Session 9
The rest of your life
From now on, you can integrate what you have learned in recent weeks in your own way. You have a life ahead of you to deepen your experience, the rest of your life to be exact. Living with attention, consciously, with an open and curious attitude.
The benefits of consciously dealing with things, of accepting and being attentive to situations instead of turning things off on autopilot have been recurring themes.
Acceptance can be the beginning of a change. Sometimes situations cannot be solved or changed. In such a case, there is a danger that you will keep trying to solve an unsolvable problem. This reinforces the feeling of powerlessness and gloom.
In such a situation you can still maintain a sense of dignity and control, you can make a conscious and wise decision to take the situation as it is. If you choose not to act, your gloom will increase less quickly than if you are forced to try to control it and it always fails.
It may be a paradox, but if we respond to our unpleasant feelings by crowding them out or trying to control them, we will eventually keep them. That’s the last thing we would expect and want and yet it seems to work that way. If we try to displace or avoid what we experience, the broader context of it escapes us. If we accept that we feel constricted or gloomy, it is immediately different. Accepting that we feel the way we feel doesn’t mean that we like everything, that we can be let go, or let everything pass us by.
On the contrary: awareness of what is gives us a choice option, it is a starting point, so we can make a better decision in what to do. Sometimes it can be wisdom to do nothing for a while.
Staying with it can mean that we are confronted with feelings of uncertainty or fear. If we can allow that uncertainty and resist the temptation to act immediately, because we can’t handle the uncertainty, then we are much more likely to be able to see things clearly. If we can consciously experience the chaos and uncertainty, the chaos can lead us to clarity. It can be necessary to slow down the tendency to act impulsively out of fear, then we can always go back to breathing
Passion
The most important encouragement for training attention comes from the quality of your motivation.
No matter how much support you get from the outside world, nothing is more important than a calm but determined passion to live life, every moment of it, as if it were truly relevant.
Because before you realize it, a lot of moments have passed due to inattention, automatism and conditioning.
That’s why it’s important to practice if your life depends on it. That’s true.
From “coming home to yourself”
Jon kabat Zinn
Use what you’ve learned in the future
For most people, it’s hard to hold on to what they’ve learned after a workout. These are some tips that can help to permanently integrate mindfulness into your life.
• Try to be aware of your body and the signals in your body. Try to regularly focus your attention on what you feel in your body. This way you learn to recognize signals better and better and you can respond to them earlier. If you become aware of this, think about how you can deal with it. A meditation practice may be able to help you create space again at that moment.
• Do a five-minute exercise several times a day. This can help you to get a little more ‘space in your head’ and to feel how you are at that moment. If you come to the conclusion that you have gone beyond your limits, you can decide at that moment what to do with them. For example, you can decide to take a break or do a (short) meditation. If you notice that you don’t get around to a five-minute exercise during the day or that you ‘forget’ it, choose fixed moments. You can also use an alarm to remind you of the exercise.
• Try to be aware of the way you sit on the chair or on the bed from time to time. Then try to feel where your body is making contact with the chair or bed. This way you pay attention to your body and you stop and think about how you feel.
• Take time to monitor your breathing from time to time. For example, when you are standing in line somewhere (in a store or in another place). This can help you to relax for a while. Think of it as a welcome moment to come back to yourself.
• Notice it when you tend to get into a “negative spiral” when thinking. You notice this because you have negative thoughts about yourself or your environment that evoke other negative thoughts. You can break this spiral by doing a five-minute exercise or another meditation. If there is no time for that at that moment, you can also try to consciously focus your attention on what you are doing. By focusing your attention on something else, there is less room for the negative thoughts.
• Talk and listen carefully. Can you listen without agreeing or disagreeing with what is being said at that moment, without liking or disliking it. When you talk, you can say what you want to say without overdoing it or saying too little.
• It is important to accept the things that cannot be changed in calmness and to have the courage to change those things that you can change and the wisdom to distinguish those two things from each other.
Weave a piece of your parachute every day, instead of weaving it the moment you have to jump out of the plane
Jon Kabat-zinn
Love after love
There will come a time that you elated will greet yourself when you arrive at your own door, in your own mirror and each will smile at the greeting of the other And say, sit down. Eat. You will love the stranger that you were again Give wine. Give bread. Give your heart back to himself, to the stranger who has been living all your life, loves you, but you ignored for someone else who knows you inside out. Grab the love letters from the bookshelf, the pictures, the desperate scribbles, Peel your own image from the mirror. Sit down. Enjoy your life.
Derek Walcott
Finally
The world is at your feet
With a newly acquired freedom
And a boundless space
Just experience alone In close proximity with yourself
