And take a few deep breaths.
And take a few deep breaths.
And take a few deep breaths.
The deep breath has been shown to hack our biochemistry,
So to speak.
And this is why the recommendation during a panic attack is to breathe deeply.
When we're in a state of fear,
When the fight or flight response is active,
We tend to take short,
Sharp breaths.
And we tend to take short,
Sharp breaths.
If you've ever experienced this phenomenon,
You'll be aware of how difficult it seems to take a deep breath during that response.
But if we can manage it,
We're telling our system that there's no danger.
We're able to breathe deeply.
We don't need to run or fight.
In a way,
Breathing deeply tells our system that we're safe.
One of the benefits of mindfulness practice is a sense of well-being.
A sense that we're okay.
A sense that everything else is okay.
This sense of okayness doesn't come from our reaching out with the mind to each of our concerns and saying,
That's okay,
That's okay,
That's okay.
In fact,
If we do spend any time thinking about our concerns,
We're likely to feel precisely that they're not okay.
Or at least think of some subtle way in which we could change them to make them better.
Know this sense of well-being that's cultivated through mindfulness practice comes about by letting go of concerns.
When we examine our present experience,
Just as it is,
We find most often that there actually are no concerns.
In fact,
Sitting here or lying here with things as they are,
If there were any concern worth acting upon,
We would need to get to a hospital.
Meditation wouldn't be appropriate if there were a concern that really needed changing.
We may not feel this way.
The act of doing nothing represents a perfect opportunity for the thinking mind to bring up all of its worries.
They may seem very real.
And in a sense,
They are.
But they're only real as thought.
These thoughts may be relevant to some circumstance in the world,
To some business we have to take care of,
To another person,
Some responsibility or perhaps even something more pleasant such as some creative project.
But these thoughts are only relevant to these things.
The thoughts are not the things.
Thinking is not an enemy.
But neither is it preferable for it to be our master.
The rational mind is best in the position of a tool,
Something we can use where appropriate,
And put down where not appropriate.
In the West,
There is no context for us to put the thinking mind down,
No context for us to rest.
Even in sleep,
We often find ourselves dreaming.
And in Western spiritual traditions,
The closest thing we get to this kind of rest is prayer and contemplation,
Which of course still has some active mental component.
In fact,
Most prayer is just another kind of wanting.
To want something is to be dissatisfied with things as they are.
We all wish to be satisfied.
The way that we go about finding satisfaction tends to be to attempt to arrange our circumstances in a particular way,
A way that we think will make us happy.
The problem with this is that even if we could make the perfect arrangement around ourselves,
There would be nothing that we could do to stop this arrangement changing.
It is like trying to make a snowman when the snow is already melting.
So does this mean that satisfaction is impossible?
No.
It just means that we need to learn to be happy without a snowman.
We've been trained to think about happiness in a wrong way.
We've been trained to make our happiness dependent upon circumstances.
But circumstances always change.
By practicing mindfulness,
We learn to be satisfied doing nothing.
And when we can be satisfied doing nothing,
The whole world becomes a bonus.
.
May we all be aware of the benefit of mindfulness practice.
May others see that benefit in us.
And may they too become interested.
And may we all find ourselves on a permanent holiday.
