A Year of Mindfulness: Study Suffering

The Half-Way Point and a Give-Away

Here we are at mindfulness practice #26. We are officially at the half-way mark in our year of mindfulness. Pat yourself on the back for sticking with it this far. In honor of your perseverance, I’m going to have a small give-away.

Sweet.

Leave a comment about today’s post, share your favorite mindfulness practice or an a-ha moment, and you will be entered into a drawing to win one of my Love Soulful Sprites. One winner will be chosen from all comments received. Comments must be posted by midnight EST on Monday, July 2, 2012.

Love Soulful Sprite

A Review

Here are links to some of the most popular posts on mindfulness practices we’ve discussed since January.

Using your non-dominant hand

Leave no trace

Eliminate filler words

Become aware of your posture

Listen

Pause before answering the phone

Waiting

Loving Eyes

Entering new spaces

Rest your hands

Saying Yes

Last Week’s Practice: Endless Desire

How did you do last week increasing your awareness of endless desire? I became quite aware of my desire to eat sweets last week. Chocolate, cookies, ice cream. The desire for these sweets felt like a bad habit. It was like I didn’t even think about it, I just wanted it.

Then I started asking myself why I wanted to pop that cookie in my mouth. And I couldn’t come up with a very good answer. But I hope that just becoming aware will help me tame that desire for sweets.

What desires popped up for you?

This Week’s Practice: Study Suffering

I grimaced when I saw the title of this week’s mindfulness practice. Suffering. Why would I want to study suffering? Isn’t this mindfulness stuff about feeling happy?

In this week’s practice, we are asked to become aware of the phenomenon of suffering. Not just the extreme forms of suffering-death, abuse, war, but the spectrum of suffering, from mild irritation and impatience to rage and overwhelming grief. We are asked to become aware of how we detect suffering in ourselves and in others. Where is it most obvious?

Dr. Bays points out that there is a difference between pain and suffering. Pain is the physical sensation or discomfort. Suffering is the mental and emotional distress that is added to the physical sensations.

By becoming aware of suffering, the mental and emotional distress, we can restrain the mind from running amok, speculating, disaster-mongering, and blaming someone else for our misery. When we stop resisting pain, we slowly begin to stop adding mental and emotional distress to physical discomfort.

As we become aware of the many forms of suffering, we also become aware of its opposite, the simple sources of happiness.

Reflection:
May I feel safe, may I feel content, may I feel strong, may I live with ease.
May you feel safe, may you be content, may you live with ease, may you be strong.
May we feel safe, may we be content, may we be strong, may we live with ease.

-Lovingkindness (Metta) meditation

Remember the Give-away

Remember to leave a comment in the comment box below and you’ll be entered to win one of my Love Soulful Sprites. All comments must be posted by midnight (EST), Monday, July 2, 2012. One winner will be chosen from all comments received.

Love Soulful Sprite

Love Soulful Sprite on meditation altar

 

NOTE: The Soulful Sprite give-away has ended.

A Year of Mindfulness-Desire

Can you believe we’re half-way through the year and almost half-way through our mindfulness practices? To be honest I don’t think I would’ve realized we’d come this far had I not looked at the calendar and then at the chapter number in Dr. Bay’s book, How to Train a Wild Elephant. Give yourself a pat on the back. You’re doing great!

How did your practice go last week? Were you mindful during at least one meal or snack to take one bite at a time? How did it feel to eat slowly and mindfully? I know it’s a hard habit to break, especially if you’re doing something else while eating…like watching TV (ahem, me) or reading or talking to friends.

Sometimes practicing mindfulness reminds me of having two characters (little Buddhas?) sitting on either shoulder. One will remind me to engage in my practice. The other will tell me to just keep doing what I’m doing. Usually the tiny mindfulness Buddha wins.

This Week’s Practice: Become Aware of Endless Desire

This week’s practice is to become mindful of the arising of desire. Now, now, this isn’t what you think. Yes, I thought it too when I first read the title. Desire = sex, love, food, pleasure. Certainly that form of desire is part of what we’re aware of. But this practice is about more than shall we say carnal desire. Consider this example:

Your alarm goes off in the morning. What might be the first thing you wish you could do? You might wish or desire more time to sleep.

You walk into your kitchen. What do you do you desire, tea or coffee or a cinnamon bun?

Get it?

Now, there is nothing wrong with desire. Desire keeps us alive. If you didn’t desire food or drink, you’d starve and die. Yet where desire can get the better of us is when we cling to its pleasure. So, if you desire ice cream and you eat the ice cream and then tell yourself it was so good you deserve another serving, then desire starts to control you and direct your behavior.

Becoming aware of desire helps us to make conscious decisions about whether following that desire is wholesome or not. Desire can be pleasurable. Satisfying your desire can also be disappointing. It is the disappointment that causes us to always look for the next great thing. You see what kind of circle we get ourselves into. It is this restlessness that causes suffering and dissatisfaction.

This week, become aware of desire. Observe your response to desire. Does it control you? Can you simply let it go?

Reflection: Manifest plainness, Embrace simplicity, Reduce selfishness, Have few desires. –Lao-tzu

A Year of Mindfulness-A Media Fast

It seems hard to believe that we’re nearing the end of the first quarter of the year. So far in our year of mindfulness we’ve practiced using our non-dominant hand, leaving no trace, eliminating filler words, appreciating our hands, and simply eating. We’ve paid true compliments, paid attention to our posture, expressed our gratitude, truly listened to sounds, paused before answering the phone, and practiced loving touch.

This past week we took the time to practice all forms of mindfulness while waiting; waiting in traffic, waiting in the check-out line, waiting at an appointment. How did you handle your time of waiting? We’re you able to feel yourself relax if you practiced deep breathing while waiting? Did you feel your frustration clear if you closed your eyes and meditated while waiting?

This Week’s Practice: Take a Media Fast

Practicing mindfulness while waiting seems to dovetail nicely with this week’s practice. This week we are asked to take a complete media fast. No email, no TV, no computer, no iPod; no newspapers, books, or magazines; no Twitter, Facebook, or other social media.

OMG!

Think you can do this? My first reaction was “Wait, I run a business. I’m the only one running my business. I can’t go cold turkey.” So I’ve decided a compromise may be in order. If you can’t take a complete media fast, can you eliminate one thing for the week? Or can you reduce the frequency of your media usage for the week?

The intent with this practice is to find alternatives to consuming media. Long before we had the internet and cable TV, most of our media exposure was limited to whatever happened in our immediate surroundings. Local news was truly local. Now that we can access all forms of media 24/7, the odds are pretty good that our anxiety has increased as we witness suffering that we are helpless to fix. That suffering sits heavy in our hearts and in our heads. We can easily suffer from “secondary victimization” where we are affected by trauma simply by hearing about it.

So this week, consider taking a media fast, eliminating some form of media, or reducing your frequency of exposure. Become mindful of what opens up or presents itself to you.

Reflection:
If we can decrease our intake of these toxic images, we can more easily establish a heart that is open and a mind that is serene and clear. This is the best foundation we can have if we want to move out into the world of woe and make a positive difference. -Jan Chozen Bays