Mindful Boston

This week I found myself telling people things that they didn't expect to hear from their meditation teacher.  In fact, since I hadn't actually intended to say any of these things in quite this blunt a way, I hadn't expected to hear it from myself.  People who are not meditation teachers like to think that meditation teachers have some kind of Zen superpowers to avoid being the fallible human beings that all people are.  But actually meditation teachers are intentionally facing down their own fallible humanness more than most.  Feeling fear, speaking lies, and screaming loud are some of the tools I use to navigate the storms of my real, fallible human life.  As a mindfulness practitioner, I can only teach what I have direct experience in living. I said, "Feel anger." When I tell people to feel what's real in the moment right now, they seem to register the words.  But they don't seem to register that I actually mean it.  Feel your anger. Yes. Feel. Y...

Some times bad things do happen to good people. If there's any way out of a particular bad situation- you take it.  Self care is primary.  Your responsibility to take good care of yourself means that when faced with a terrible situation, you get out of it when ever it is possible to do so.  In MBSR, we do spend time looking at specific instances that the students mention from their past.  There are always some questions and some gray areas.   So we work with the tools of re-framing, broadening perspective, and Non Violent Communication to address the gray areas that come up. But- what happens when there is no way out?  There are some situations that are not gray-areas.  They can be no-win situations, or no-way-out situations. They can be situations of injustice. In no-way-out types of situations, a person's actions are limited.  Most of the available choices are internal choices rather than external choices about actions.  In MBSR class...

Four weeks ago, I used this quote during MBSR class #1 to describe a theme I saw emerging for all of us: "And then the day came, when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”  - Anaïs Nin The class we just had last Friday had a theme to it that was hard for me to put into words.  In MBSR, we usually try to find poetry- but this week I was introduced to a youtube video that really described what I felt was our theme for class #4.  Someone called WaxAudio mixed together Pink Floyd and the Bee Gees.  (!) Here's the link:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U13xOvDa19U This very strange, somewhat ridiculous, combination of music speaks to me about the questions we were facing in class: How does one live for oneself within a system that expects super-human (or robotic) levels of performance? When living in financial poverty (or emotional poverty) can there be happiness within the overwhelming levels of stress? A...

Sometimes our carefully constructed plans get side-railed.  It could be a family member in the hospital.  It could be a migraine headache. It could be that in some way your adult life did not turn out the way your child-self envisioned. Real life, the way it is now, is what we have.  This is the only reality we have to work with.  It is the only starting place we've got.  It's not all that useful to to think about "if only things had gone according to plan," or "if only I were in that other place." That other place does not exist. That other plan never came into being. Right here, right now, is good enough. Who you are, as you are, is good enough. Start here.  Start now.  This is the only place from which to move forward. It is valid to have this experience, even if it happens to be an unpleasant experience.  Validating only pleasant experiences creates a fractured sense of self.  In other words, repressing the truth of one's experi...

This is from Osho's book "Buddha Zen Tao Tantra" ...Nobody can just float, first you have to learn to swim. Don't go to the river or you will be drowned. A person has to learn to swim and when the swimming becomes perfect, he need not swim, he can just be in the river, floating; he can lie in the river as if he is lying in his bed. Now he has learned how to be in accordance with the river; now the river cannot drown him; now he has no more enmity with the river. A perfect swimmer becomes part of the river; he is a wave in the river. How can the river destroy the wave? When he floats in accordance with the river, he is no longer fighting, resisting, doing something. He is in tune with the river and he can simply float. But don't try this unless you know how to swim; otherwise, you may be drowned. The same thing happens with Tao. You make a great effort to live in accordance with the truth, and by and by you understand that your great effort helps a little, but hin...