how to be aware in an unaware world

Tag: meditation

Action
“Iron rusts from disuse; water loses its purity from stagnation, even so, does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.”
– Leonardo Da Vinci
By design, some people think more and some instinctively act more. The head and the heart are at play in every decision we make.
But no matter how we approach the Book of Life, we have to write the chapters ourselves, we have to take action for our character.
Whatever we call it, inaction, laziness, or sloth, the result is the same.
Our minds need attention, purpose, and pause to stay vigorous.
For instance, reading can bring vitality and imagination to a stagnant mind. Whereas movies, television, doom scrolling, and social media do little to engage our minds in an active, rigorous way and can actually be detrimental to the mind.
Practicing mindfulness involves being fully present in the moment, and paying attention to our thoughts and sensations without judgment.
The Book of Life represents the unfolding story before us, with each moment and experience being a page or chapter.
Mindfulness encourages us to live more fully and consciously, recognizing the significance of each moment in our life story.
Reflection
Even waking up earlier can be the catalyst to a bright, purposeful day, with time to set our intentions and focus our energy.
There are 5 things I try my best to do every single morning: Wake up at six (much harder than it sounds), take a cold shower, work out, meditate, and journal.
I know that after doing those five small things (in under an hour and a half), I have set myself up for a great day.
And I’m not alone. The happiest people on the planet have a morning routine (see the link at the bottom).
Routines require rigorous action. It doesn’t have to be a giant, exhausting action either, often the smallest choices make the biggest impact in the long run.
It’s kin to building a house brick by brick rather than plopping the whole structure down at once, each brick laid is a deliberate voice, ensuring quality and craftsmanship.
Every small action relies on another even smaller action to complete.
Complete? But that’s not the right word. Is anything ever really completed? Are we ever finished with something, no matter the size and detail?
There is continuous improvement, evaluation, and backtracking to every endeavor.
These small actions, like brushing our teeth, rely on even smaller actions, like buying toothpaste or a toothbrush, which relies on going to the store, which relies having the means and health to travel, which relies on the knowledge that brushing your teeth is good for you, which relies on the ability to comprehend that knowledge, which relies on working memory to store that knowledge, which relies on an intact brain to store that memory, which depends on, well, you get the point.
This reminds us to understand the complexity of the world we live in and the propensity to often take it for granted.
It also points to a fascinating topic that some people study their entire adult lives: behavior. If we are a collection of our daily choices, then doesn’t that give us so much possibility to affect our behavior?
There is little fluctuation in behavior when we are grounded in self-disciple and good-natured, daily choices.
The one thing that is a constant in life is that everything changes, and the observation of that change over time is called mindfulness.
A person’s practice of observation (meditation) is at the core of every action, no matter how small.
Encouragement
I encourage us to pick up a good book today and read for a while, maybe go on a long walk in the woods or paint aimlessly, draw something completely random, pick up an instrument, or play a challenging game!
No matter the choice of action, make sure to focus on the intentionality and to note as always how you feel in the process.
Links
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September 30, 2023
Failure
“Every artist was first an amateur.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
What comes to mind when you hear this quote? What constitutes a failure to you?
When I think of failure, I don’t think of how unfortunate and frustrating it is, but rather how helpful it can be.
Failure is defined as the condition or fact of not achieving the desired end or ends or the condition or fact of being insufficient or falling short.
Failure is a choice that is reinforced as unacceptable by a high-achieving society.
But failure is a beautifully ironic thing. Without it, we would have no success, and yet it’s the last thing we want when pursuing success.
We must accept that we suck at something to ever not suck at something.
And even when we get as far as mastering something, we must be humble enough to act as if we’re still an amateur.
Children are a great example of this. They are amateurs at everything they try. They have seemingly unaffected beginner’s luck. A fresh, new, untainted, unafraid approach that is so beautiful to watch.
They may fail, cry, stamper, and pout, but at least they tried, without much hesitation, and eventually get up, dust themselves off, and try again.
We call it luck when they finally get it right, but it’s not luck, it’s a failure.
It’s like poker. Some play it for the first time and win hand after hand after hand, and the whole table chalks it up to beginner’s luck, but that’s no luck at all.
That’s both having no idea that their cards are the best at the table and playing without much care as to their card’s odds of winning the hand because they didn’t know that those cards made a good hand in the first place.
It’s a childlike carelessness.
Furthermore, never trying things that frighten us is one unhealthy habit to develop.
The fear of failure (or Atychiphobia) is a universal feeling, one that every single person on Earth has and will experience multiple times in their life.
Reflection
“There’s no way I can do that!”
“Are you kidding me?”
“I don’t want to!”
“I’ll never be that good!”
“What’s the use?”
I hear these phrases far too much, people giving up before the fight even begins.
We are selling ourselves short every single time we mutter those words, both inside and outside our heads.
We are selling ourselves short every time we refuse to try something new or retry something old and forgotten.
Forget what you cannot do and there is so much left over that you can.
Over time, that fear of failure will dwindle to but a speck in the mind, and eventually we will come to even seek out failure.
Failure is also different than letting go.
Failure implies that we are unsuccessful at accomplishing something less important to us.
Letting go implies that we are opening space for something more important to us.
It’s a matter of importance.
When something is important enough to you, nine times out of ten you will try over and over and over again to learn it with accuracy.
Encouragement
I encourage you (as I encourage myself each day) to try something new with the expectation that you will fail and to know that failure itself is an essential part of the learning process.
Then, I encourage us to keep that vision we try, over and over and over again.
It can be something as minuscule as a drawing, writing a poem, or cooking a new dish. Or it can be something massive like a trip outside the country, learning a new language, or getting a pilot’s license.
Links
Thank you deeply for your time and attention in reading this post, it is a rare gift these days.
Feel free to comment, like, and share it. You can also support me by Buying Me A Coffee. Thank you in advance!
September 26, 2023
Dreams
When we drift off into that strange yet personal place of dreaming, after long hours in a wakeful state, we find that there is no awareness of time, desire, food or drink, warmth or cold, longing or lacking.
We are sheltered, for a brief time, from the world outside, sunk deep into a space only we can occupy, twisting left and turning right without much recollection or direction.
It is in this place we find solace. It is in our dreams that we are limited only by our imagination, suspended in a blissful state of relaxation and peace.
It is also in this place we find fear. Manifested and percolated by the trauma seen and felt in the waking world. We are trapped, so it seems, in the unconscious abyss for some time.
And when we wake up some mornings without recollection of that place, we question its very existence. Are dreams real if we have no definitive proof they exist? Are we actually dreaming or just resting the mind?
There is an old and powerful Tibetan practice to help us recall our dreams when we wake, eyes squinting, fragments of visions still floating in our minds.
The practice goes as such:
- Slowly close your eyes before bed or during your evening wind down.
- Begin to rewind your day by thinking back to what happened ten minutes prior.
- And 10 minutes before that.
- And before that.
- And before that.
- All the way back to when you woke that day.
Try and keep the rewinding of your day objective, not stopping on one experience or another very long, just like rewinding an old VCR tape.
When we recollect our day, we begin to recollect our dreams. Furthermore, we can make sense of what we see in our dreams by recording them in a journal, voice memo, or conversation.
The questions go as such:
- What did you see, smell, taste, and feel?
- What was the setting and what was the plot?
- What was the purpose?
- What brought you out of the dream?
- How did you feel upon waking?
Looking back on my dreams through the years has been like stumbling upon a world that seeps into my life. I have had deep visual dreams that predict feelings in the future. It’s wild.
For example, I had a dream years ago that I will remember for as long as I am able:
The setting was one of tranquility. The white, sandy beach and tall, barren cliff of a small island come into focus. I smell and taste the salt in the air and how healing it is. I approach the beach on a small boat, looking all around me and up the Craig. As curious as a cat in Wonderland, I climb out of the boat and approach the cliff’s rocky feet. With no hesitation, I began to slowly climb, gaining height very fast. And as I climbed higher and higher, a sense of fear and trepidation grew. I felt as though I made a huge mistake but couldn’t turn back any longer, both my body and mind suspended in fear. As I keep climbing, the sun grows brighter and brighter. It feels like I am over a hundred feet up now. I reach my arm up and over to a vibrant green vine close to the top and find it not a vine at all, but a surprised, scared snake. It turned violently and in the blink of an eye, struck my right arm. I immediately let go of the wall out of fear and confusion. As I fell, for what seemed like several seconds, the world around me became filled with white, my life partially flashed before my eyes in those seconds. I truly felt I had met my end. The sudden rush of thoughts and feelings of all those I love and care for were gone, my life and hopes and dreams gone as I awoke, sweating, heart pounding, still questioning for a few seconds if I had really left the waking state.
I realized right then and there, that reams are the portal by which we glimpse death, and as a result, the appreciation of life.
In that dream of death, I found the waking of life, an overwhelming gratitude that it was but a dream.
Dreams are also portals of instruction, vision, reasoning, and perspective. It’s how we interpret these dreams that help us navigate our waking hours.
I still climb, in the waking world, and face that fear of falling every time. Only a few other times have I envisioned my death and the deep loss that is felt. Overall though, I fight my fear and appreciate life.
May your dreams be a guide to you tonight.
Dreamy Links:
Thank you deeply for your time and attention in reading this post, it is a rare gift these days. Feel free to comment, like, or share it. You can also support me by Buying Me A Coffee. Thank you in advance!
September 19, 2023