Attention! Attention! Attention!
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Mindfulness cuts through illusion, including the illusion of a separate self – the pervasive sickness of our society. Mindfulness is sharp, discerning, taking no prisoners. Mindfulness is standing naked in the universe, no protective clothing. Mindfulness is the true occupation of a bodhisattva – an awakening warrior of radiant origin.
Do you mind? When we ask this question of another, we sometimes mean “You are in my way. Don’t you care? Will you readjust your position to allow me to continue on my way?” Another shade of meaning points to attention and awareness (or lack of awareness). If truly we “mind,” then we are aware and attentive. The question can also imply, “Where is your mind? Is your mind somewhere else?” The question thus refers to the degree of presence or absence.
Minding then means to care, to be aware, to be attentive, to be present, and to shift and change according to current reality.
The practice of mindfulness, the cultivation of nonjudgmental moment to moment awareness, includes
- Attentional training – practicing the ability to place one’s attention where one chooses and to remove one’s attention when one chooses.
- Being nonjudgmental toward self and others – This does not mean that you don’t know the difference between acceptable and unacceptable behavior. It means that you don’t make an idol out of whomever or whatever you are being judgmental toward. “Idol” means your eye is dull; your eye becomes stuck there at the judgment point and cannot see further.(27) Since whatever you attend to you become, you become that stuckness.
- Being present – Everything that is going on is going on right here, right now. Now is the time. It is always already now. When we are not here now, we are not at the place of action. We are not being frontline responders. And that is always a personal choice. We are masters at zoning out.
- Being aware – Images that come with sensations, feelings and thoughts carry us away. Part of mindfulness practice is recognizing when we are zoning away, recognizing our own state of consciousness, its furnishings, and perhaps deciding to rearrange the furniture. I don’t like that old sad sofa, that rigid straight chair, that bed of nails, that dart board with the picture of the person I love most to hate. Or maybe you decide to keep those furnishings. That is, of course, up to you. The point is to become aware of the habitual furnishings of your mind.
Deadly States of Mind
In the martial arts, the state of one’s mind is considered as highly important. One’s attitude is manifested mentally, spiritually, and physically. One’s attitude is clearly visible. The “wrong” attitude can open one to serious injury or death.
In writing about their art and in training students, martial arts teachers use many “minding” terms: right mindedness, no-mind, mind like the moon, mind like water, immovable mind, no-abiding mind, original mind, placement of the mind, mind-stopping and so on.
There are at least four ways of mind that can be deadly (in martial arts and in daily life): the full mind, the stopped mind, the led mind, and ordinary mind.
The Full Mind
He checked his mind from time to time. When looking within, he found that much of the time he was full. When thoughts and images occupied his mind, when emotions flooded his heart, he had no time, no room for anything or anyone. When his mind was full, he went through the day as if blind and deaf, insensitive to all but mind-chatter and emotional surges. He became a victim of fullness. There was no room for anyone but himself.
Once there was a young Japanese swordsman full of pride and self-importance. He used every opportunity to show off his skill with the sword, even challenging and killing those who were obviously no match for him. One day, full to overflowing with his swaggering ego, he confronted Miyamoto Musashi (who later authored Gorin No Sho, The Book of Five Rings). Musashi declined the invitation to an immediate duel. An agreement was reached to meet on a river island at dawn the next day.
Before dawn, the young man strutted before the onlookers proclaiming what he was going to do to Musashi, if that coward ever showed up! Meanwhile, Musashi asked a boatman to row him to the island of encounter. On the way, he whittled a rough sword out of an extra wooden oar.
In a relaxed yet focused state of mind, Musashi stepped out of the boat, walked directly to the awaiting braggart and struck one blow on the crown of the man’s skull. The man with the mind full of himself fell dead.
The young man obviously had the wrong state of mind. He was saturated with egotistical pride. Musashi, on the other hand, had a “free and open mind.”
The Stopped Mind
When he asked Willard Lindstrom, an accomplished South Dakota guitarist, piano player, and beekeeper, his secret to making music, Willard said simply, “Don’t stop.”
A second type of mind that leads to defeat is the stopped mind. A stopped mind produces an opening. The enemy appears and slashes through the opening.
When your mind (awareness) stops, you stop. Like a fly in the web of a spider, you re caught in doubt, tangled in hesitation, paralyzed by indecision. One step toward “unfreezing” is to realize that you are all three (fly, web, and spider) and begin laughing at your amazingly competent ability to trance yourself into stuckness.
Deliberate stopping of the mind, called a suki in Japanese, is one of the weapons used by martial artists. In stopping the other’s mind (often by a devastating shout), the attacker has the other at his mercy.
The truth of this can also be seen in a conversation where each may be attempting to sway the other to a particular point of view. As long as one keeps a verbal and nonverbal flow with immediate and relevant responses, one cannot be “pinned down.” If there is faltering and hesitating, the other conversationalists pick up the beat.
In daily life, a stopped mind is one caught in fantasy, in doubt, in any internal state that decreases or eliminates awareness. A stopped mind is a dead mind. The person is a victim of stupor-idity.
The Led Mind
Do you remember the childhood trick of pointing to a person’s chest and asking “what’s that?” as if something inappropriate (a bug, spilled food) is there? If they fall for it and look down, your pointing finger quickly becomes a tool for flipping them under the nose or chin. You have led their mind and they have paid the consequences.
The mind that is led is an attached mind, attached to some aspect of internal or external circumstances. The mind sticks like glue to a pre-established plan, to rigid belief, to a feinting movement, to a sword blade. As a result, the attached mind does not reflect current reality.
A swordsman named Hidetsuna, who lived in 15th century Japan, passed through a village where he was met by confused and anxious villagers. A man had taken a child hostage and barricaded himself in a barn with threats of killing the child if anyone approached.
Hidetsuna put aside his swords, had his head shaved, donned a monk’s robe, and approached the barn armed with only two rice balls, one in each hand. He told the alarmed (and hungry) man that he had brought food for the child and for the man.
Hidetsuna tossed one rice ball to the man, who released the child and caught it in his left hand. Hidetsuna immediately tossed the other rice ball. The man dropped his sword and caught the second rice ball. Hidetsuna stepped in and subdued him.
This man’s mind was led by the tossed rice balls. As a result, his mind could not take in his current reality.
The led mind pursues a reactive path. All other paths are closed. Free unrestrained 360 degree awareness is not a possibility.
Trance Mind
Most of us attend to our internal dialogue most of the time. By attending, we direct energy to our internal dialogue. It grows even more powerful. We begin to identify with our thoughts. We believe we are the internal dialogue. This is a form of insanity. Insanity is the inability to shift one’s attention, a stuckness.
We entrance ourselves. Like master hypnotists, we give ourselves repetitive suggestions. We convince ourselves that we are this way, the world is that way, and the future is like this or that. We repeat these hypnotic commands to ourselves and dare anyone to deny that our hypnotic suggestions are anything but reality. We repeat scenarios of doom as if fingering a demonic rosary.
“Monday” is a trance state. So is “Friday.” Dogs don’t know it’s Monday (except by our trance behavior). Neither do the trees, small children, flowers, the sun, the earth. You are the one who decides that since this particular appearance of the sun is named “Monday,” you will imbue it with Monday-like qualities. You are the one who decides. Oh sure, you may have committed to certain activities. But you don’t have to let it be “Moan Day.”
Trance dance. If you are going to be in a trance, don’t do it half-heartedly. Really get into it! Trance yourself on purpose and with full awareness. For example, if one of your favorite trances is worry, take your usual worries and fashion them into a worry mantra, a litany of worries, complaints and fears. Write them down. Capsulate them, make them into one or two sentences or a few phrases. It’s helpful if it’s rhythmic. At the end of your worry mantra, add a phrase (repeated twice) invoking the aid of the powers of the universe, such as “Help me O God, Help me O God” or “Help! Help!” Every time you feel like worrying, recite it like a Gregorian chant. [Caution: Do not use self-limiting phrases like “I can’t” as in “I can’t pay these bills. I can’t pay these bills. Help! Help!” Take the “I” out of it as in “Bills are unpaid. Bills are unpaid. Help! Help!”]
Why-ning and how-ling. Why-ning is a part of ordinary mind. Why-ning refers to the tendency to ask “why?” Why me? Why must I do this? Why am I like I am? Why is the world this way? Why, why, why, why, why? This is why-ning.
Why? Genetics, environment, karma, family, job, society, early childhood experiences, Adam and Eve and the serpent, television, other people, God, the Devil, the Big Bang, the Great Unfolding…. The list goes on and on.
Trying to find out why is of limited use in creating personal change. I can stay on my therapeutic couch of analysis forever. A little understanding of why is okay, but a more important question is how? After I know what I want to change, I need to know how. How? By doing this and not doing that. By being this and not being that. By attending to this and not attending to that.
Stop why-ning. Start howl-ing.
Stance Affects Trance
My grandmother would correct my posture. “Stand up straight,” she would say. She was wiser than I knew at the time. Following her advice affected far more than the physical body. Physical stance is an ally in clear seeing.
Many of us are entranced much of the time. Even though our bodies are here, our minds travel to other places and times: reliving conversations with others, envisioning next steps in daily activities. These travelings in past, present, future, and hyperspace are trance states.
For example, I may trance myself into believing that I am “George Breed”, a social phenomenon composed of other’s perceptions and expectations. If not careful, I might live out a portion of life doing my best to either conform to or react against these perceptions and expectations. I would rather see clearly and not be entranced.
The way we stand and sit affects the subtle energies of our consciousness. To experience this, sit with your elbows resting on your knees and head in your hands and look down. Become aware of the mood tone of this posture.
Now relax, breathe and shake your hands as if flinging water droplets from your fingers. This allows releasing of mood.
Next, sit erect in a chair, both feet flat on the floor. Visualize a golden or silver “heavenly cord” from which you are suspended. The cord is attached to the crown of your head and extends upward into infinity. While grounded by the chair and floor, your upper body is suspended by the heavenly cord. Let breathing flow. Become aware of your mood. Notice the differences between your mood tone in this posture and the mood tone in the first posture.
Persons often report that the second posture is “easier” and “more relaxing.” With awareness, you may find that you put yourself into postures (like the first posture) that produce trance states of negativity. It pays to park your body in a posture that generates positive energy. No one is in charge of this but you.
Chiltan Posture
One Flagstaff winter morning I opened to the Chiltan posture.(28) My dogs and I were moving through the Ponderosa Pine forest before sunrise, the just-past-full Moon grinning from the west on the new snow while the Morning Star blazed gloriously in the eastern sky and the Big Dipper cast its overhead glow while its north-pointing finger singled out the San Francisco Peaks, capped with snow and framed in a break in the pines. The near peak, Agassiz, looked like Mount Fuji in the moonlight.
I stood facing the Morning Star, feet shoulder width apart, left hand on one-point, right hand on heart. My right hand on the heart energized, warmed, and strengthened the heart; the left hand opened the one-point. After the heart and one-point were vibrating warmly in the cold pre-dawn air, I switched hands. I found that the right hand on the one-point and the left hand on the heart connected one-point and heart.
I turned to the west and opened to the spirit of the Moon in the same way: first, right hand on heart, left hand on one-point; second, the switching of the hands.
I turned to the south and faced two oaks, standing side by side, each with gracefully extended snow-covered arms glistening in the moonlight. My left hand was on my heart, my right on the one-point. The energy of the one-point, activated earlier, moved through my right palm, into the right arm, up and across the shoulders, and through the left arm into the heart chakra. The energy reversed itself and spiraled from the heart into the one-point. The energy then moved straight up and down connecting the heart and one-point in one shimmering vibration.
After a while, I moved through the forest and found myself standing and experiencing the blessing of a large snow-draped oak. I opened to its Chiltan spirit. Joy moved through me. I turned and saw the moon hanging over four distinctly individual Ponderosa pines. The vision of each was touched by the faint rosy hue of the soon-to-appear sun. Moonlight still fell on the snow. I looked at the oak. Something almost imperceptible moved in its upper middle branches, something at its heart. I laughed with pleasure and moved on through the snow.
Going Out of Your Mind
The man was highly intellectual. He sat in my office caught in the web of intellect. While he continued to speak, I wrote a note on a small card and handed it to him. He read it aloud, “Go out of your mind.” He looked confused, then serious. He burst out laughing.
In our culture, the phrase “out of your mind” means crazy, irresponsible. “Are you out of your mind?” is a question asked of someone behaving in a bizarre or unexpected fashion. We value total identification with the mind or intellect. We still put Descartes (“I think, therefore I am”) before the “horse” (one’s vehicles: the physical body and the awareness body of infinite extension).
Having been asked to talk to a university career women’s group, I looked up “career” in my mammoth 1918 Webster’s Dictionary. Career has its roots in a word that means “to gallop swiftly on a track like a running horse.” The word “careen” (to veer almost out of control) is a close cousin.
Many of us have multiple careers and are galloping swiftly through the day. It behooves us to pay attention to our horse during the day. If we go out of our mind and allow the full experience of embodying, we find that our horse has wisdom of its own. Going out of our mind allows attuning to the wisdom of the physical body, which opens further into the awareness body (you extend much further than you think).
The warrior often has no time to think. When someone comes swinging, the “horse” is already moving. The same is true in everyday life. In driving a car, you may have had the experience of braking and/or swerving quickly with no thought. The horse takes over. The horse has great wisdom.
In going out of the mind, we open to relationship. In relationship, separation does not exist. One does not act (a “subject” does not “do something” to an “object”). Action is. What occurs is called forth from what is. Whatever comes to pass is called for by the flow of the situation. Future action unfolds out of current process. The Tao taos the Tao. The Flow flows the Flow. The Wave waves the Wave.
In the martial arts, this phenomenon is known as the sword that swings itself. The swordsperson has no thought of harming another, no thought of revenge or of dispensing justice, no thought of self-protection. The swordsperson is simply (and vividly) present. The attacker calls the sword into action.
When the sword swings itself, the ego is not involved. When the ego (sense of separate self) swings the sword, the ego is responsible for whatever happens (usually a bloody mess). When the sword of spirit swings, no ego is in sight. Right action occurs. The action provides what is called for, no more, no less.
Presence
A bear of a man sat in my office. He was moving through troubled times at home and at work. The man chuckled. “Well the way I figure it, if you can’t do anything else, you can still suit up and show up. Isn’t that right?” I could only laugh with him and agree.
The man’s “suit” consisted of presence: troubled but here, hurting but here. He was determined to continue to face and deal. No strategies, no weapons, no plans other than to “suit up” and “show up.” No running, no hiding, simply present.
Life has its own rhythm. At times it is easy to maintain open awareness. At other times, it feels almost impossible. We seem to open and close like some exotic blooming flower, opening and closing to a rhythm we do not understand.
When we can’t see clearly and we feel “shut in” and our vision obscured, an effective response is to allow. Allow, even give blessings to, the current state of awareness and it will be given room to change. Transformation occurs.
If nothing else be simply present.
Vanquishing Negative Thought
Steps exist for getting rid of negative and judgmental thoughts. First, before you throw the thought away, see if there is any information that is useful in that thought. Do not throw a repetitive thought away until you see if it has something to say to you.
As an example, if the thought comes into my mind: “I talk too much,” I want to take a look at that. I want to observe the full extent of my talkativeness. Am I indeed flooding the air with my words?
After extracting any useful information, the next step is Pffft! a method taught by Aikido Sensei Koichi Tohei. Find an index finger. Place it to your lips. Vigorously utter the sound, Pffft! and throw the thought with your index finger to the far horizon, to outer infinity. Body and mind acting together are more powerful than either alone. One combines the bodily gesture of throwing it away with the imagery of that thought being flung to the far corners of the universe.
A participant from the Navaho Nation recently told our mindfulness group that the Navaho way is to say “Pah.” I like “Pah.” It is a gentler releasing. Pah!
Whether you Pffft! Or Pah! do not stand there looking for the thought to come back. Immediately turn your attention to something else: a predetermined thought, an affirmation of some kind, a prayer. Or turn your attention to whatever you are doing. If you are ironing your clothes, turn your attention to ironing your clothes. If you are driving, turn your attention to driving.
If the negative thought arises again, as soon as you are aware of it, throw it away again with a gesture and sound, and then turn your attention immediately to another place. Since attention directs energy, if you pay attention to this negative thought after extracting its useful information, then you are giving it more power. You are allowing it to stay in your mind and it becomes more and more powerful. To allow it to dissolve, you must turn your attention to something else.
Attention directs energy. What is attended to becomes energized (more powerful). What is not attended to becomes de-energized and eventually fades into oblivion.
Formal and Informal Practice
Mindful awareness can be practiced both formally and informally. Formal practice means to have a certain time and location for sitting quietly, to honor a specific form (parking one’s body so it doesn’t fall over, sitting in a dignified posture, eliminating external distraction, creating a sacred space, etc.). Informal practice uses daily life with all its unexpectancies, distractions, interactions, routines as an arena for mindfulness.
Formal practice provides a base, a ground for informal practice. Daily life practice ensures that mindfulness is part of one’s being and isn’t an aspect that can only thrive in a “hothouse” environment.
Your Mindfulness Practice
Consider creating (or deepening) a formal mindfulness practice for you. What time of day might it occur? Early morning? Noon? Evening? Where might you sit? In what chair? On what cushion? Can you turn your phone off during this time? Do you need to notify other family members so they can support your practice?
For daily life practice of mindfulness, consider using a centering exercise (e.g. small bowl of water) as you move through the day or periodically attending to your breath to call yourself into the Now. Practice being actively present in whatever you are currently doing (driving, talking, listening, walking, performing a task).
Here is some room for you to make some notes about your mindfulness practice. How will you embody mindfulness in your life?
