Mind Set Go

Grounding.  Mindfulness.  Meditation. Prayer.  Breath.  Being present.  Qi Gong.  Tai Chi.  Compassion.  Loving kindness.  Gratitude.  Patience.  Letting go.  Acupuncture.  Yoga.  Yoga nidra.  Mindful eating.  Mindful this.  Mindful that.  The list goes on.  In western hands, (or should I say minds?) are these concepts conceptualized and practiced within a framework of “me”?  Have they become buzz words and/or things with the intent of becoming more, becoming better?  As new years approach and pass by and resolutions are formulated, the western mindset is driven by thinking about how the past and future relate to the self.  Additionally, we are goal oriented.

Thich Nhat Hanh was aware of this western concept of goal orientation.  In his book, Peace is Every Step: The path of mindfulness in everyday life, he acknowledged that although it may be useful to be goal oriented, if we are, “we often forget to enjoy ourselves along the route.”  He suggested that in embracing a Buddhist concept translated into “wishlessness” or “aimlessness,” we can avoid losing our steps if “we do not try to arrive anywhere.” (p. 17)  Eckhart Tolle, in A New Earth: Awaking to your life’s purpose (2006) addresses the patterns of thinking in the egoic self as well as the potential for awareness and transformation.  Not transformation through what I would call egoic resolutions, but through awareness. 

Since personal worth is truly not something measured, accomplished, obtained and attained, why are ancient practices put on bucket lists, pathways for personal gain?  Why are these concepts practiced for a desired outcome, with some sort of selfish intent when they are here and now—that which can be experienced, enveloped, embraced, assimilated?  Framed in a western mindset, ancient practices often become goals and pathways of self-motivated purposeful actions even if true awareness and self-actualization are not self/ego generated or motivated.  Ancient practices, now “verified” by science and practiced by more and more westerners within some contextual style, have somehow now gained not just acceptance, but have become prescribed anecdotes for health and well-being.  Perhaps practices such as yoga and meditation are morphing into something new, something altogether different in the west while retaining the same names?

One very early morning last year, we awoke in Japan and decided to take a long morning walk to the outskirts of Tokyo to an ancient burial ground.  We wandered on streets and crossed avenues to find ourselves in a section of small homes where it seemed that everyone was still asleep.  Walking past windows and knowing that someone might be sleeping very close to the walkways, we began to tread with intent—intent with each step so as to tread lightly.  We could hear ourselves breathing, our hearts keeping time, when suddenly the energy changed.

Something was ahead, making metallic crackling sounds.  We stopped and waited there in the early morning with the just rising sun of dawn and came face to face with a mother creature and two younger ones behind her.  When they were just about ten or eleven feet away from us, they stopped and stared at us, all five of us seemingly frozen.  There was no time to assess the situation.  No time to reach for the cell to capture and document our meeting for later reminders. 

At some point the animals seemed to decide to do nothing about their encounter with us other than to resume their normal momentum of teetering on the metal fence with claws creating a percussion of sound.  We stayed frozen, only eyes moving, as they moseyed on down the fence in our direction higher than shoulder level and not too far away.  After they passed, all we could do was to start breathing again; time had seemed to stand still for a moment when we (the animals and us) were looking at one another with sheer amazement.  And so our own morning constitutional commenced.  We were almost there—there being the point on a map we had pointed to only an hour or so before.

As we turned a corner we found that people lived backed up to and surrounding the burial area.  And one lone woman was awake.  She was diligently sweeping, and since we were seemingly the only other creatures awake, other than whatever animals we had just encountered, we more than half expected for her to look up and acknowledge us.  You know, to nod, or to say hello, or to at least have a slight glance of eye contact. 

Nothing.  What had our wild, wild western minds expected of someone, this early in the morning, from an entirely different culture so enraptured, it seemed, in her task at hand?  Could we ever come to understand or at least acknowledge her very presence in here and now?  And, how was this suddenly turned into something being, somehow, about me?  

I think I seemed to expect something that didn’t happen in that moment, and when something we expect doesn’t happen, we tend to mentally lose sight of the moment—at least I do.  I tend to start to enter a different world, a world of me, a world that has lost sight of the power of now… of what I will call now-dom.  It’s so easy to escape into a world of thought that it becomes reality.  It’s what we do: seeing the world from our own paradigm.  And that inner world becomes the springboard for our justifications and our judgements, of ourselves and others.  We measure our own being or worth based on inner dialogues that we practice so often that they often become our only basis of reality.

Many people have survived, and even seemingly thrived, in a world based on finding what needs to be fixed, followed by attempts of fixing said identified items.  The reactionary process involves “sucking it up” and forging ahead; believing that change takes hard work, people often turn themselves into self-coaches, egging themselves on, often using and creating scenarios and visions (and even dialogs) within their minds to provide not just motivation and inspiration, but also what might be considered technique. While one might say that individuals are full of baggage, (and have what is often identified as mental and physical scars) practicing loving kindness accepts all of this without judgement.  It’s really okay. 

It’s okay to be imperfect.  It’s okay to proceed without the labels and analyses.  Acceptance without judgement.  Starting in this moment, not based on any past. 

For those who are weary, who are sick, who are lost, minding the gap between desire and letting go of desire can be quite challenging.  Those who conceive of themselves as in the most need of change, can be impatient and the most ego-challenged.   Coming to the mat to change may not elicit the change one hopes to “obtain.”  However, in coming to the mat and accepting ourselves as we are, we do change, often in many different ways, physical and mental.

Yes, this is the time of year that many of us regroup.  We think about the weeks ahead and what we can accomplish during this time of year when most are in a sort of state of hibernation.  We formulate ideas about diet and exercise.  We decide that we can and will let go of the old habits that haven’t served us well, and plan to adopt new ones; we set goals and resolutions.  We think we need to find what we need most by the judgements we make of what we used to do, how we used to be, what we haven’t done, what we could do… and the list goes on.  We are very busy—at least in our own minds. 

If someone were to tell you that something can be found—not by looking for it, but by opening yourself to it, you would probably think that person wasn’t truthful and perhaps was a bit crazy.  However, if we can let go of conceiving what we want ourselves to be, we are accepting of that which we are and can become.  While it may be embraced that the first step in change is awareness, there are habits to let go of long before a process of change ensues.  Instead of conceptualizing and perhaps even attempting to evoke change as the next step after awareness, once we are aware, then we can let go. Awareness + letting go= change.

Oh, and by the way, this stepwise mentality is dysfunctional, and it is part of the wild, wild western mindset!  If we analyze and desire that after letting go, change ensues, we have defeated the purpose we have actually imposed.  I know it all sounds confusing, but consider: It’s our own concepts of purpose that muddle the process and turn something that is by its very nature not driven by an end-result into something quite different than the real concept of purpose. 

Purposeful, an adjective, is often confused with purpose, the noun.  Purposeful mindfulness is not mindfulness.  Purposeful meditation.  Purposeful prayer.  Purposeful gratitude.  All these are quite different than embodying purpose.  The search for purpose may be confounded by many things including our own misgivings as to what it is, but humankind’s quest and discovery of purpose is present for the looking and can be found and actualized.  

Long before I had ever read Victor E. Frankl’s book, Man’s Search for Meaning, I remember standing in the kitchen washing dishes by hand.  The warm water, and transformation of dirty to clean, wasn’t capturing my attention.  I was focused on having seen a friend’s face on television, paraded for all to see as a Prisoner of War during the war that was going on, Desert Storm.  I envisioned all sorts of terrible things that might be happening to our friend, and later learned that he was, indeed, being tortured. 

As I stood there feeling helpless to assist, other than caring, at that very moment something changed in me.  It was as a sort of epiphany that came over me, now decades ago: There are some things that cannot be taken away from you.  Your ability to hope, to pray (if you so choose), and to be happy.  Yes, there are some things that no one can take from you.  I remember thinking that someone could put you in a box, for instance, and could torture you, but if you chose to hope, if you chose to believe in a higher source, and if you chose to be happy, no one could take that from you.  The meanings that you make in and of your life can be here and now and become one with purpose.

Purpose involves finding meaning and unconditional value.  Purpose is present, accepting, filled with love and kindness, compassion and understanding.  Purpose is more than a feeling one obtains, a goal one pursues.  Purpose is found not by running around blindly with a figurative deadline or a literal finish line, but by being present here and now and finding meaning in what we do.

We wonder why someone who has stepped off after a long journey of hiking for months on end might feel lost.  We wonder why we feel badly after a retail-therapy jaunt at a store.  We wonder why we have lost the edge created by a massage, or the time sitting in a chair while someone preens us with haircuts and/or shaves/ and/or mani-pedis, after they are over.

For a moment in time, whether it be months of putting one foot in front of another, very conscious of each step we take, minding roots and rocks and puddles, we are present.  When hunting and gathering or being aware of being preened or having meditated whilst being preened, we are present.  Once we open our mouths and cast judgements on ourselves or others, we have lost the moment.  At least temporarily. 

(Just this week, I did just that, writing in a letter and in great detail the perceptions I have now about something that happened over a two-year stretch of time, thirty years ago when I felt mistreated by a supervisor in a job.  Did I actually place a stamp on that letter and mail it to a former colleague?  Yes, I did.  Did I “go there” in my own mind?  Obviously, I did.  But again.  That is okay.  The quest is not perfection.  There is no quest; only acceptance.  Acceptance that we are, each of us, imperfect in our perfection and that there is no formulation of I in the here and now. 

In the case of a hike from point A to point B, when we arrive at a campsite that we set up in an exhausted state, we still function, present and aware.  When we make plans of a next route, figure out what we will eat, how to cook it, eat it, and then collapse into sleeping bags we lay out in a tent or hammock we pitch, (and when we encounter another human and say, “Hello,” and when we open our eyes, hear the coyotes howl or the rain pulsate rhythmically and feel, with our entire being, the dew and the dawning of a new day, feeling our sore muscles, aches and pains of a yesterday come to fruition here and now) we are not necessarily worried about or planning to stay present, we’re just doing it.  Doing.  Present participle; present continuous tense.  And as we pack up and start putting one foot in front of the other— we stay present, focused solely on where we are going in that straight, yet curvy, line of here-to-there conceived in ups and downs of mountains and valleys over moments of time measured in seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks and months. 

Now, mind you, I haven’t hikes for months on end as thru-hikers have.  But here’s the reality: We wonder what happens when what we perceive as one segment of life ends and we assume that our minds and bodies, in the next segment of life, will return to what we considered normal life in the last segment.  “Normal” in the sense of going back to what may have been functioning day-to-day in a mindless mire (or rut) of thought and dialog we created within our own heads affecting our entire being.  “Normal” in comparison to a sudden change of life combined with conceptions of life being compartmentalized into then and now rather than a journey where now is always now. 

I would assert that those of us who have ventured into the realm of letting go of the mind clutter we often label as normal, (even for a moment during a period of meditation or prayer, or for extended periods of meditation at a retreat or during a very physical and possibly lengthy walking meditation) have changed.  And if we do not acknowledge and accept that change, if we do not embrace it, we can and will be left at a loss, feeling empty and discouraged and confused if we are surprised that nothing is the same—including ourselves.  And, again, that’s okay. 

Perhaps the reason for empty feelings can be that after you left the world of now-dom in which you were very present perhaps almost every step of the way, you may venture into a world in your mind, that really doesn’t even exist, where you fill yourself with very westernized ideas of what matters and how to obtain it. In leaving the reality of now, you may shift into an egoic state in which you may feel that you didn’t find something like the answer to the meaning for life or your own purpose, perhaps maybe because you didn’t realize that you were happy for a period of time when you were “busy” actually living and finding meaning in actual life when you were present in the moment.  And, perhaps, in addition to not embracing the change that occurred, you actually believe there is a back to go back to.  There is a figurative “back,” but it is that which your mind creates—not what actually exists.  And so, if you cannot accept that or that it is okay to be that way, you probably will feel empty.  (Isn’t it interesting that it is often accepted that a seemingly mindless continuum of life is normal, but that life changes, whether planned or accidental, are not part of life, of normalcy?)  If you want to be happy after “returning” from a journey, just continue the journey, here and now. In reality, it’s just not that simple. For me, too.

Life is not about finding an answer, although asking questions and wondering is okay.  It’s not about avoiding stumbling and falling, but realizing who, what and where you are in this moment even if you find yourself on the ground.  It’s about not only accepting how strong you are in this very moment, but how vulnerable and weak you may feel and accepting that as okay.  When something happens, only you can formulate that it is a challenge.  There are no hiccups along the way.  There’s just the way… the journey, itself. 

If you have stepped off the trail and are seemingly fumbling to find purpose, not only are you not alone, you belong.  It is what we do.  And when we combine that with the wild, wild western mindset of purposefully doing things without necessarily doing something as purpose, then be especially kind to yourself when you do not get the kind of acknowledgement you so strive for in your very confused mind.  Accept that you stamped that envelope and mailed it for another human to peruse and perhaps judge. Accept how it made you feel in the moment and yes, what you are feeling now in its aftermath.  But realize that you have the ability to mindfully tread where no others have been: in the own confines of that which is actually your own infinity in your own mind.

I truly believe we all have what we need.  Perhaps a western mindset has a hard time with “less is more.”  However, mindlessly chucking possessions is not the point.  What we need is not based on material things, material gain or even personal gain.  So rather than asking, “What is it I need?” embrace that which you already have.  Rather than asking, “Does this thing make me happy?  Can I do without it?” realize that it’s not what you hold in your hand that matters.  It’s what is already in your mind (without what you have added to it through misconceptions, hunger and greed that misaligns true meaning) that is real. 

Discovery of new ideas and concepts and practices does take mental focus, and planning is not a bad thing.  But letting go of what the mind does, its what-if’s and its picture you… not the mind… paints and holds on to of things gone by, and by removing the personal paradigm (worldview) so callously and perhaps innocently placed on new ideas and concepts and practices, is quite different than letting go of planning and focused attention which are also important.  Letting go of the mind clutter is quite different than the mind and clutter. Defining what mind clutter is is part of awareness.  While physical clutter can add to mind clutter, the two are quite different. 

Remember:

It takes a tear to make an ocean

The same ocean that strokes and caresses and calls you in

It takes a moment to embrace a lifetime

The same lifetime filled with breath and acceptance and calls you in

It takes a touch to make a hug

That same hug that envelops and calls you in

It takes listening to truly hear

The sounds, surrounding you and calling you in

Crying an ocean, clawing at hours gone by, gasping for air, pushing others away, voices drowning out sound, do they really exist?

You are not only welcome here, you belong here.  Floating, free spirited, alive.  Your ticket is free and unconditional.  No first class/second class citizens.  One with a world not beyond reach, yet with each other and yourself.  Welcome the call and heed it.  The purpose of the tear, the moment, the breath, the touch, the sound is not yours to be found.  It exists without regard to you, literally and figuratively.  Open to change, soar on the wings of the call without naming it all.  Accept yourself, not as an imperfect entity, but as the intention-less being-less spirit that you are and you will be able to accept all in a universe not made for you or by you.  And if you find yourself unable to comprehend all of that, it is okay.

The Japanese badgers do have a name, something we call them.  Encountering something new, whether looking eye-to-eye with animals that are new to us or with people with different behaviors than our own, can help us realize that we can explore what we do in the middle ground we, ourselves, fabricate sandwiched between then, both past and future.  One way that the Cambridge English Dictionary defines middle ground is as “a position between two opposite opinions in an argument.”  I believe that somewhere sandwiched between past and present is a middle ground that can call you in, in which you can remove any sense of guilt or argument.  This middle ground is not muddled with thought, but is here and now.  Enjoy.

Nancy Marie Farley Rice