, and the stones, and the clear water.
Friends argue that I might be wiser for it.
They do not hear that far‐off Yankee whisper:
How dull we grow from hurrying here and there!

Many have gone, and think me half a fool
to miss a day away in the cool country.
Maybe, but in a book I read and cherish,
going to Walden is not so easy a thing
as a green visit. It is the slow and difficult
trick of living, and finding it where you are.

~Mary Oliver

Home Practice Guide - Week Four - Thoughts

“Mindfulness is cultivated by assuming the stance of an
impartial witness to your own experience.”

~Jon Kabat-Zinn

Seated Practice
This week we ask you to cultivate your inner witness by bringing a little more precision and discrimination into your practice. Begin by imagining a blank screen and anchoring your awareness to the breath as we’ve been doing. Then, with as much vigilance as you can muster, notice whenever anything shows up on the screen that is “not‐breath.” There is no judgment here! We are simply learning to identify (perhaps even using counting as a tool) all those moments where something other than our breath has our attention.

Once you feel more confident in identifying “breath” from “not‐breath,” begin to notice the characteristics of the “not‐breath” moments. Are they images or words? Are they fleeting commentary or part of a bigger story? Are they background noise or main stage? Do they have an emotional tone? Do they interact with body sensations (thoughts giving rise to sensation, sensation giving rise to thoughts)? Note: We are not analyzing the content of the thoughts or the stories and beliefs that are underneath them. We are simply becoming more aware of the nature of our thinking. This is a tricky distinction and it is easy to get lost here. Notice what you can and come back to the breath!

We are now asking you to sit for 20 minutes a day! As well, you may choose to begin your sitting practice with a pranayama exercise to clear and focus the mind.

For those of you with an established practice, continue to reinforce your practice in some way— committing to a slightly longer meditation, strengthening your intention as you sit or filling the gaps in the regularity of your practice.

Mindfulness in Daily Life: Shadow
Becoming aware of the interplay of light and shadow is great fun! Whenever you can (whenever you remember!) notice whatever shadows are present in your immediate environment. You may discover a subtle shading of the pepper shaker on your kitchen table or a sharp display of a tree’s limbs on the pavement. This practice encourages you to SEE the spaces in between the objects of our lives. Sunny days are wonderful for this practice, but cloudy or indoor days require a keener eye. As always, notice your judgments (“wow!” or “whatever…”) and come back to simply seeing. Consciously attending to this play of light and shadow opens us up to the extraordinary nature of the ordinary. Enjoy!!

Weekly Meditation Minder March 18-12

Hello springtime meditators!!

How are sounds working in your daily life? The peepers have begun here in the country !!

Well, this week we began to explore the nature and quality of our emotions; we are practicing with R.A.I.N. & HINDRANCES as ways to recognize, accept and become less personally invested in them. The previous attitudes of beginners mind and patience continue to be significantly helpful elements to cultivate as we delve more deeply into our awareness of what is happening moment by moment. Now, this next attitude of mind, Acceptance, from Jon Kabat-Zinn, is crucial to our mindfulness practice. Without it we may well miss our real lives.

"Acceptance does not mean that you have to like everything or that you have to take a passive attitude toward everything and abandon your principles and values. It does not mean that you are satisfied with things as they are or that you are resigned to tolerating things as they "have to be." ... Acceptance as we are speaking of it simply means that you have come around to a willingness to see things as they are. This attitude sets the stage for acting appropriately in your life, no matter what is happening. You are much more likely to know what to do and have the inner conviction to act when you have a clear picture of what is actually happening than when your vision is clouded by your mind's self-serving
judgments and desires or its fears and prejudices.

In meditation practice we cultivate acceptance by taking each moment as it comes and being with it fully, as it is. We try not to impose our ideas about what we should be feeling or thinking or seeing on our experience but just remind ourselves to be receptive and open to
whatever we are feeling, thinking, or seeing, and to accept it because it is here right now. If we keep our attention focused on the present, we can be sure of one thing, namely that whatever we are attending to in this moment will change, giving us the opportunity to practice accepting whatever it is that will emerge in the next moment."

So, this is the real deal, this attitude of acceptance shows us, allows us to see, what is actually happening right now, what is really true for each of us is only what is here in any given moment. In these next few days continue sitting for 15 minute segments, really notice as you witness breath what else shows up and how you meet it. Consciously bring your accepting mind into the moment, it really changes everything!

We meet this Sunday March 21, 2010 630-745pm. We will continue to develop attention, focus, and skill working with emotions and now thoughts, creating peaceful presence and stillness.

Accept, Allow, Be

Jenn & Rebecca

Home Practice Guide-Week 3 - Emotions

“Acceptance. . .simply means that you have come around

to a willingness to see things as they are.”

~Jon Kabat-Zinn

Seated practice

This week we ask you to put to use these two practice elements —R.A.I.N. & the Hindrances—in your home practice. Play with them. Maybe in one sitting you commit to using the R.A.I.N. technique and in another you bring some particular awareness to what Hindrances are showing up for you. Or you might loosely integrate them into your practice, intentionally bringing acceptance and interest to your aversion or restlessness, etc. Note: The anchor of your meditation is still the breath.

R.A.I.N.

R: Recognize

A: Accept, Allow

I: Interest, Investigation

N: Non-identification-letting go: “Not me, Not mine, Not who I am”

THE HINDRANCES

1) Restlessness (worrying, remorse, agitation)

2) Sloth & Torpor (sleepiness, boredom)

3) Sensual desire (wanting)

4) Aversion (anger, frustration, irritation)

5) Doubt & Fear

While you are still focusing (and returning to) the breath, you are allowing for greater awareness of what draws you away, particularly the emotional quality of what draws you away. We are NOT interested right now in the story. Instead, allow yourself to briefly explore the texture of your felt experience (where in the body you feel the emotion, its weight, its breadth, its changing quality) and then let it go and come back to the breath. Remember to honor the hindrances as guests—we aren’t denying or pushing them away but we also aren’t letting them decide who we are, take over our house and run the show.

For those of you who are new to meditation, we are now asking you to sit for 15 minutes a day.

For those of you with an established practice, focus this week on really grounding your practice in some way— committing to a specific length of time, strengthening your intention as you sit or filling the gaps in the regularity of your practice.

Mindfulness in Daily Life: Sound

Whenever you can (whenever you remember!) notice whatever sounds are present. Hear the tone quality, the loudness, softness, continuity, sharpness, dullness, roundness, even the silence underneath. Notice the sounds of walking, eating, cooking, breathing, going to the bathroom, computer keys clicking, voices, wind, cars, birds, plumbing, whatever it is. And of course, notice when there's a mental story or judgment about the sound; whenever there is, meet it for a moment with curiosity and acceptance, and then come back to the physical quality of the sound itself. If you find yourself caught up in an emotion, a personal drama or any kind of mental gymnastics during the day, come back to the simple experience of the actual sounds arising in that moment. Enjoy!

Rebecca & Jenn

Weekly Meditation Minder March 12

Hello all,

SIT! 15 minutes once before Sunday evening when we meet again, yes??

Another attitude of mind from Jon Kabot Zin for you to digest:

Patience is a form of wisdom. It demonstrates that we understand and accept the fact that sometimes things must unfold in their own time. A child may try to help a butterfly to emerge by breaking open its chrysalis. Usually the butterfly doesn't benefit from this. Any adult knows that the butterfly can only emerge in its own time, that the process cannot be hurried.

In the same way we cultivate patience toward our own minds and bodies when practicing mindfulness. We intentionally remind ourselves that there is no need to be impatient with ourselves because we find the mind judging all the time, or because we are tense or agitated or frightened, or because we have been practicing for some time and nothing positive seems to have happened. We give ourselves room to have all these experiences. Why? Because we are having them anyway! When they come up, they are our reality, they are part of our life unfolding in this moment. So we treat ourselves as well as we would treat the butterfly. Why rush through some moments to get to other, "better" ones? After all, each one is your life in that moment.

Where are the places that you rush in to fix, change, manipulate? Reflect for a moment and see how knowing this may alter your experience.

...To be patient is simply to be completely open to each moment,
accepting it in its fullness, knowing that, like the butterfly, things
can only unfold in their own time.

Much Metta, Bundles of Patience,

Jenn & Rebecca

March Dates: Sunday the 14th & Sunday the 21st See you there!! 630-745p At Eyes of the World

Excerpts from Full Catastrophe Living by Jon Kabot Zin.

"The richness of present-moment experience is the richness of life
itself. Too often we let our thinking and our beliefs about what we
"know" prevent us from seeing things as they really are. We tend to
take the ordinary for granted and fail to grasp the extra-ordinariness
of the ordinary. To see the richness of the present moment, we need
to cultivate what has been called "beginner's mind," a mind that is
willing to see everything as if for the first time."

Lovely Meditators,

A bit later than I had planned but here now, my apologies :-)

We would like to encourage you to increase your daily sitting time by 5 minutes. It may not be possible everyday but do create an intention and commit to trying the 15 minutes at a few of your allotted practice times...

Although breath continues to be the focus, the anchor, let us adjust our perception and view our experience here in a new light. Beginners mind or the ability to look at the world anew as if for the very first time is one of several attitudes of mind we each must develop as we "cultivate the healing power of mindfulness"

An open, "beginner's" mind allows us to be receptive to new possibilities and prevents us from getting stuck in the rut of our own expertise, which often thinks it knows more than it does. No moment is the same as any other. Each is unique and contains unique possibilities.

This really becomes an openness of mind as well as an act of letting go of the need to be in judgment about or able to control anything. Encourage a great curiosity about what is happening in this moment. Watch, see, witness. Continue to begin anew with each breath, noticing when you've drifted off and enjoy each of these moments as an opportunity to look again, to see the coming back in yet another way, a fresh way.

Take a moment to reflect on the how this habit of mind may open up for you as you sit with the breath. As if this breath is the first one you have experienced.

Now, take it beyond the sitting practice, make a connection to your daily life. How are you seeing the people in your life, at work, in your family, in the market, on the street, in the news? How about familiar problems or relationship dynamics? Are you able to see these people and experiences as they are right now with a clear and uncluttered mind? "Or are you actually only seeing them through the veil of you own thoughts and opinions?"

Do take a moment to jot down some of your thoughts. Check in on the blog, sit regularly, let us know if you have any questions!

Many blessings, much metta,
Jenn & Rebecca

Breath

Breath

Breath, the mindful breath,
the rhythm, out and in,
the wave that washes
through our days, creating
space for stillness, sorrow,
joy, or exaltation. Full,
then empty, ebb and flow,
breath accompanies each
step into the unknown.
In the breath, the soul
finds an opportunity to
speak. Images or intuition,
poetry or wordless wisdom,
come and go - no effort but
to breathe and listen.

~Danna Faulds