Cultivate It But Don't Try To Be Mindful

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Do you do this yourself? Don’t get carried away by any of them. If a particularly useful idea strikes you, note it down on a pad so you don’t forget it, then let it go. There will be many occasions when you fail, when you discover that you’ve drifted off in a hazy cloud and the minutes have ticked by unnoticed. Simply note this as an indication of how far you have to go and get down to it again. That is simply more drama you create, and it distracts you from the task at hand. You’ll discover that, as you practice, you accomplish a great deal more than you normally do and with less effort. Celebrate this discovery. This relaxed focus is mindfulness. Cultivate it but don’t try to be mindful all the time. You will not succeed, and your perceived failure could actually take you on a downward spiral. Once you get there, increase it to thirty minutes. Go up in increments of ten minutes until you can be continuously mindful for two hours.

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Don't Break Easily

As you do this exercise, you’ll notice that the crowd you’re carrying around thins. They all come back later, but you now know you can banish them, and this knowledge will give you many future victories. Extend this practice deliberately to all areas of your life. Notice how superficial many interactions are. Have you ever had a colleague wish you good morning and be halfway down the hall before you could reply? When you say, Good morning, really mean it. Establish eye contact, and say it with energy and from your heart. Wish the person every good fortune and blessing. Do it silently and sincerely. Do it to people with whom you have casual interactions, such as the cashier at the cafeteria or your cab driver, and do it to people who are important in your life, such as your spouse or boss. Again, do this many times consciously, but don’t expect to be able to do it all the time. You’ll notice that the nature of your interactions with others changes. Relationships become deeper.

Cool, Calm And Collected

Conversations happen that didn’t before. Celebrate this as well. If you’re diligent in your practice, and as you become more proficient, you’ll observe that many members of your gaggle have left for good. Why is there so much suffering in the world? Why do people butcher each other with such barbarity? Why are the affluent so indifferent to the plight of so many people who live in abject misery? Why, oh why, do such things constantly happen to me? These questions come from the very depth of your being. These are insistent questions, and you seek hard for explanations but don’t find any. So you go back to your life dissatisfied and bury your unease in frantic activity. You’ll never find the answers to such insistent questions. In fact, there are no answers. You’re looking for solutions in the plane of logic and cause and effect, and there is no panacea in this realm. String theorists now postulate even more dimensions in their quest for a theory that unifies all known forces of nature. In similar fashion, you have to move to a higher state of consciousness if you really want to ease your pain permanently instead of papering over it with insistent action. Perhaps a story is in order.

How Many More Times?

You have an extraordinarily vivid dream, a nightmare so dramatic that you still recall every detail. You and your wife are on a luxury cruise when pirates capture your ship. All the people in penthouse suites are swiftly transferred to fast motorboats and ferried away. You and your wife are among them. The days that follow are agonizing, filled with torment. You’re beaten and kicked and slammed against the wall. You’re injected with heroin as the kidnappers try to get you addicted. You know you have at least two broken ribs, because they scrape against each other and the pain is excruciating. You learn to walk stiff legged, with your back in a specific position to avoid disturbing the bones. The pirates quickly discover that you love your wife dearly and use that to manipulate you. You would have given it to them freely, but they injured her anyway and did it with sadistic pleasure. It’s a desperate situation. All prisoners are held separately in makeshift cells, but it is an improvised arrangement, not a real prison, and there are plenty of opportunities for you to talk with each other. The pirates try to prevent this by the threat of severe beatings if you are discovered, and they deliver on this often enough that all of you spend most of your time in sullen silence. One day, one of your shipboard friends sidles up to you. He’ll also accompany you, because his life will be forfeit if he remains. Can you arrange for a million dollars to reach him today? It so happens that you can. You do business in many countries and sometimes grease the skids by buying off influential politicians. So you have developed a method of arranging cash transfers that don’t leave an accounting trail and depend on code words that have meaning. You reveal what your shipmate needs to know to get your manager to release the money to the pirate, who has a numbered account in a Swiss bank. These are sophisticated pirates, and you marvel at how the world has changed. Hours before you are to make your escape, one of the pirates kicks you viciously in the knee. You can no longer walk, but you urge the others to leave anyway and take good care of your wife. You so want her to escape from this hell. You watch anxiously as the others leave with their clearly frightened turncoat. Minutes later, you hear gunfire, machine gun bursts and explosions that may be grenades. You see men in military uniforms running toward your cage and taking cover. You are beside yourself with worry.