Begin Again -2

This second talk of the new year is about the necessity to begin again. In practice and in life, we are always beginning again. This is supported by a deep and loving forgiveness of ourselves and all the ways we forget to practice, we forget to breathe, we forget that it is all so fleeting and we can learn to incline the mind toward letting go.

Transcript

So today it's the fourth day of the new year of 2024 and when you really think about it it's just a concept that we all agreed on.

You know if we use nature as a barometer it's a natural time of the year to go inward.

You know animals habitually hibernate at this time and for us it's often a time of reflection after the solstice a time of renewal when the light is starting to return and for many of us I think we've become habituated to use this time of year to reflect on what's important to us.

You know what you know maybe to get a little more quiet and to take stock you know and what we value what we're grateful for.

So how do we align ourselves more closely with what's important and actually possible.

So rather than resolving maybe it's more helpful to think about what we want to cultivate or what we're aspiring toward.

The root of this word aspire it means to breathe upon.

So rather than looking at the new year with a gaining idea an idea of getting something out of it like you know we're gonna get somewhere and then we're gonna do all these things and then we're gonna be happy.

You know perhaps changing our perspective a little bit to expand it you know what are we what are we breathing upon.

Aspiration in a spiritual sense is a yearning to manifest what we care about.

Here's some words of wisdom actually from an interesting source it was these are from Oprah Winfrey.

She said before you agree to do anything that might add the smallest amount of stress to your life ask yourself what is my truest intention and give yourself time to let a yes resound within you.

If it's right I guarantee your entire body will feel it and I've had this experience so I know that it's been true in my experience that yes a yes a resounding yes you can feel it.

Any doubt or insecurity or uncertainty it will lift.

That's been my experience with aligning with my truest intention and I hope that can be for you as well but we have to wait so that's the that's the rub here because if you have a lot of impatience which I contain that in my body waiting is not always the easiest thing to do then there's the waiting for the resounding yes.

The whole path of practice as we know is remembering and forgetting and returning remembering and forgetting and coming back starting again starting again so given that we're going to go into this forgetting and I liken forgetting to sort of being on autopilot you know we have our routines and our habit patterns and we habitually forget our intention for like habitually it's quite humbling actually so given that that's sort of the way in which we as humans operate it's helpful to get familiar with how we go into autopilot and when we go into autopilot it could be immediately after this meditation practice or this Dharma talk you know we're going to get up and check our phone and make our second cup of you know warm beverage and check our to-do list and then we're back on the you know back on the autopilot you know or if we are bored in our life we can you know get on the device of any of our choosing and play a game or listen to a podcast or shop you know we do these things so getting familiar with your autopilot is it's important you can do your life with mindfulness and that's what that's what we're looking to do here so watching our life in a daily way it's really at the the heart of the practice like knowing what is the state of my mind in this moment just having that knowing happening and it could be anywhere you can be waiting in line to get stamps at the post office or you could be walking your dog what is the state of my mind now and without judging it or evaluating it or trying to change it knowing your emotional state in this moment you know is there I'm feeling lonely or is there sorrow or there's joy this is mindfulness how we perceive and frame each moment generates our reality I can't stress that enough how we perceive these moments of our life what we think we become that's powerful you know the mindfulness practice that we do I've often said that it can be called honesty practice it's a practice of being honest with yourself self-honesty every moment that we are mindful is a moment of recognizing what's actually happening and being honest about it look at this I'm spacing out or look at this I'm I'm shopping for things that I actually don't even need okay look at this and if I if I were to ask you you know when you're really stressed out okay what really matters right now right now in the middle of the stress you might come up with something like you know to get out of this situation or maybe it's something like to tell them what you know they should do or to feel better maybe it's just a matter of I want to feel better I don't want to feel this contraction but if we took a breath together to settle a little and to pause what really matters right now hmm you might come up with something different you know you might come up with well I don't know I've lost my intention or maybe you know I'd like to be open and welcome this difficulty something different may occur with an inhale and an exhale being the first thing that happens after asking the question what really matters right now the challenge is that the mind that we live with is very conditioned to fixate in a narrow and superficial way it's conditioned we've got a lot of support in our culture there's a poem that describes our conditioning pretty well that I'd like to share with you it's called flickering mind by Denise Levertov I stopped to think about you and my mind at once like a minnow darts away darts into the shadows into gleams that fret unceasingly over the rivers pearling and passing not for one second will myself hold still but wanders anywhere everywhere it can turn not you it is I who is absent you are the stream the fish the light the pulsing shadow you the unchanging presence in whom all moves and changes how can I focus my flickering perceive at the fountains heart the sapphire I know is there how can I focus my flickering perceive at the fountains heart the sapphire I know is there that just describes the mind so perfectly darting about like a minnow this way and that way and this way and that way and every now and then knowing that there is more that in the silence there is vastness and sacredness but still the mind flickers mindfulness practice has been described as present time awareness like right now present time with equanimity so imagine imagine that you're you have it imagine a telescope you're looking at the moon through a telescope so present time awareness combined with stability and clarity and alertness if the telescope is shaking this is present time awareness and we're looking through it and it's shaking we're going to miss the grandeur of the moon you know we're gonna miss it because it's just shaking so the equanimity that I'm suggesting is that we stabilize the view we steady the mind if the telescope is out of focus we also miss the grandeur of the moon so we focus the telescope and we begin to see experiences with more magnification you know we zoom in there's an alertness so mindfulness can be this present time awareness with this stability and focus and as you explore explore this and experiment with it you know we can stabilize our mind in any situation and have some clarity but what me we may be experiencing in front of us what may be happening could be difficult it doesn't mean that the difficulty goes away but we're stable we're not shaky we're steady and we're focused if we're pulled off into the difficulty in a reactive way then the equanimity isn't there the teacher calls this type of relationship between mindfulness and equanimity the radical permission to feel so what happens to our attention quite often the awareness it gets fixated and what equanimity is it's an allowing practice to feel into to open into to let life come and also to be willing to be affected by what come I think oftentimes in practice and in life where we're bracing against our experience but what we're learning here in this practice of beginning again is we're learning to let the winds of feelings and sensations and experiences blow through trusting that nothing inside us will blow over so I encourage you to practice mindfulness when you get off the cushion in this steady way present time awareness with equanimity balance what arises can be known you don't have to do anything to it you don't have to get shaky because of it you can see and then respond and that's really all of practice you know just knowing something understanding what's in front of me it allows for other things to open within us and we can be nourished by that opening so these are my reflections today on beginning again this first week of this new year thank you for your kind attention