Mindfulness:

When we use the term mindfulness, this is the act of being mindful of something:
Our breathing,
our eating,
our walking,
even in rest.
We are surrendering ourselves to the present moment.

When we showed up today in meditation, we heard the words “I have nowhere to go. and nowhere to be.”

These are opposing forces to what life has conditioned you to do.
The way that our society works is based off of how much one can consume, how much one can create, how quickly we can “return our investments” to stimulate the outside world. To move it forward and produce results, generate income, and manifest monopoly for monetary benefit.

This has been ingraned in our heads since a child. It’s never enough to just finish school. We need to be the best. It’s great that we play sports, but whats even better is when we produce that championship trophy at the end of the year. And when you grow up, your status to the world isn’t based off your happiness. It’s based off material posessions surrounding you.

So this becomes a difficult concept for us to attach ourselves to. Being relaxed, feeling rested, almost feels like a punishment because it lacks material results. We gain nothing from it tangibly. But let’s think about why this is so important for a second:

All of these companies, the ones you work for, the ones who advertise to you, the ones you see on the side of the street as your driving to your friends house- all of these companies have invested trillions of dollars to attract something from you. And what do they find most compelling? Yes your money is the ultimate goal- but what they need to do first is attract your attention.

They need to steal your mindfulness. They need to make you feel less whole. Make you develop a FOMO of the service they provide. They need to distract you from the present moment in order to make you feel as though you are missing something.
And that’s the biggest key about Mindfulness- in reality, we have all that we need in the present moment. That’s the hidden secret. They spend all their resources to steal away your happiness with the present moment. They take the gratitude that you naturally possess and they try and soften it by saying “yes BUT-” what if you added this, what if we could give you THIS as well… wouldnt it be even nicer?”

And there’s a reason why those ads have changed. Back in the 50’s/60’s..those ads used to be about how a product could work well. How strong and durable a product was. But because humans have developed, and we’ve reorientated material possessions, now they use the framework to sell to us as an object of “self care”- you will feel better, you’ll have more time, it saves you money…its benefiting you emotionally now as well to buy the product.”

We’ve changed to more emotional advertising. And I want you to think about why that is. Because our emotions, and how we feel, the way that we think, all guide our thoughts.
Those thoughts guide our words, They guide our speech and what we say and think about with others.
Those words inevitably affect our actions. And our ability to take our own thoughts and create our realities.

So what we are thinking about, what we are grateful for, all of those things matter. The mindfulness that we apply to our lives has a direct impact on what we do- how we live out our lives.
So if we are in a constant emotional state of fear, of thinking of our past, of reliving the same situations.

If we are in a constant emotional state of fearing for our future, of constantly worrying and running our body off of anxiety, we affect our reality through this.

But if we can use mindfulness, and we can apply it correctly in the present, we can stop our fears and anxiety. We can develop gratitude for the situation and circumstances we have. And this, developed over time, will trickle into all areas of your life. This will develop a true buddha nature, of seeing and caring for the beautiful world that we live in. It makes life easier to deal with when we are in the correct mindframe. When we can stay in a positive state. And this is what the Buddha is trying to tell us.

He’s trying to say that through mindfulness, your life can change. You can go from being anxious to being free. From being held down to world ties, to having a state of emptiness that allows the world to fill you. You cannot be filled if your cup is already full. You have to empty our the bad in order to allow space for the good to enter.

Mindfulness is the energy that we create when we bring our mind back to our body and get in touch with what’s going on in the present moment, with us and around us. We become aware of our breathing and we come home to the body, fully present in whatever we are doing.

This energy you produce with this practice is concentration. Of being in the present moment and focusing fully on what or who is in front of you. When you are mindful of something, you are concentrated on it. When there is more mindfulness and concentration, there is insight. You cannot isolate the insight of a present moment without it being surrounded by the other two energies- mindfulness and concentration.

If you lie down, walk, sit and you are still thinking, ruminating, if your body still has tension, we have not stopped with mindfulness. There is a trick of allowing your mind to have a thought, but not engaging in that thought. Not allowing that thought to take off in a full blown conversation in your mind that causes you to disengage from the presence. -walking that fine line.

What do we do when we can’t get our minds to turn off? We simply acknowledge the thought. We allow our brain to have it. We do not suppress. We invite thoughts to come and we also invite thoughts to go. We don’t engage in the conversation. We respect their origination- the fear, anxiety, the boredom- and we allow it to be free. we let it go. set it free from conversation. We focus back in on grounding ourselves- what do i see, what can i feel, touch, smell, taste- and bring ourselves back to the awareness of the present moment. This is how we engage and re-engage in mindfulness. We stop the mind, but we also have to stop the body from reacting. Going back to breathwork and allowing ourselves to come back home.

“I have arrived. I am home.” Gatha to practice.

One thing I want to mention is this could be very difficult as well because you haven’t done this for your entire life. Like going to a retreat, it cannot be fixed in five days. You have _ amount of years of living that you have done, alot of it with asfixiating on your trauma and depending upon your past to help you guide your future. This is not an easy task of fix to simple get rid of. The object of Mindfulness cannot be simply fixed. I’ve studied for 15 years. And this is not to deter you, but to alieviate the feeling of perfection that might try and supress you during your own journey. No one is mindful all the time. But the more we can develop this, the easier our suffering becomes. We learn to detach from suffering. We learn the fact that it’s not inherintely personal. Just like the four noble truths teach us. Suffering is everyone’s problem. But the more we unidentity with the bad things that happen, the more free we can become.

You will also have noticed by now in your own journey that you have inhabited alot of your ability to stop and ruminate from your parents. Your parents and ancestors hand you their physical and mental abilities to you as you take your human form. And you working to fix this, to root in a different energy. All of that is breaking generational trauma and habits that they didn’t get to. And it’s a wonderful thing you should take refuge in. That you have the capacity to change and grow and remember to take time for yourself and giving yourself gratitude for going on this journey. Some people never even get to the starting point. Some people start and get so intertwined with their ego that they take sacred things and turn them into self harming realities. Take your time, reach out, and lets talk about our own journey of mindfulness and where we are on our paths.