A lot of people think that mindfulness depends on thought and mindfulness comes from the chattering mind.
That's not true.
Mindfulness is the source of thought.
It's the source of your intellectual mind.
So mindfulness does not depend on thinking.
Just because you're alive,
You're always going to be mindful.
If you're not being mindful with your child,
With your dog,
It's simply because your attention is on mind chatter instead of your attention being on mindfulness.
You can touch your fingertips as a physical reminder to become mindful and then follow two inhalations,
Two exhalations,
And your attention will come to mindfulness.
Think of a salad bowl.
The salad bowl is mindfulness.
The lettuce,
The cucumbers,
And the tomatoes are your passing thoughts and emotions.
So mindfulness holds impermanent thoughts,
Emotions,
And physical sensations.
It's like a bowl that holds the impermanent phenomena like thoughts,
Emotions,
Physical sensations.
A state of mindfulness has a lot of advantages.
For example,
If you become mindful of some baggage that you're carrying,
Things like jealousy,
Fear of lack,
Fear of running out of money,
If you shine the light of mindfulness on old baggage,
Then the baggage will eventually lose its power over you.
So let's say your father was a very angry man and you've learned to fly into rage,
Not because you're a rageful person,
You're just copying the behavior that you picked up from that.
And then if you touch your fingertips to make yourself mindful and then follow two inhalations and two exhalations,
Then you can notice that you're becoming angry.
Noticing that you're becoming angry is very different from drowning in anger.
You have a lot more stability.
You're more centered when you notice that you're angry.
Mindfulness will really help your relationships when you're mindful,
When you're following the breath,
And you're in somebody's company.
You find that you're listening deeply.
You have presence.
The Buddha said the highest form of love is listening very,
Very deeply to somebody.
You cannot do that if you're not mindful.
So when you touch your fingertips,
You follow two breaths,
You become mindful.
If you're in the company of somebody else,
You're more present.
You're listening more deeply.
You're sensitive to their needs,
To their emotions,
And that kind of relationship deepens because the other person feels a lot of love.
The other thing about mindfulness,
Mindfulness keeps you from reacting because in everyday life,
Things happen to push your buttons.
So if you had a playboy dad,
And as a woman now,
You're very sensitive towards your man's behavior.
And so he calls you 15 minutes late.
You don't know that.
It's because his iPhone ran out of battery.
Because your dad used to be a playboy,
When your fiance calls you late,
You fly into a state of jealousy or anger or rage.
So there you're reacting.
But imagine that your mate calls you 15 minutes late.
You touch your fingertips as a reminder to become mindful.
You start following some breaths,
And then you realize that you're becoming angry and jealous.
Realizing that keeps you from suddenly reacting,
And it keeps you in the field of action.
Action means you realize that you're flying off the handle,
But you're still breathing.
So you're maintaining more equilibrium.
In terms of creativity,
A state of mindfulness will definitely allow you to access new ideas,
Access more creativity.
Human body has the ability to relax itself.
Sometimes you come across babies who start crying,
And then they're able to calm themselves down.
That's the human ability to access the relaxation response.
It is part of you.
