Mindful Service: Doing Good In The World

One of the benefits of meditation is that it opens up space in the mind to consider the enormous possibilities that life holds for us to do good. Within that spaciousness, we can begin to listen to the still, small voice that speaks to us about what makes us most come alive.
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Transcript

Let's begin by fully arriving here and leaving behind everything happening in our day,

Sensing just what it's like to wake up to this moment,

Refresh.

Seeing what it's like to pause.

Seeing what happens when we focus on just this moment.

Checking your body alignment,

Feet on the floor,

Hands resting gently at your sides or in your lap,

Your posture erect,

Noble,

Aligned,

Allowing your body to be at ease.

If you feel comfortable you can close your eyes.

Becoming aware of the gentle movement of the breath.

Drawing in a full in breath,

Filling the lungs,

Feeling the chest expand and then relaxing,

Releasing on the out breath.

And filling the lungs on the in breath,

Feeling that expansion,

That fullness and then releasing,

Relaxing as you exhale.

And taking one more full in breath and feeling the way the body becomes energized as you inhale and holding the breath,

Feeling the contraction in the body and welcoming all those sensations and then relaxing.

Letting the breath to return to its natural rhythm.

That's all we need right now is the body breathing.

Let the gentle rhythm of the breath expand through the body,

Releasing any obvious areas of tension.

Feeling the breath massage those knots,

Release them so the whole body can be at ease.

Now take a moment to look into the future,

To imagine your future self,

Your future you.

It could be 5,

10 or 20 years from now.

Your future self is more mature,

More evolved,

Full of life experience,

Not so preoccupied with some of the cares that you once had.

Better understanding the world and your place in it,

Who you truly are.

Feel that future self welcoming you,

Embracing you,

Holding you tight and then looking warmly into your eyes.

Feel what it's like being in the presence of this future self.

That's what your life feels like right now,

The state of your heart,

This future self holds your hand,

Communicates silently with you,

Teaching you about who you truly are.

What is it that you most want to take away from this encounter?

What word or phrase or image would you like to take with you?

Allow it to rest in your heart as you depart,

Sensing your future self still remains close,

Suddenly already here.

As you're ready in your own time you can come slowly back.

When you're ready you can open your eyes.

If you feel comfortable doing so you can turn your camera on.

I always like seeing people during the talk.

You know recently I returned from a service trip to Mexico.

My wife and I lead trips to different parts of the world to build houses,

A habitat for humanity like groups.

These trips I observe there's always an arc,

There's months of planning and challenges and obstacles and experience itself and then lots of follow up and there's lots of different feelings too.

It's you know the work first and then all the stressors and bringing people to foreign culture and language and then all the benefits of course.

That you're providing these people with a solid stable home for the first time.

It's usually houses,

You're placing houses that are made of discarded wood and plastic sheets and so forth with solid brick or cinder block houses.

But then there's also all the benefits for the people that go.

And it got me reflecting of well why am I doing this?

What is it that's going on?

Stepping out of normal life like this into this future world and future self.

Reflecting a little bit on that meditation.

And this got me curious about how we form these intentions to do good.

And the effect that they can have on our lives and in general how we consciously move in a positive direction with our life.

This group is focused primarily on mindfulness meditation which I think as all of you know begins with this development of non-judgmental present moment awareness where you're following your breath or you're sensing your body in a way that for a moment escapes this spinning worrying preoccupied mind which we all have that's concerned about the past or fretful about the future.

There was a teacher I saw recently who referred to it as the rumbling and grumbling mind.

And then all this evaporates with one breath which is the thing that got me first hooked to this whole thing.

You pay simple attention to a breath or the body and then all of a sudden this fretful fearful world disappears for a second and the present moment just seems radically okay.

And you kind of think,

Wait what happened?

We often repeat this quote from the psychologist Viktor Frankl that between the stimulus and response there is a space which is kind of right where mindfulness takes you in that space in that gap.

But then the quote continues and he says in that space is our power to choose our response and our response lies our growth and freedom.

Just a word about Viktor Frankl.

He was one of the psychologists whose work really was the foundation for what we call now positive psychology.

It was a movement away from the focus on disease,

Illness,

And psychology and to this question of well-being.

What's the psychology of well-being?

His most famous book some of you may know is called Man's Search for Meaning which he wrote very soon after being liberated from Auschwitz and actually the original title of that book was A Psychologist's Experience of the Concentration Camp.

And there's another remarkable quote from him I just thought I would read which is understanding this was the source of that book.

Nothing can be taken from a person but one thing the last of the human freedoms to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances to choose one's own way.

In meditation I think that we get a taste of this freedom that we're not boxed in by our mind and then it allows us to ask some of these questions which is ultimately how do I want to live if I actually do have this freedom?

How do I want to live?

How do I want to love?

You might say there are so many ways to answer this question.

I wanted to just share a couple things with you.

Howard Thurman the famous theologian and civil rights activist was once approached by a young person who wanted to know what to do with his life and I think was probably expecting that Dr.

Thurman was going to tell him to go off and join the movement go to Freedom Summer what have you and his answer was a little different.

I'll read it to you.

He said don't ask what the world needs ask what makes you come alive and go do it because what the world needs is people who come alive.

Another quote Sister Eda Ford who was an American nun working in El Salvador in 1980 she was killed by the El Salvador military about the same time that they killed the Archbishop of San Salvador Oscar Romero for speaking out against oppression in that country and after she died her family made public a letter that she had written shortly before that to her 16 year old niece on her birthday and this is what she wrote.

I hope you come to find that which gives life a deep meaning for you something that energizes you enthuses you enables you to keep moving forward.

I cannot tell you what that might be that's for you to find to choose to love.

I can just encourage you to start looking and support you in that search.

Last a quote from Jonathan Fowles the meditation teacher in this area who said have you noticed that the happiest seasons of your life correlate to when you maintain a dedicated focus on what matters to you what matters most to you.

Have you noticed the happiest seasons of your life often correlate to when you maintain a dedicated focus on what most matters to you.

Some characteristics of this process of unfolding of discovery taken from my own experience I wanted to share with you.

One remarkable thing I've noticed is that these movements of the heart never coerce us never force us to do anything they always arrive at least to me as a as a very gentle kind of invitation.

Sometimes it's referred to as a very small a very still small voice that just puts a little thought in your head like what if what if sometimes it's it's for me initiated by seeing somebody else do something that resonates inside of me and I get this thought wow I wonder if that could be me like I look at another person I think wow I wonder what that's like I recall as a first year college student I was a music major in college and that spring of my first year I was walking past the TV room in the dorm and I saw a special on I don't think anyone was in the room and the TV was on and it was a special about the 10th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

I knew his name of course I didn't really know anything about him and I stopped and I started listening to these clips from the speeches and people talking about him and it was just so striking to me it was you know at a time where I was trying to figure out what to do with my life I thought wow like that's a possibility for a human life what a remarkable thing I don't I didn't really understand it and it's even more remarkable because I just remembered this not long ago now many years later working as a civil rights lawyer I still have that memory you know in my mind of just being so struck not deciding anything or something but just being so struck like that that too is a possibility for human life.

Another characteristic when these thoughts come at least to me the next thought is often doubt the inner critic with some certainty saying like you can't do this no no I'm sorry lots of reasons impossible impractical I don't know how it goes in the Buddhist tradition the story of the Buddha's enlightenment is that he'd been involved in very serious spiritual practice for years and the night before his awakening he sat underneath a tree the Bodhi tree and he said this is it I'm not moving from this tree until I'm fully enlightened take a little stubbornness there I'm not moving and so it according to the the story this and people view this as as myth but take it for what it's worth Mara who is the personification of evil sent these torments to him because I guess Mara felt like he was really close really really close so he's they Mara sends torments armies of demons pleasures various kinds of pleasures to entice him to knock him off his game and nothing was working nothing yeah Buddha was still just sitting there and then the final temptation like the last one the last trick out of the bag was was doubt so Mara says the Buddha what makes you think you can become enlightened what makes you think you and and then further says where is your witness that you can do this produce one witness and so according to the story the Buddha touches the earth and says the earth is my witness and according to the story in that moment he was completely in the mind lots of interpretations of the story one is that he was saying Mara you're not real the earth is real you are not real about this inner critic there's a teacher Tani Saro Biku who calls it the committee of the mind I love this the committee of the mind so it's like having a board of directors inside of your head and so when you when you you're proposing something to the board of directors and so they go around the table giving their objections right about why this is not going to work and this teacher's instruction is just like you would with your board of directors you simply listen your patient you go around and you say thank you right does anyone else have something to say thank you uh-huh okay thank you but do not take it as as necessarily the truth I think the last thing I'll say is that you know this discovery process might might not at least hasn't for me always involved doing something different or new it can be just simply reawakening something inside of you that's been there for a long time in May I traveled for the first time since the pandemic to a conference in New York and out of the conference rushed to the train station to catch my train and I looked up at the board look for the train track and I found the train and it said destination Washington DC and I was kind of struck by that because you know previously in my life I never thought I would be living in Washington DC I could imagine myself a lot of other places in the world not Washington DC but it recalled for me like why am I doing this I'm going back to Washington DC to try to do something great and something you know something noble right and at least for me you know that so often gets eclipsed by the all the emails and the meetings and I mean everything we all do like every day we could so easily forget like why why am I doing this why is this important I recall in the early days of the Bureau used to be these big posters they would put out of consumer complaints consumers and plate database and the messages back from consumers after they had received relief for whatever problem it was and sometimes late at night when I was leaving I would just pause in front of one of these and I would just read it I've read them all you know a few times but I just read one again and just try to let it sink in a little bit like this is what you're doing you know this is what it's about here can I imagine that person who wrote that right and the effect on them so maybe we'll just take a moment here at the end if you want to just go back inside for a minute if you'd like to close your eyes and just pause to think for yourself what's calling you or maybe you have a vision for something might be feel outside of your comfort zone something that stretches you or maybe it's some inner work or deepening of relationships or what does this future self say to you I'll conclude by this portion of a poem by Mary Oliver called The Summer Day I don't know exactly what a prayer is I do know how to pay attention how to fall down into the grass how to kneel down in the grass how to be idle and blessed how to stroll through the fields which is what I've been doing all day tell me what else should I have done doesn't everything die at last and too soon tell me what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life tell me what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life as you're ready you can come back open your eyes