Long Island Center for Mindfulness

I go among trees and sit still. All my stirring becomes quiet around me like circles on water. My tasks lie in their places where I left them asleep like cattle.... Then what is afraid of me comes and lives a while in my sight. What it fears in me leaves me and the fear of me leaves it. It sings and I hear its song. Then what I am afraid of comes. I live for a while in its sight. What I fear in it leaves it and the fear of it leaves me. It sings and I hear its song. -Wendell Berry Be still and meet that soft, terrifying place in your heart. Let the fear subside, and listen to the song that arises.

I’ve never been passionate about mindfulness because it’s mindfulness. I’m passionate about mindfulness for it’s potential to cultivate freedom of mind. I think it’s important to periodically step away from the label of something--which is often loaded with ideas, judgments, and conceptsto be reminded of that something’s essence. Mindfulness is not just another idea on the cover of TIME magazine. It’s not just something that you see super spiritual people doing. It’s not ...another thing you need to add to your to-do list for optimal living in 2018. It’s a vehicle for cultivating real freedom of mind and heart. It’s helpful to reconnect with that.

In spirituality, we often talk about Relative Reality vs Ultimate Reality Relative reality is the mundane, the tangible, the superficial. It is the level of the self. You and me. I. Labels, concepts, ideas. Ultimate reality is the transcended space. It is the ego-less. It is the space where we are all one, beyond ideas and story. It is wholeness.... Both are forms of reality, mind you. In the realm of spirituality, though, there is a tendency to view concerns of the relative world as simplistic, materialistic, or fake; an obstacle in the way of something deeper; an expression of the world or ourselves we must avoid or suppress. But you cannot access the ultimate without the relative. That is spiritual bypassing. You must see the self before you can transcend it. You must feel hurt before you can move through it. You must feel the draw of lust before your mind can let go of it. Relative reality is the only gateway into ultimate reality. Do not dismiss it.

You do not have to live your whole life in this moment. You do not have to live all of your pains in this moment; you do not have to live all of your joys in this moment. Just live what is here.

As soon as your heart shuts down, you create the conditions for numbing and disconnection. Nelson Mandela talked about keeping compassion for his captors, and how if that were lost, he would then truly be captured. Other people may hurt you, but they don’t need to capture you. You have the last say in how your heart will respond.

About 3 months into my retreat in Burma, I went through a period of very intensive thinking, rumination and distracted mind. My mind was ALL OVER the place. I couldn’t settle down. I would try to come back to the breath, but it was like a boomerang back to the thought of the moment. I told my teacher my struggle. I told him how frustrated I was that I had been here for 3 months, practicing 14 hours a day, and my mind could STILL wander all over the place. How can I stop it?... He smiled at me, and said: Your job is not to stop your mind from thinking, it’s simply to KNOW when your mind is thinking. This reminder was exactly what I needed to make friends with my mind. Going from a place of trying to stop thought to a place of just seeing it when it’s there was the very thing that pacified my mind, and only when I became ok with the thoughts did they start to subside. You don’t need to clear your mind. You just need to know when your mind is thinking. That awareness is the mechanism for freedom. Thoughts will always be there. You must learn to be ok with them, to hold them in awareness, and just watch the show.