Maybe it wasn't much, but I'll take it.
A few days ago I found that an insight which I've rationally known for a long time had partially passed through the dividing line between intellectual understanding and experiential understanding.
Meaning, the insight now wasn't so much something that I thought about, but something that had become more of my basic attitude to life.
Put into words, my aha! sounds rather trite. Yet it resonated with me.
I realized that I'll always be disappointed if my goal is to resolve the problems in my life. For as soon as I deal with one problem, another pops up. That's simply the nature of life. So I stand a better chance of success if my goal is to remain as calm, cool, and collected as possible no matter what happens.
This is how Google AI sums up that adage.
Another way of putting this is that it struck me that what I do is less important than how I do it. I tend to think that if I can only accomplish X, Y, and Z, then I'll be happy. However, since often the accomplishing doesn't happen, it would be nice if I could be happy with or without X, Y, and Z.
The Stoic philosophers speak of this sort of thing, arguing that our reaction to what life brings us is within our control to a greater degree than is making life produce the things that we want.
And it's very much in line with the tenets of mindfulness meditation, as laid out by Jon Kabat-Zinn in his book Wherever You Go, There You Are -- which is my favorite book in this genre. He writes:
We use the word "practice" to describe the cultivation of mindfulness, but it is not meant in the usual sense of a repetitive rehearsing to get better and better so that a performance or a competition will go as well as possible.
Mindfulness practice means that we commit fully in each moment to being present. There is no "performance." There is just this moment. We are not trying to improve or to get anywhere else. We are not even running after special insights or visions. Nor are we forcing ourselves to be non-judgmental, calm, or relaxed.
And we are certainly not promoting self-consciousness or indulging in self-preoccupation. Rather, we are simply inviting ourselves to interface with this moment in full awareness, with the intention to embody as best we can an orientation of calmness, mindfulness, and equanimity right here and right now.
...The spirit of mindfulness is to practice for its own sake, and just to take each moment as it comes -- pleasant or unpleasant, good, bad, or ugly -- and then work with that because it is what is present now. With this attitude, life itself becomes practice.
Then, rather than doing practice, it might better be said that the practice is doing you, or that life itself becomes your meditation teacher and your guide.
This is possible because meditation is all about not-doing, rather than doing. How difficult is it to do nothing? Not difficult at all. It's really easy. So is mindfulness meditation. No teacher or guide required. Kabat-Zinn says:
Thinking you are unable to meditate is a little like thinking you are unable to breathe, or to concentrate or relax... People often confuse meditation with relaxation or some other special state that you have to get to or feel.
...But meditation is not about feeling a certain way. It's about feeling the way you feel. It's not about making the mind empty or still, although stillness does happen in meditation and can be cultivated systematically.
Above all, meditation is about letting the mind be as it is and knowing something about how it is in this moment. It's not about getting somewhere else, but about allowing yourself to be where you already are.
...Meditation is synonymous with the practice of non-doing. We aren't practicing to make things perfect or to do things perfectly. Rather, we practice to grasp and realize (make real for ourselves) the fact that things already are perfect, perfectly what they are.
This has everything to do with holding the present moment in its fullness without imposing anything extra on it, perceiving its purity and the freshness of its potential to give rise to the next moment.
Then, knowing what is what, seeing as clearly as possible, and conscious of not knowing more than we actually do, we act, make a move, take a stand, take a chance. Some people speak of this as flow, one moment flowing seamlessly, effortlessly into the next, cradled in the streambed of mindfulness.
...Work at allowing more things to unfold in your life without forcing them to happen and without rejecting the ones that don't fit your idea of what "should" be happening.
...Letting go means just what it says. It's an invitation to cease clinging to anything -- whether it be an idea, a thing, an event, a particular time, or view, or desire. It is a conscious decision to release with full acceptance into the stream of present moments as they are unfolding.
To let go means to give up coercing, resisting, or struggling, in exchange for something more powerful and wholesome which comes out of allowing things to be as they are without getting caught up in your attraction to or rejection of them, in the intrinsic stickiness of wanting, of liking and disliking.
It's akin to letting your palm open to unhand something you have been holding on to.
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