Mindfulness: Steps 2 through 6

SEE ANEW: If you are truly mindful, you will discover that the stuff you see every day will look like stuff you have never ever seen before. By practicing mindfulness you take the chance to see everything as if it was for the first time and you don’t allow yourself to fall back on the illusion or assumptions, or preconceived ideas of knowing prevent you from being present to whatever it is you are experiencing in your Right NOW!. We are too often, and most often delusional.

Delusion is the ridgepole that holds up the rafters of clinging anger, fear, and sorrow. ~Kornfield

It is when we nail down our beliefs that we have trouble. Knowing is a process that has no end. We know, and then we know more, and then we know even more.


I am aware that the knowledge I presently possess is not changeless, absolute truth. Truth is found in life and I will observe life within and around me in every moment, ready to learn throughout my life. ~Thich Nhat Hanh

Try this: The next time you meet someone you know well try and see something new in this person.

DEVELOP SELF-TRUST: If you can develop a basic trust in yourself and in what you are feeling right NOW, you will begin to see your feelings are an integral part of the mindfulness moment [sometimes called meditation.] Do not get caught up in the reputation and authority of your teachers. Even the Biblical Apostle Paul said:

Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. . . Philippians 2:12-13

It is impossible to become like somebody else. Your only hope is to become more fully yourself.

You are your thoughts. Don’t ever let anyone else have dominion over them. ~Helmstetter

NON-STRIVING: Almost everything we do is for a purpose. No nation on earth is that more true than the United States. I can vacation fishing because the purpose is to catch fish. To vacation by sitting in a lawn chair by the pool drives me crazy. What is the purpose of that? The mindfulness moments, (meditation) is not something that is done for a purpose. To think of mindfulness meditations as a way to cure your depression is to do something other than becoming mindful. Trying to give a specific purpose to mindfulness actually becomes an obstacle to mindfulness. Although becoming mindful takes a lot of effort and energy, ultimately it is about doing nothing.. It has no goal other than for you to be yourself and to know yourself.

It becomes abundantly clear that we cannot attain awakening for ourselves: we can only participate in the awakening of life. ~Stephen Bachelor

The irony is that you already are yourself! To be mindful don’t sit still in order to get relaxed, or enlighten or sleep better. Sit to learn to carefully see what is happening and accept it.

If we reach into this world where things appear to come and go and try to find something to put our mind at ease, to free us from our pain, suffering, and confusion, we’ll not find it. ~Steve Hagen

ACCEPTANCE: Often acceptance comes after we have gone through intense period of emotion turmoil and anger. Doing that uses up our energy in the struggle instead of using it for healing and change. You are much more likely to know what to do and have the inner conviction to act when your vision is not clouded by your mind’s self-serving judgments and desires, or its fears and prejudices.

. . . if your . . . wheelbarrow has a dent in it, you don’t buy a new one. . . . Not everything needs to be fixed. ~Pausch

At some point I realized that I did not need to be fixed. All my life I thought I was broken. I thought that some shrink, or some antidepressant was going to do the trick, flip the switch, and turn OKism on for me and I would finally be able to live happily ever after.

We don’t need to control the world. We don’t need to defend ourselves against it. We don’t need to preserve anything. We only need to be here – totally, completely, freely – responding to the actual occasion. ~Steve Hagen


LETTING GO: When ever I pay attention to my inner experience, I find out that there are certain thoughts, feelings and situations to which my mind seems to want to hold on to forever. Maybe I feel I was not loved enough, or that I was treated unfairly, or even that I was subjected to incidents of abused and because these beliefs are in my head I just seem to hold on to those past experiences and carry them around with me as each memory becomes rotten and infested with mental maggots. This can even be true if the memory is about something good that happened, some pleasantness that I cling to as I seek to prolong that experience. To be mindful I have to let go of that mental memory baggage, I have to intentionally put aside my habitual tendency to elevate some aspects of my experiences and reject others.

The longer you have bought the thought, the “truer” it is. In our mental control centers we fill to overflowing the files that support what we have told ourselves most, and we throw out anything that disagrees. ~Helmstetter

Don’t hold on to some stuff that supports your preconceived ideas while discarding the stuff that fails to support those preconceptions. Throw it all out and just be open to what is actually going on in your NOW.