Often we consider work as a must, some people even consider it as a necessary evil. But we can flip this attitude and see what we can actually gain from it. Work can be a great source of practice. Often it offers us the opportunity to help people, even if you sell popcorn. Also it provides us with activity, which, if offered at a healthy level, can actually reduce stress levels. Taken from an even deeper point of view, we can use our work as the object of meditation. We can try and bring our attention to what we do and let the activity take us back into the now, again and again. We notice that if we do this, we become more relaxed, more into a so-called ‘flow’ and thereby also more humorous, energetic and compassionate towards our colleagues. The work itself becomes the object of meditation.
If you are an artist (amateur of professional) you might know how hard it is sometimes to get to that point of creativity. This creativity does not come out of thought usually, the inspiration always comes first, the thought comes after that. But where does that come from? i believe it comes from that point of non-dualism, a thoughtless state of mind, kind of like the tip of a knife not being left or right, it’s just sharpness. In this state there is no room for doubt, there is not even room for our selves. This is way a lot of artists describe it as something not necessarily coming out of themselves, it’s like it has always been there, but our bodies our just means of expressing this. Often artists come to this point during extreme periods in their lives, where there is a lot of turmoil in their lives and sometime art can be the only way of expressing some form of sanity, usually this is sanity in it’s purest form. But also in calmer periods in our lives we can train ourselves to become more in touch with this state. But the most, uttermost important factor is that we do not try to force it. We can just sit down to our piano’s, guitars, notebooks, canvas, with the pen, pick or pencil in our hands and just sit. Just sit. Don’t force anything and trust yourself. Then sooner or later you will notice something just comes, not because you thought about it, but just because you are giving IT room. And nota bene, this might sometimes take a long time, we might even sit for hours and nothing comes. but it is exactly this kind of patience and self-kindness that eventually feeds our creativity and can make it an endless source of poetry, music, painting, fashion or whatever your channel is.
It is always hard when someone accuses you of having done something wrong. Our minds tend to have very strong automatic reactions to it usually. Basically there are a couple of reactions we can have. There is the aggressive one, which can be either internally of externally focused, meaning that because of the accusation we can start beating ourselves up over it, or we can become very offensive and externalizing everything, putting nothing of the blame on ourselves. Of course in some occasions the accusation might simply be a projection of the other person, trying to force you into a subdominant position. But it is then an art to filter out in what way that person might be right, but not fall into the trap of feeling over-guilty and beating yourself up over it. Because that dualistic approach basically never works. if someone accuses us, we can listen, open our hearts to it and simply just be honest about it, without attacking either ourselves or others. Instead of attacking we simply make peace with the past and become fully honest about our actions. If we do this, we can really feel the rawness of our hearts and gently staying with this feeling can be extremely transformative, because we do not only feel the pain we have caused others, we feel the pain which is caused everywhere around us, we become more compassionate. In this way we also become milder in our judgements of other people, knowing that we ourselves also make those kinds of mistakes and that aggressive judgment won’t make and end to that specific behavior. So if we have made a mistake, we can use the sense of guilt to do something with it, to ride it’s waves, to actually make it constructive, with a sense of forgiveness in that, but without loosing our honesty towards ourselves.
The interesting thing about mindfulness is that when we in any way try to manipulate our thoughts and sensations into a certain state, it doesn’t work. Only from the moment on when we can really be with ourselves, without trying to change ourselves, healing occurs. Somehow this is the most healthy way to relate to ourselves, to our brains, to our thoughts, environment and to our children. Often when children are being treated as though they themselves can not be who they are, they will often somehow copy that attitude towards themselves and others later on in life. Some people have this extremely in which almost every emotion or thought is being beat down and punished into the ground. Others have it on a more subtle level (which might even be harder to actually notice), expressing itself through small neuroses. But in mindfulness meditation we start seeing how we relate to those thoughts, if we try to push them away all the time, or the other way around try to indulge in them (acting out). Just as beating a child as well as fulfilling it’s every wish aren’t healthy ways of parenting, pushing away and indulging in, also often aren’t healthy ways of relating to ourselves. So in a way, mindfulness meditation is a form of re-parenting, re-relating and rewiring ourselves.
In mindfulness meditation many qualities are cultivated, such as concentration, sharpness and gentleness. Depending on our personalities and the qualities that we already embody, we might have to focus a bit more on some qualities in order to create balance between all of them. For instance when you have a tendency to be harsh on yourself, you might want to be more mindful on being gentle towards yourself, your thoughts and your emotions, perhaps reminding yourself when starting to meditate or say it to yourself when you notice you’re being hard on yourself again. Then again some people might have a real problem with discipline. They might want to lean in a bit more into the breath, in order to detach from that fuzzy cloud of thoughts. In meditation we are not necessarily talking about a conditioned form of gentleness or discipline, because that might soon actually become quite claustrophobic. Instead we are much more talking about cultivating a natural form of these qualities, which actually feels very spacious, very free. However if we have a strong tendency towards harshness, laziness or any other “poison” in our minds, we can use antidotes to return to this balance, to this open healthy space.
What makes mindfulness so special is that we practice the quality of attention that we give to ourselves and our surroundings. We all give attention, otherwise we wouldn’t have a mind. But often this attention is often colored, or biased. It might be a harsh kind of attention, or even too soft, where it gets blurry and we loose our sharpness. The mindfulness technique is perfectly designed to practice a very natural, friendly but clear form of attention to our emotions, thoughts, sounds, feelings, smells etc. It is an unconditional and non-judgmental form of attention, yet very warm and human. By being mindful of all that happens (Vipassana) we start to see, our patterns, reactions. By staying with the breath (Shamatha) whilst being mindful of what happens, we do not loose ourselves in that which we see, hear or feel. We don’t get caught up in the stories, but instead become like mountains, unwavering but also fully accepting. The breath becomes an anchor which holds this quality of attention. This is the same kind of attention that children need for becoming healthy human beings, but also what can make a painting or a meal so delightful, because it is made with so much care. This is the quality of attention that we practice in mindfulness and this is also the quality of attention the world needs today.
Usually during the year we take off a few days from our work by taking a holiday, which is very important and vital for us. We can recharge our battery, get our minds off work and hassle and enjoy good food, good weather and nature. The question, however, is how do we spend this holiday? We can use this holiday to just space out, numb ourselves with alcohol or drugs, party at night, sleep at day, but often when we get back home, we will feel even more tired than before. There is not necessarily anything wrong with that, it just often doesn’t have any lasting positive effects. Or, we can take a holiday, still very much enjoy the nature, the beach and good food and drinks, but actually pay a little more attention to our bodies and minds by mindfulness and contemplation. we can reflect on our patterns, our stress levels, our harshness towards ourselves and use the holiday to actually become softer, milder and more compassionate, healing both our bodies and minds. Then a holiday does not necessarily become a flee, but actually something more like a retreat which is not disconnected from our daily lives, but actually makes it more healthy.
Sometimes the hastiness and pressure of our lives can become a real burden in our spiritual practice. You try to be compassionate and mindful, but your just being snappy and agitated all the time, no matter what you try. Sometimes the pressure of our lives can become so intense that spiritual practice alone doesn’t cut it, in fact, it can even worsen it!. Sometimes, then, we just have to let go of it all and relax, just be, letting our body take care of itself. A trap in spiritual practice can be that we think we can take it all. We have practiced our minds, making them very strong and versatile and therefore we need lees sleep and get much more work done. Whilst this might actually be true up untill a certain point, we still are limited to our physical bodies, which we have to honour and listen to. Once we start respecting that, creating a balance between work and just relaxation, then the spiritual practice becomes fully integrated and there is balance between the relative and the absolute, heaven and earth. Life becomes both mundane and magical at the same time.