Mindful Living — Body, Mind, Spirit as Classroom

Mindful living is passionate, engaged living. This article looks at being present in your body, embracing who you are, and making the choice to live fully and completely through mindful living. The challenge: letting go of internal and external pressure to stay the same.

When you com­mit to mind­ful liv­ing, you pri­or­i­tize your men­tal health. It is vital to incor­po­rate mind­ful liv­ing prac­tices into your life.

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Body, Mind, Spirit as a Mindful Living Classroom

Last arti­cle I con­clud­ed with a long list from Shel­don Kopp. As I was con­tem­plat­ing mind­ful liv­ing, I caught sight of the bot­tom end of the list, and especially:

38. We must learn the pow­er of liv­ing with our help­less­ness.
39. The only vic­to­ry lies in sur­ren­der to one­self.
40. All of the sig­nif­i­cant bat­tles are waged with­in the self.
41. You are free to do what­ev­er you like. You need only to face the consequences.

All 43 items in the list are inter­re­lat­ed, and part of the ‘help­less’ (# 38) idea is that we always work from a place of insuf­fi­cient infor­ma­tion (# 33–35).

By adopting mindful living practices, we can better navigate our internal landscapes and become more aware of our emotions and reactions.

First Exer­cise: Iden­ti­fy­ing Patterns

Think of some habit­u­al behav­iour you per­form, that always gets you in trou­ble. See if you can think past the blam­ing (i.e. “s/he made me do it,” or “it’s the world’s fault,” or ’ ”it’s in my genes”) and just notice the pat­tern = “A” hap­pens, and I always, auto­mat­i­cal­ly do “B” behav­iour, which leads to “C“rappy results.”

Now, won­der with me for a moment. Why do you con­tin­ue to do what does not work?

Don’t give up on this ques­tion. I am not sug­gest­ing you feel bad or try to jus­ti­fy what you do. Just clin­i­cal­ly and clear­ly ask your­self: “Why, when “A” hap­pens, do I always do “B”?”

One of two things will hap­pen. You’ll either have an insight about some­thing that hap­pened in your dis­tant past that became the cat­a­lyst for the behav­iour, (Kopp: # 25. Child­hood is a night­mare), or you’ll be com­plete­ly puz­zled, unable to find any rea­son, let alone a good rea­son.

In either case, once the blam­ing and excus­es stop, you’re left with noth­ing upon which to base your present behaviour.

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The Next Dilemma

Mindful living begins with this subtle recognition:

I am help­less to change oth­ers or the world, and I nev­er have all the answers.

Which, once you real­ly get it, is pret­ty powerful.

It’s pow­er­ful because you can stop your­self from wast­ing time doing what will nev­er work, and you can get to work­ing on your self.

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BodyMindSpirit Work

Your body, mind, and spir­it is the only class­room you have a hope of suc­ceed­ing in.

For those of you that are heavily invested in changing the world, ending poverty and disease, etc.—good for you! Do what you can. Every significant change has come from the work of individuals who first worked on themselves. In other words, change in the world comes from personal effort and discovery.

Body­Mind­Spir­it work (BMS) is, for me, best cap­tured in the con­cepts of Zen and mind­ful­ness. (Sur­ren­der­ing to self (Kopp # 39) is all about accept­ing that the only real­i­ty you have is the one inside of you.

What goes on inside of you and how you spin your life is unique­ly yours. As in my sug­ges­tion about think­ing about your habit­u­al behav­iours, the goal of BMS work is to become con­scious of your process.

This is simple/hard.

Next time you get angry (or have anoth­er pro­found expe­ri­ence) try this: instead of blam­ing and fin­ger point­ing (Kopp: # 37 — It is most impor­tant to run out of scape­goats) and thus detach­ing from your anger, stop and have a breath. 

Be present with the feel­ing of your anger. Say, to your­self or aloud, “This is anger.” Then, “I am angry.”

Once you have named and owned the feel­ing, find a safe place to “be” your anger. Climb into your bed and pound your pil­low. Go out to your car, roll up the win­dows, and scream.

Many New Age wimps think the game is all about walk­ing around hum­ming “Om” and smil­ing. Crap. BMS work is all about being com­plete­ly in your expe­ri­ence, with­out blame, with­out mis­di­rec­tion, with­out excuse. 

When we do this, we find that our emo­tions and thoughts flow through us like water in a fast-mov­ing stream.

There is noth­ing real or per­ma­nent about any of it.

To con­tin­ue with anger for a minute longer: peo­ple fear anger because they most­ly have seen it direct­ed at oth­ers, or have seen vio­lence. We are speak­ing here of self-respon­si­ble anger (and self-respon­si­ble every­thing…) that has lim­its and con­trols. When we teach our clients this, the rules are:

1. direct the anger at an inan­i­mate object (a pil­low, pad, etc.)
2. Don’t touch any­one with­out permission
3. Don’t break anything.
4. Set a timer for 5 min­utes, and real­ly go for it.

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The Pleasure of Internal Battles

The con­cept of an inter­nal bat­tle is this: inter­nal work is not about ‘let­ting it all hang out.’ It’s about self-dis­cov­ery that’s under your own control.

Most peo­ple have no con­trol. So, they blow and spout and steam and run in repet­i­tive circles.

Mind­ful liv­ing is about liv­ing focused on you and your ‘stuff’—you and your choic­es. And to accept that all of it is ‘you.’

Once you get this, you can dig even deep­er, and you’ll find addi­tion­al resources and new ideas for liv­ing out your life.

Remember, thinking you can keep doing what you are doing and get different results is childish.

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Living new, Amorous Adventures

A friend of mine posts her ‘sta­tus’ reg­u­lar­ly. Yes­ter­day, she post­ed a line from her Chi­nese horoscope:

I am hav­ing my heart torn between sta­bil­i­ty and the need to live new amorous adven­tures. (Chi­nese horoscope).

Notice how this horo­scope per­fect­ly cap­tures the dilem­ma of life. You can either try, des­per­ate­ly, to cling to sta­bil­i­ty (an illu­sion, as every­thing is always chang­ing) or you can pas­sion­ate­ly live life.

I wrote to her that my expe­ri­ence of her and her self-made dilem­mas was per­fect­ly cap­tured in this horoscope.

As is true for all of us.

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This IS the dilemma

We’ve been con­di­tioned since child­hood to des­per­ate­ly cling to sta­bil­i­ty, so we make it dif­fi­cult to let go — to shift. We scare ourselves.

As each thing ‘comes up’ for us, there is a choice. Do I ‘behave myself’ and do what ‘mom­my and dad­dy’ what me to do, or do I take a risk?

This is not to say that embrac­ing a life of ‘liv­ing new amorous adven­tures’ will be easy, or acceptable. 

Because most peo­ple fear change, and see explo­ration as threat­en­ing, there will be out­side pres­sure to con­form, and inter­nal pres­sure to be a good boy or girl.

So, we go back to our ini­tial exer­cise, rephrased:

Sec­ond Exer­cise: Danc­ing With Your Patterns

Think of some­thing you want to exper­i­ment with, some­thing that has a real ‘charge’ for you. (Think of it as a new amorous adven­ture.) See if you can think about what sto­ries you tell your­self to:

• stop your­self from hav­ing the experience,
• exper­i­ment with it only in your imagination,
• or exper­i­ment only at a glacial pace.

What­ev­er.

Now, won­der for a moment. Why do you con­tin­ue to do resist div­ing right in and hav­ing the experience?

Don’t give up on this ques­tion. I am not sug­gest­ing you feel bad or try to jus­ti­fy what you do. Just clin­i­cal­ly and clear­ly ask your­self: “What am I doing here? Why am I behav­ing in a way that is con­trary to hav­ing this experience?”

(Hint: for many, it’s “What will peo­ple think?”)

One of two things will hap­pen. You’ll either have an insight about some­thing that hap­pened in your dis­tant past that became the cat­a­lyst for the behav­iour, (Kopp: # 25. Child­hood is a night­mare), or you’ll be com­plete­ly puz­zled, unable to find any rea­son, let alone a good reason.

Once the blam­ing and excus­es stop, you’re left with noth­ing upon which to base your present stalling behaviour.

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A Small Reminder

Now, I want to quick­ly say that Kopp reminds us: # 41. “You are free to do what­ev­er you like. You need only to face the consequences.”

North Amer­i­cans espe­cial­ly do not like con­se­quences. Chang­ing a char­gy behav­iour has the poten­tial to stir up all kinds of inter­est­ing stuff. Most­ly, there is the poten­tial of some­one around you get­ting their shorts in a knot.

So, you’re right back to: “I think I’ll live my life as a good boy/girl, and do what oth­ers want me to do.”

Besides, the unknown is so… scary.

Well, have a look at your life. If you love it exact­ly as it is, keep doing what you’re doing. If all of it or aspects of it aren’t work­ing, you must pro-active­ly change something.

Mind­ful liv­ing. There is no oth­er option.

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