Is Where We Are
The good news is, you’re already here. The trick is to remember that.
And to recognize that.
And to experience that here, now.
It’s easy. Maybe too easy? We seem to want dramatic solutions to dramatic problems. We take classes in cognitive awareness, feel crystals, and throw the I Ching. The more anxious we feel, the more effort we think we need to escape. But when our thinking is hijacked by an inflamed brainstem, simply coming back to now can bring us into alignment and return us to an optimum mental state. As humans, we have evolved to employ higher mental functioning, but we need clarity of mind to fully access that state. Unfortunately, we’ve retained shadows of a less awake, fearful, scurrying mind that sometimes hijacks or clouds our reasoning. Reasoning becomes overthinking, catastrophic thinking or distracted escapism. When our thinking is compromised, we would do well to pay less attention to the narrative of our thoughts and more attention to recognizing when the mind is distracted it’s thinking.
When we train in meditation, we are training to notice when the mind is distracted and to bring it back to the present. We don’t need deep psychological reasoning for this process. In fact, the simpler we keep it, the better. We notice, we return, and we do all of this with no judgment, no explanation, no concepts at all.
Quite simply, what is happening now? What am I experiencing now in the simplest, most tactile way? Not grand ideas, but simply the experience of my hands, feet and breath. Letting go of ideas of what we think is happening, we turn our attention to our feet on the ground. I mean really do that. Really feel your feet on the ground. Not think about it. Just feel your hands on the desk or your thighs. Bring yourself back home. You can do this walking around your kitchen when anxiety arises. Come back to the experience of your feet on the floor. It’s that simple to break the momentum of panic, thinking and fear.
Aside from placing a gap in the panic, being aware of ourselves, and parts of ourselves, is comforting to the frightened part of us that can take over our whole day.
Mindfulness of mind means noticing when the mind has hijacked us, taking center stage with some thought or idea that obscures everything else we might see. Mindfulness of being awake in the present moment reminds us to come back to what is verifiably happening, such as the breath or our posture. When the mind notices itself, that noticing is happening in the present. But when the mind gets lost in the narrative of its thinking, we are no longer in the present. We are removed from it.
Most of the time we are lost in regret over some past action or anticipation of some future occurrence, and both of these are imagined circumstances. When we bring ourselves back to our body, that is actually happening here. We can take solace in that. We can begin to feel grounded when we return.
That said, coming back to the present and then judging that experience—such as noticing how distracted the mind is or believing we have to apply ourselves further—are also thoughts that are not actually in the present. They are closer to the present than imagining we are in Tahiti on the beach, but they are still one step removed because we are talking to ourselves about the present. The experience of the present is nonconceptual.
There is a great irony in the art of meditation: being grounded in reality is not what we think. Being grounded in reality is an experience. Mindfulness of mind is the experience of stepping back and seeing what the mind is doing from a grander perspective. It is like a snapshot, and as soon as we start commenting on that snapshot, we darken our connection to the experience. We confuse it. We complicate it.
The aim of meditation is not to become better, smarter, or more productive. The aim of meditation is to become here and be awake right now, in this moment. As simple as that sounds, this is considered both the primary practice and the pinnacle experience of meditation training in the Tibetan Buddhist systems. When we are fully here, we are fully connected to the inherent wakefulness of the universe. As soon as we think about that, we take a step away from the experience.
Mindfulness, then, is the subtle and nuanced process of stepping back in order to see our experience without stepping into conceptualization. We are looking at the mind rather than being lost in the mind. The mind seeing itself is considered a sacred moment in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. As soon as we congratulate ourselves or conceptualize the process, we step away from that experience.
The pinnacle position for the meditator is to be in the present experience without comment, concern, or criticism. When those things arise, as they naturally do, the process of recognizing them and coming back to the breath, the feet, and the hands is the process of waking up. We are training the mind to recognize distraction and to recognize presence.
The process of coming back here becomes easier and more efficient when we train ourselves to recognize both distraction and what it feels like to be here. Without complication, our feet are on the ground, our hands are on our thighs, and the mind is returning to its resting on the breath. This gives us a base to which we can return anytime.
As Lennon sang, “wherever you are, you are here.”
Thanks Joe
Sherri