Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World (30 page)
Read Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World Online
Authors: Mark Williams,Danny Penman
Sometimes, Marissa found that, despite her mindfulness practice, feelings of being overwhelmed by life came out of the blue. Everything seemed to be going smoothly when, suddenly, she might wake up feeling very tired and listless, or with angry or sad thoughts going through her mind.
When things came out of the blue like this, they always set off patterns of thinking that drew on her own unique history. So because she had been down in the past, her tiredness
now
triggered old habits of thought that were particularly damaging: full of overgeneralized memories, predictions that this would go on forever and repeated thoughts claiming, “I’m no good.”
She found that all of these patterns were very adhesive; she found them very difficult to dismiss but, after a while, she began recognizing them through one salient feature that all of them shared:
they all undermined her motivation for taking any action to nourish herself.
When this happened, she found it useful to tell herself: “Just because I am feeling like this now does not mean that things have to stay like this.”
Marissa would ask herself: “What can I do to look after myself to get me through this low period?” She would take a breathing space to help gather herself. She found it particularly useful to start by using the Week Five practice of dropping her attention into the body to see how her mood was reflected in her physical sensations, and allow her attention to dwell in the body for a while. This helped her to see her situation from a wider perspective. This wider perspective, in turn, allowed her to become aware of both the pull of the old habits of thinking, as well as the skillful action that she could take, either immediately or later so that she could better take care of herself during this vulnerable period.
Everyday life offers endless opportunities for you to stop, to focus, to remind yourself to be fully awake and present to what is happening right now.
It matters that you care.
It matters that you feel.
It matters that you notice.
FROM “HOKUSAI SAYS,” ROGER KEYES
1
T
here is an old story told about a king who wished to move his palace.
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But because he feared that his enemies might take advantage of this to attack him and steal his treasures, he summoned his trusted general. “My friend,” he said, “I have to move my palace, and must do so within twenty-four hours. You have been my trusted servant and soldier for so long. I do not trust anyone but you to help me with this task. Only you know the network of underground passages between this palace and the other. If you are able to do this for me, and move all my most precious treasures by yourself, I will give you and your family your freedom: you may retire from my service, and as a reward for your faithfulness over so many
years, I
will give to you such a portion of both my wealth and my lands that you will be able to settle, and you, your wife and children and their children and grandchildren will be financially secure.”
The day came when the treasures were to be moved. The general worked hard. He was not a young man, but he persisted in his efforts. He knew that the task needed to be completed within the twenty-four-hour window. After this, it would become unsafe to continue. With minutes to spare, he completed the job. He went to see his king, who was delighted. The king was a man of his word and gave him the portion of the treasure he had promised, and the deeds to some of the most beautiful and fertile lands in the kingdom.
The general returned to his home and took a bath, and as he lay there, he looked back on all that he had achieved, and he relaxed: he felt a great satisfaction that he could now retire, that things were dealt with, and that his major tasks were finished. For that moment, he had a sense of completeness. The story ends here.
Do you know what that moment is like? Perhaps you have experienced a similar moment when things have gone well for you in the past? You have felt a sense of completeness. A sense that tasks have been done.
One of the most difficult aspects of the frantic rush through a busy life is that we often do not allow even the smallest notion of “completion” to enter the picture of our daily lives. We often rush from task to task, so much so that the end of one task is just the invitation to start another. There are no gaps in between in which we could take even a few
seconds
to sit, to take stock, to realize that we have just completed something. Just the reverse: how many times do we hear ourselves say, “I
haven’t achieved anything at all today”? And we say this most often when things have been at their busiest. Is there an alternative approach?
If you can practice cultivating a sense of completeness—even a glimmer, right now, in this moment, with the little things of life—there is a chance that you would be better able to cope with those aspects of mind that keep telling you that you are not there yet; not yet happy, not yet fulfilled. You might learn that you are complete, whole, just as you are.
As you became immersed in the detail of each week’s practice, you may have found that you lost sight from time to time of the overall aim and structure of the program, so here is a brief reminder of what you have been practicing.
The aim of the early sessions was to give you, through formal and informal mindfulness practice, many opportunities to recognize the Doing mode in its many forms, and to begin the cultivation of the alternative Being mode. Since attention is so often hijacked by current concerns, the first meditations helped you to learn how to pay sustained attention to one single thing, using as the focus of attention things that any of us tend to take for granted, such as the taste of food, sensations in the body, the breath or the colors and shapes of an ordinary visual scene. You learned to see the patterns of mind that distract you, and how the constant chatter of the mind can dull your senses, draining the color and texture from each present moment. You learned to come back again and again to whatever you had been intending to focus on, without judgment or self-criticism. The core theme at this stage was how to pay attention, intentionally, with kindness. Practice in the simple act of giving the mind just one thing to do provided, and still provides, many opportunities to wake up and
recognize that the Doing mode of mind is asserting itself.
You learned that the Doing mode of mind is not a mistake, nor is it an enemy to get rid of. It only becomes problematic when it volunteers for a job it can’t do, then refuses to let go, so that you go on working at a problem or a project long after you are too tired to make any sensible progress. Your projects and preoccupations then become adhesive and all-consuming, and you cannot see how to let go.
So, the training in later sessions focused on widening awareness so that you could recognize when, in everyday life, the stress of frantic daily living is starting to trigger overuse of the Doing mode. You learned to disengage from Doing mode and then to enter Being mode. You learned strategies that could provide you with a range of options for responding more skillfully when you feel overwhelmed by the overbusyness, stress and exhaustion of life. Central to these was the ability to step away from using your Doing mind to
overcome
your mind—and to cultivate kindness toward yourself and others.
Mindfulness practice does not
compel
us to let go of Doing, but it does give us the choice, and the skills to do so if we so choose. And with an insight into how to let go, practiced many times in the small moments of daily living, there are many opportunities to learn ways in which, even when difficult and uncomfortable emotions arise, you can
make space
even for
them
, exploring them with compassion and courage when you feel it is right to do so.
Finding peace in a frantic world is not easy. In our darkest hours it can seem as if the entire world has been designed
from the ground up to maximize our distress and drive us to exhaustion. Stress and anxiety can seem overwhelming, and full-blown depression can appear to be only a hair’s breadth away. While the attitude that “the world is against me” is understandable, it also limits us. It means that we do not see how many of our troubles arise from the way
we
live our lives. Simply put, we get in our own way. Anxiety, stress, unhappiness and exhaustion are often symptoms of a wider and deeper malaise. They are not free-floating afflictions, but symptoms arising from the way we relate to each other, ourselves and to the world itself. They are signals that there is something wrong in our lives. They are signs to which we need to pay attention.
If you accept all this, then the door is opened to a radically different approach to living—one that encourages you, from moment to moment, to actually live your life to the full
right now
, rather than putting it off until tomorrow. We all have the tendency to postpone our lives. How many times have you told yourself,
I’ll catch up with my sleep on the weekend, When things let up a bit I’ll see more of the kids
or
Next summer I’ll relax and take a proper holiday
? Well, here it is:
now
is the future that you promised yourself last year, last month, last week.
Now
is the only moment you’ll ever really have. Mindfulness is about waking up to this. It’s about becoming fully aware of the life you’ve already got, rather than the life you wish you had.
Mindfulness is not an alternative version of psychotherapy or another “self-help” approach to improving your life. It’s not a technique for understanding the past or for correcting “aberrant” or “incorrect” ways of thinking in the present. It doesn’t paper over the cracks, but looks for patterns in them, seeing
them as our teachers. Mindfulness doesn’t directly “treat” our difficulties, but instead reveals and brings a penetrating yet kindly awareness to their underlying driving forces. It deals with the subliminal themes of all our lives. And when these are held up to the light of awareness, something remarkable happens: the negative themes gradually start dissolving of their own accord. Our endless striving, tunnel vision and brooding, our tendency to get lost in our own thoughts, to be driven by the autopilot, to become consumed by negativity and abandon the things that nourish our souls—these all represent the Doing mind working as hard as it can. When we let go of seeing this as an enemy to be overcome, all of these tendencies are able to melt away in the light of openhearted awareness.
We can tell you this—we can even prove it to you with the most powerful tools that science has to offer—but you must experience it for yourself to truly
understand
it.
We constantly weave false dreams for ourselves, but what we really need to weave is a parachute to use when life starts to become difficult or begins to fall apart. Mindfulness has been compared to weaving such a parachute.
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But there’s no point in doing this when we’re falling headlong towards destruction. We have to weave our parachute every day, so that it’s always there to hold us in an emergency. The first seven weeks of the Mindfulness program helped you begin to taste this process, but Week Eight is as important as them all.
Week Eight is the rest of your life.
The task now is to weave the practices into a routine that is sustainable in the long term.
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Mindfulness can serve as an emergency parachute. It needs weaving every day, so that it’s ready and waiting should you encounter an emergency. Here are some tips:
- Start the day with mindfulness When you open your eyes, gently pause before taking five deliberate breaths. This is your chance to reconnect with your body. If you feel tired, anxious, unhappy or in any way distressed, see these feelings and thoughts as mental events condensing and dissolving in the space of awareness. If your body aches, recognize these sensations as sensations. See if you can accept all of your thoughts, feelings and sensations in a gentle and compassionate way. There is no need to try and change them. Accept them—
since they are already here. Having stepped out of automatic pilot in this way, you might choose to scan the body for a minute or two, or focus on the breath, or do some gentle stretches before getting out of bed. - Use Breathing Spaces to punctuate your day Using Breathing Spaces at preset times helps you to reestablish your focus in the here and now, so that you can respond with wisdom and compassion to thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations as you move through the day.
- Maintain your Mindfulness practice As best you can, continue with your formal meditation practice. They are the practices that support your Breathing Spaces and help you to maintain mindfulness throughout as much of your daily life as possible.
- Befriend your feelings Whatever you feel, as best you can, see if you can bring an open and kindhearted awareness to
all
of your feelings. Remember Rumi’s “Guest House” poem (see p.
166
)?. Remember to roll out the welcome mat to even your
most painful thoughts, such as fatigue, fear, frustration, loss, guilt or sadness. This will diffuse your automatic reactions and transform a cascade of reactions into a series of choices. • When you feel tired, frustrated, anxious, angry or any other powerful emotion, take a Breathing Space This will “ground” your thoughts, diffuse your negative emotions and reconnect you with your bodily sensations. You will then be in a better position to make skillful decisions. For example, if you feel tired you may choose to do some stretches to reawaken and reenergize your body. - Mindful activities Whatever you do, see if you can remain mindful throughout as much of the day as possible. For example, when you are washing dishes, try to feel the water, the plates and the fluctuating sensations in your hands. When you are outside, look around and observe the sights, sounds and smells of the world around you. Can you feel the pavement through your shoes? Can you taste or smell the air? Can you feel it moving through your hair and caressing your skin?
- Increase your level of exercise Walking, cycling, gardening, going to the gym—anything physical can be used to help weave your parachute. See if you can bring a mindful and curious attitude to your body as you exercise. Notice the thoughts and feelings as they arise. Pay close attention if you feel the need to “grit your teeth” or you start to feel the first stirrings of aversion or other negative thoughts or sensations. See if you can gently observe the sensations as they unfold. Breathe with, and into, their intensity. Gently increase the length and intensity of your exercises, but always try and remain mindful.
- Remember the breath The breath is always there for you. It anchors you in the present. It is like a good friend. It reminds you that you are OK just as you are.