The ‘truth’ about our own purpose in life may be closer than we think- a ‘voice’ from within that calls out to us to wake up and pay attention to something deeply visceral. Perhaps, we are too busy searching outside of ourselves… the ‘truth’ obscured as we tend to be consumed by what we have been socialized and conditioned to believe about our choices, relationships, and ultimately our own path in life. Do we often feel out-of-synch or off-track with the conditions and consequences of our lives? Is there a deep longing to harmonize what we value with how we live? Can we sense our need to ‘shift’, but yet ignore or resist the ‘calling’?

It takes great courage and fortitude to dive into the frontier of our own unknown. For many of us, we have been taught the meaning and value of an outer life often at the expense of mindfully connecting and realizing what is inherently most purposeful and fulfilling from right within ourselves. Often sweating the small stuff, we lose sight of our larger, more meaningful perspective in life.

Shifting from an outward to an inward inclination, we begin to open up, trust, and unfold with what calls us from within. To unfold with our life’s purpose, we need mental space and attention to listen closely from within, and to be open for honest & clear reflection. As we reflect, we may begin to realize the importance of our life’s failings and successes- all lessons and grist for the mill- when excavating what is truly purposeful in our lives.

To know where we are. It is here where we may begin to ‘shift’ our actions… and to discern from the feedback of our actions what is truly meaningful and relevant to a purpose we deeply long to actualize.

Despite the tentativeness of mind, we can courageously move forward stretching and pushing ourselves into what deeply moves us. Each day we can take pause to passionately envision and service our life’s purpose giving it and our consciousness the energy & power to make it both real and self-fulfilling…

In our modern society, ‘time’ has become one of our biggest stressors. At some stages of life, it might feel as though there is never enough time to do what we need to do. Often we don’t know where the time has gone, the years pass by so fast. At other stages, time may weigh heavily upon us. The days and the hours can seem interminable- and we don’t know what to do with all our time. As crazy as this may sound, I am going to suggest that the antidote to time stress is intentional non-doing, and that non-doing is applicable whether we are suffering from not having enough time, or suffering from having too much time. The challenge here is for us to put this proposition to the test in our own lives, and to see whether our relationship to time can be transformed through the practice of non-doing.

If you feel completely overwhelmed by the pressures of time, you might wonder how it could possibly help to take time away from what you have to do in order to practice non-doing– and on the other hand, if you are feeling bored and isolated, and have nothing but time on your hands, you might wonder how it could possibly help to fill this burden of time unfilled with “nothing”. The answer is rather simple… inner peace exists outside of conventional time.

If we can commit ourselves to spending some time each day in inner stillness even if it’s just for 2 minutes, or 5, or 10… for those moments we are stepping out of the flow of time altogether. The calmness, relaxation, and centering that come from letting go of time can transform our experience of time when we go back into it… then it becomes possible to flow along with time during our day rather than constantly fighting against it, or feeling driven by it simply by bringing awareness to our present moment experience.

When our day becomes suffused with a clear awareness grounded in the present moment, we transcend the normal pressures of time. So if we are pressed for time, being in the present gives us more time by giving us back the fullness of each moment. No matter what is happening, we can be centered in perceiving and accepting things as they are… then we can be aware of what still needs to be done in the future without it causing us undue anxiety or loss of perspective… and we can move to do it with our doing coming out of our being… out of peace… and into making better, more intentional and contextually appropriate choices (decisions).

Time and the clock drive us from one thing to the next. It has become a way of life for many of us to be driven every day by all of our obligations and responsibilities. Routinely take PAUSE to simply BE and you’ll FREE yourself from the tyranny of time while living in the present more of the time.

In our everyday lives, we tend to waste inordinate amounts of time & energy musing about the past and worrying about the future. The essence of mindfulness in daily life is to make every moment you have your own… it’s the practice of pause. Take time each day to intentionally “be”… to meditate, reflect, and to slow time down itself… to STEP OUT and to STEP BACK IN. Calmness and clarity unfold from protecting our time to be still… seeing is being and being is seeing when purposefully living in the present moment. Try it and see for yourself…

Part of our ‘human condition’ is our innate tendency to avoid pain. It is often desire for ‘avoidance’ that prevents us from starting or sustaining new habits in life. The energy behind our desire to avoid pain tends to be stronger than the motivational force underlying our intention to make positive changes in our lives.

In our minds, we tend to inflate the transitional pain associated with making a change- we tend to identify with it as being more painful than not changing at all. More often than not, we remain ‘stuck’ and stagnated by habits that may be counterproductive and unhealthy.

To move forward with positive change, we need to empower our intention. We need to overcome our RESISTANCE by stepping out of our relative comfort zone, and begin to reap the potential benefits (rewards) in making the change. If we are soon to directly see & feel the benefits of our change… the rewards for ‘doing’ can become pleasurable- and a new motivating factor may replace our existing desire to avoid.

Consider the pain that may be necessary for disciplining ourselves to make positive change in our lives… does the price of this discipline outweigh the potential suffering we may ultimately experience from the pain of our regret?

“To do or not to do”- we all have this intrinsic ‘freedom of choice’. Is the discomfort associated with the transitional pain for change greater than the pain of having lived a life without genuine fulfillment or happiness?…

‘Awake’, we come to remember to take pause to be in this moment- to routinely allow a calm and relaxed composure to wash over our entire being as we simply witness our own accessibility to be fully present.

In this space of awareness we come to notice things as they are- as they are arising without indulging- without becoming what we are simply witnessing- thoughts, feelings, and/or sensations. To observe in this way can help us to break down our ‘automaticity’- our reactionary tendencies and habits to get carried away by what we are experiencing within. With practice, this skillfulness in observation can bring us more freedom and choices to discerningly respond with greater wisdom and care.

In practice, we learn to deliberately ‘stay with it’ or to ‘stay the course’ regardless of what is presently happening before us. With the diligence of a judgment-free awareness, we may cultivate a firmness of mind and spirit- a habit of forbearance to become less reactive- and an unyielding courage to simply observe and acknowledge in the face of hardship or danger. It is this resolve that moves us deeper into the nature of our own experiences and yet deeper into the unchartered frontiers of our own minds.

When we cease to try and surrender to awareness, the world takes on a different light…

“Ceasing to try”- ceasing to be anywhere else but here and now… sitting in stillness in quiet and calm awareness. There is nowhere else to be and no one else to be. Sitting in stillness with our ‘choiceless awareness’ is in direct contradiction to the core of our highly conditioned “self”- to be anything less than doing, striving, controlling, imagining, thinking, etc. We are constantly in motion, busy trying to influence the outcome of our moment-to-moment living. More often than not, our measure of doing and acquiring leaves us short of fulfillment.

In just being, the ’emptiness’ of this mind-body process allows us to stand where we are- to be ourselves without pretense or expectation to be anywhere or anything else. Just being ourselves is inherent to our practice- and allowing our moments into ‘choiceless awareness’ to flow forward to reveal the light of their truth- reflective and pure- and absent of self-conscious thought, opinion, judgment, etc.

Here where we sit quietly in the middle of our direct mind-body experience, we look for nothing as the awareness of self-observation reveals what emerges and becomes on its own.  The energy of our intention to simply sit and watch brings forth what shall come to be known in this ‘choiceless awareness’. Nothing, but to be with ourselves, and with whatever comes to be in our just being in the here and now.

With gentle attentiveness and relaxed alertness, we focus in on what is arising while remaining aware of our surroundings. To let be, life has an interesting way of breaking into our awareness to reveal the quality of our response to it. In the process of awakening, we merge with refined sensitivity into the act of “awarenessing”- focused yet expansive as we “dial” in and out the arising events of consciousness. Gentle yet determined, we remember even in our streams of unconscious endeavors to come back again and again to being wakeful- and to seeing how our mind states can be both fuel for our suffering and our happiness.

Today, doing more and having more are strong societal measures of our success, but inwardly we are still rather paupers in the fulfillment of true happiness. The longings of heart still burn deeply in our consciousness, but yet this frontier seems overlooked for the sake of pursuing the conventional and the conditioned. We communicate with such eloquence and opulence of speech, but yet the words often manifest as empty rhetoric. Our relationships appear to suffer as we are so busy tending a field of burgeoning technology rather than the inherently rich soils of shared and collective consciousness. Just being allows us to step back into the expansive frontier of the human psyche. As meditators, we are like “psychonauts” (R. Thurman) exploring and examining the unknown of our expansive minds for the sake of our own humanity.

The radical shift in our individual consciousness is to be more at home within ourselves… to be sensed, felt, and shared with the collective consciousness of others. The challenges to living more fully- with deeper happiness and less suffering- lie within the depths of our own consciousness. It is through the light of awareness that we begin to illuminate and penetrate our life’s obscurities. Just sitting and being may not seem all that important or meaningful- but for many who routinely do- it can be a real life changer.

Sitting on the cushion each day can help us to realize the sometimes ‘toxic’ nature of our habitual minds- the afflictions and aversions of mind that drive our reactive tendencies. To sit with our own ‘rawness’ of just being allows space to arise for a detoxifying & transforming dose of reality.   

‘Missing in action’, we become estranged from having real presence in our own lives. We forget to show up for the experiences directly before us. Reality happens as we remain lost in the activities of mind. Life happens whether we directly participate in the “performance” of truly living or not.

Be where it most matters… HERE & NOW!

Bear witness to the past & future as only thoughts about what may have been or what may come to be, but be FREE to know what really matters is what’s HERE & NOW.

Our mind works diligently at interpreting and narrating the events of our life to us. Our awareness simply allows us to experience them, directly and intimately, without indulging in them- to experience them simply as they are.

In the space of awareness we can witness our events of mind- our thinking, feeling, and sensing- without being defined by the experience itself.

Being imperfectly perfect makes us who we are. It’s our signature, and it’s this uniqueness and commonality that all of humanity shares. The essence of our existence is developmental in nature. It’s a process not a destination, and like “perfection’, we are ‘relative’ not ‘absolute.’  

Imperfection broken down:

I’m perfection… just as I am.

Our brains have been hard-wired and our minds deeply conditioned to think and problem solve. Historically, we have survived, adapted, and evolved with an architecture and circuitry of a brain networked to receive sensory impulses for immediate processing- mainly for self-protection and preservation. There is significant angst and unrest when events of mind are left unfinished or unresolved. We have learned and aspire to put closure to things regardless of whether it is most appropriate for the situation or not. Our mental commentary might stream something like…  It’s done… let’s move on… there’s so much to do… and I am so busy and so preoccupied to leave this unfinished and hanging around my consciousness.

Using awareness we are able to disconnect from our mind’s problem-solving circuitry, and allow our consciousness to unfold into the emptiness of our “pause”- the “space” between our stimulus and response. Here we are free to spontaneously embrace a shift from doing to non-doing. It is here that we are allowing our brain and our mind the opportunity to learn a new way of being, which is calmer, quieter, and more stable.

It is here and now that we can learn to “see in new & fresh ways”- a state of mind where experiences are taking on a whole new look as the “thinking self” is relaxing and shifting into the “observing self”. In awareness, the observing self abides in openness, uncertainty, and the unknown as what we may regard as “unfinished business” is left to teach us more about how “to see” and less how “to think”. With ‘clear seeing’– the awareness of the observing self- we begin to see the influence spawned from our fabrications of mind to have and complete more. We can recognize and acknowledge the strength and power of our habits and conditioning to fuel and sustain our self-absorbed accomplishments.

It is the higher energy of awareness that allows us to penetrate and transmute the impulsive forces underlying our habit energy to be less driving, controlling, wanting, grasping, and expecting to “close” what may need to remain open- and to continue to unfold revealing the inherent “truth” behind our experiences.

It’s not that “unfinished business” remains unattended as the unresolved happenings of our consciousness are observed and examined openly in our field of awareness. The difference here is in how we “attend”- our underlying intention to “see clearly”- and the disposition we foster in our “seeing” of what is directly happening. It is having the courage and patience to let be and to let unfold in a more spontaneous and natural manner- to reveal to us how we may best respond both flexibly and adaptively.

Habitually, we are creatures called to constant action- doing, fixing, and finishing what we start. It takes much patience, practice, and even fortitude in our mindfulness training to relax in the face of what compels most of our waking attention to finish, complete, and resolve. Often we cannot just “stay with it” or “sit with it” as we are routinely overwhelmed and ultimately swept away by our recurring urges and impulses to be quickly reactive rather than patiently adaptive.

Befriend your fears and you will free yourself to live a life that is full of wonder.

Many of our own possibilities come to pass as we are paralyzed by the uncertainty- by the inadequacy that is self-described. Our fears lose their power over us when we are strong enough- courageous enough- and compassionate enough to embrace them. In the warmth and openness of our abiding awareness, we may come to know that our fears have been there simply to protect us and shelter us from harm.

To know and to understand what may have held us back can bring us the insight- the energy- and the motivation to uncover what may have been unfortunately cradled in fear.

What holds us back? What keeps us ‘stuck’ from moving forward into a healthier, more peaceful place in our lives? What do we resist in our lives… and why?

Is our resistance a function of our inability to simply accept life as it is… here & now? Can we not skillfully let go of our views- our illusions & projections of how we think our life should be?

Do we perpetually cling to what is familiar because we are deeply frightened of the unknown- of what we might discover about ourselves… or about our world?

The more we resist, the greater the control it seems to hold over our mind and our sense of ‘being’. We create & empower its solidity by our inability to ‘see’ through its hollow nature. When we ultimately turn to face what we resist, it loses its ‘grip’ on our lives. Awareness, intent, and genuine acceptance allows us to penetrate the underlying fear.

As resistance melts away, we often become more flexible & fluid in our lives. What may have once been impossible now becomes workable. With acceptance… there is freedom to move forward with greater wisdom, understanding, & maturity.

Mindfulness practice can help us turn up the resolution on things we openly, quietly, and objectively observe. It is this resolution that brings a greater clarity, sharpness, and precision of things as they are witnessed in our field of awareness.