Practising Mindfulness

Category: Parenting

  • The Power to Choose over the Pervasive Influence of Anxiety

    We can of course get drugs to fix most things (or so we’re led to believe) and are the drugs a long term healthy fix? We may also be led to believe we’re powerless to make the changes we need. We may believe we’re unable to take control

    Intentional or not it is in the drug industries interest that we continue to believe we need their assistance. There is no doubt modern medicines have their place and value. It would certainly never be for me to advise anyone about medication prescribed by professionals. We must remember that those professionals are as reliant on drugs as those they prescribe them to. So rather than this reliance, we can seek to find the answers from within ourselves, and if those answers are beyond any recourses we hold, we must educate ourselves into changing our thinking. How does that sound? Challenging? To love a challenge we must firstly keep an eye on the prize.

    Some, after many years of searching, finally see the true reasons for their difficulties. Those that find the answers can then help us take a shortcut; a rabbit run to our prize. To take advantage of this we must listen and pay attention. We must be mindful

    Always stop and take a moment to consider the root causes. What are our responses to anxiety and fear? So many children are pacified with sweets and food. Children struggle to deal with strong emotions. Parents often struggle to deal with their children’s emotions. Instead of remaining calm and reasoned a parent may instantly seek to ease their child’s unease with sweets and food. In whatever way we seek to ease our children’s upset, we can trace our own experiences back, and see how similar solutions were offered to us. These solutions have grown and mutated over time. We may be copying the behaviour we witnessed as a child. Sometimes we’re not even consciously aware of how we reach for the distraction before experiencing the emotion.

    Instead, we must make offerings of love, and comfort. We then wait for the mind to gain control in its own time. The avoidance of feelings, through the usual unhealthy distractions, only delays the inevitable. They will always surface in some form. If we continue to eat, instead of feeling and working through anxiety, we end up with all the associated diseases that come with obesity

    The root of our anxiety can be simple. A lonely child is standing in the que at the tuck shop because he is afraid. The sweets will act as a distraction and the sugar itself will lift his mood. When we spend time with the child within ourselves, this simple act, can ease our loneliness. As adults when we’re mindful of our habits – through seeing their root – they become less like habits. When we’re aware of the distraction the feelings will surface. We must feel them to be free of them. Will drugs help us with this? Or will our awareness?

  • If you’re able to remain focused for forty minutes . . .

  • Mindful of the Truth

    In this reality, he sat next to the bed of the dying child and told her all about heaven. In an alternate reality, he told her this . . .

    We all die. Some die sooner than others. It is nature or circumstances that decide this. And it’s true that you will never see me again but that’s okay. Okay, because of what I’m about to tell you.

    There are many different elements that have made you who you are. Those elements, or parts, were already here before you were born. When you die, your body returns to the earth. All that you are is recycled and used again. You become the grass, the trees, and the blue sky. You, my love, will go everywhere. You will be in everything and that everything will be here for as long as there is a universe. And how long will the universe live? Longer than our minds can conceive of.

    Which reality we live in is, of course, a choice. If we chose a reality based on fantasy, what is this life? Is our life something vague and filled with conflict and denial? Are we wrapping ourselves in cotton wool created by lies? Facing the truth means experiencing the stark realities of life. And those realities, although sharp and focused, are the truth of a beautiful life

    When we have the courage to face our suffering and talk to our children with truths, only then will we live in a world that knows how to escape the madness. Always be mindful of the truth, and that way, you will find truth in everything. Love. Loss. Joy. Sadness. Life. Everything becomes clear. Life and death are beautiful then.

  • Mindful of the Root to Anger

    We see violence and anger and for many of us our instant reaction is to be angry and violent ourselves

    I watch a child shouting abusive language at an adult and I instantly feel angry. I want to discipline this child. Teach them to respect adults and know their place. I want to shout and slap. I’m angry enough for this to build into rage and fury.

    It’s only when I stop and become mindful do I realise what this actually is. I become aware of how infected by fear I have become. The angry child is terrified and powerless and all I wanted to do was compound this. I became fearful and angry myself. It’s a childish response. I must be the adult

    Once I acknowledge the responsibility of becoming the adult I allow something else to take over my mind. That’s right. I allow room in my mind for the opposite of fear. As soon as I do this it is this emotion that begins to consume my thinking and feelings. I allow it to consume my mind. When I do this, what I want now, is to hold this terrified child in my arms until my love helps their fear subside. The antidote to fear and anger, that can all too easily build into rage and fury, is love. All we need do is become mindful enough to begin questioning our initial reaction. In this way we begin to give love room to exist in our minds.

    An important consideration is how mindfulness can allow us to see the very root to our initial reaction to a child’s anger. We can ask: How is it I feel instantly angry myself? Where did I learn this reaction?

    In my case this reaction is down to conditioning. I was taught that children are inferior to adults and should reflect this in their behaviour. Authoritarian parents – inferior, childish and conditioned themselves – made certain that I showed inferiority to their superiority. As such, my instant reaction to seeing, or experiencing a child demonstration abusive angry, language to an adult, was as my conditioning dictated. Instead, I can be aware now, and allow the opposite of fear to consume me.

  • Responding to Aggression with Love and Humility

    Some will always fight fire with fire. The healthy response for mind and body is to extinguish aggression with the cool, quenching powers, of love and humility

    When the bully told the boy: “get down on your knees and kiss my feet” how powerful would it have been if the victim had said: “certainly sir and would you like me to polish your shoes whilst I’m down there?”

    Firstly, we can look at the need of the bully to dominate. There is a likelihood that the bully had experienced a high degree of humiliation from a parent or other adult and needed to inflict this pain on others. This of course doesn’t make it right and yet it helps us understand the child’s pain.

    Secondly, we must look at the strength and courage it would have taken for the victim to respond to the bully with love, humour, and humility. The child victim of the bully would have needed an informed and developed consciousness. He would have needed to be aware, present, and mindful of his words and actions. He would have needed the ability to consider cause and effect. He would have needed to be considered.

    Developing and informing our children is were the answers lie

    The consequences of the majority of us responding to aggression with love and humility are not difficult to see. We would certainly live in a quieter, more peaceful, world. And it is the case, that compared to the past, we already live in a better world. For us to grow and build on this success, we must keep a keen eye on how our children choose to respond to aggression. They can easily be taught the peaceful path when offered love and humility from us adults.

  • Self-awareness & Objectivity with Mindfulness

    I noticed in the news today that the mother of a child that was murdered by fellow students wants mindfulness introduced into schools. The story doesn’t make it clear what she believes there is to gain from this and I can only imagine it’s the following:

    Mindfulness increases self-awareness through our ability to see ourselves objectively

    Although this is the case, for children who have murder on their minds, for objectivity to be a preventative measure, these children would firstly need some comparisons and of course a developed sense of wrong and right. They would need a developed understanding of cause and effect. They would also initially need to care about whether their actions are wrong or right. Does self-awareness and objectivity award this to a child?

    My personal feeling is that it would need to be the parents, carers or those responsible for murderous children, to be the ones who’re more mindful

    Mindful parents are those who’re aware of what children’s minds are exposed to and the effects of this exposure. Mindful children who’ve been exposed to – and consequently instilled with – prejudices, hatred and the belief violence is a solution, will still commit murder. In fact, it might even make them better at it. Mindfulness training for children, on its own, would be insufficient.

  • Mindfulness of Beliefs

    Taking mindfulness up to the next level, we can use it to improve further aspects, of our lives

    Our beliefs influence our lives in ways that it can be quite staggering to comprehend. And we can gain sufficient understanding of beliefs, and how being mindful of them can improve our lives, in a relatively short period of time. There’s little need to go into a detailed study of beliefs, all we need do, is apply some simple understandings of them – and mindfulness – in order to make some powerful changes.

    Lets’s begin with a useful example of beliefs in relationships

    Think about growing up with a parent (or parents) who believed that relationships can be open. If you’re unsure of what I mean by ‘open’ please look up the exact meaning of this type of relationship here. On a personal level, I have very firm boundaries in respect of intimate relationships, and that’s how it works for me. Some might describe my view, or beliefs, as dated or restricted in some way, however, from my understanding, open relationships tend to create far more problems than they solve. Anyway, consider how things might be to a child growing up in such a household. A specific example I can share with you is, that of a child who sensed her mothers disappointment at her fathers promiscuity. This disappointment was emotionally transferred to the child who went on to believe that relationships where ‘disappointing’.

    Now, the point to be mindful of here is, the question of how such an individual went on to create disappointing relationships, as an adult. To help with this, we can ask ourselves the question: what would need to happen for me to find relationships disappointing? And I’m not talking specifically about intimate relationships here. The deep rooted belief that relationships are disappointing will spill over into all relationships. We must remember that the mind has a tendency to generalize when it come to beliefs. The mind will group all relationships together and find ways in which they are all a disappointment in one form or another.

    When asking yourself that earlier question, I wonder what answer came back to you? Perhaps disappointment in a relationship would be something as simple as poor timekeeping. In the case of the individual who grew up in a promiscuous household, she found relationships disappointing, when she couldn’t trust people to stay true to future arrangements. The way in which she did this, was to always make some small change to plans with friends, that would involve some uninvited element that would then cause her friends to feel disappointed. This would then cause her friends to make changes that then disappointed her. The end result being the fulfillment of her belief that relationships are disappointing.

    Take some time with that last paragraph, as understanding it fully, will prove very powerful.

    Until we’re mindful of how we find fulfillment of our beliefs, and take responsibility for this, we will continue running around in circles

    It’s useful to keep in mind how it is us that creates our own difficulties. It’s far too easy to blame some sort of external element. This is of course the point. The mind would prefer to hold on to its beliefs because to do this is an efficient use of energy. So pinning the blame somewhere, other than on ourselves, saves energy. Change takes effort. Changing beliefs takes a great deal of effort, and yet through being mindful, of how our beliefs can be influencing the flow of our lives, change begins to gently happen. A gentle flow is preferable and this is helped through mindfulness of our beliefs.

  • What to Believe to Make the Change

    My curiosity constantly draws me into seeking to understand what drives people. I’m curious as to what it takes to make a person want to live well. Why should we search for peace? Why should we question our addictions? Why should we care?

    I feel the answer to these questions lies entirely in the level of compassion that’s been instilled in us from a very early age. Self-compassion, or compassion for the wellbeing of others, I believe is something that starts very early. It’s those parents who buy their child a rabbit, with the intention of helping that child build love and compassion for other beings, who raise a human that’s likely to care. The caring and taking responsibility for another being, from an early age, helps the child understand the two way nature of the relationship. Pleasure is awarded the child whose rabbit is healthy because they’ve taken proper care of it. Also, when the rabbit eventually dies, the child learns from their suffering. They learn that happiness and suffering go hand in hand.

    There must be sufficient reward for caring. There must always be something in it for us and we must never be ashamed to know and admit this. Our survival is paramount and we must be taught that when we make our survival the priority, we inadvertently lift everyone else

    Consider the late spiritual leader Thích Nhất Hạnh. Many have described his greatest achievement as the communities he created; the Sangha. We must ask what was his motivation? The first driver will have been his belief. His faith. He believed in Buddhism with every fiber of his being. He also believed he had the medicine to help people out of their suffering; that Buddhism had some of the solutions to humanities plight. The second driving will have been his compassion. He wanted all of us to better deal with our suffering, through living lives, that had more of an acceptance of how – according to Buddhist understandings – we generate our suffering. The third, and by no means last motivation, will have concerned the pleasure he received as a result of helping others prosper.

    The communities he created are currently hard at work looking to spread the word. They’re looking to spread the word of mindfulness and the importance of love and compassion in the world. It’s my understanding, that the current they will always be swimming against, is that of the conflicting beliefs our children are still being taught.

    We must understand that the rewards we receive concern the easing of our own suffering. The child must be taught to understand, how it’s the process of helping other beings prosper, that in turn creates their own prosperity

    It starts with: What do I want? Thích Nhất Hạnh saw the image of a Buddha as a child and decided: “That’s what I want to be” it started with what he wanted and the comfort that there will be some benefit to him. His compassion for other beings then drove him to want this for others too. His communities were his masterpiece and what piece of mind this must have offered him.

    If you want piece of mind, if you’ve finally had enough of our destructive patterns of living, ask yourself what you believe is the best way to live well. To give or to take? I would suggest neither. I would suggest that through reaching for the child within, who wanted the rabbit to thrive, we get closer to finding the truth. We are neither giving or taking, just simply being compassionately and mindfully there for another being, and in turn it will be there for us. Make your driving a deep desire to help others prosper and make the miracle happen.

  • Stimulation

    Image by Pexels
    The need for stimulation is fine and creating the need for it’s opposite is also fine

    Think of a child constantly seeking stimulation. When a child is stimulated, it’s often because a parent, carer or teacher, is being attentive to them. They’re being entertained, educated and played with. When the child is stimulated in this way the result is happiness, excitement and growth. Ultimately, and for obvious reasons, we can become totally addicted to this.

    On a personal level the later part of my childhood was filled with the kind of stimulation fear brings: chaos

    Interestingly enough I feel that as a result of this chaos my mind often craved calm. The only problem with calm is it’s seeming lack of stimulus. Children that are unfamiliar with calm, only knowing chaos, become very accustomed to the need for stimulation. We can end up conflicted, wondering about the exhaustion we often feel, and why we can’t seem to turn of our need for constant stimulus.

    Wanting is driven by our addiction and craving for stimulation

    It harks back to childhood and the way in which we were stimulated then. The positive of this was experienced by lucky children who where encouraged to find stimulation through creativeness. We can easily recognise those individuals, especially those who continue to be creative all their lives. Caution is advised though, because craving the kind of stimulation creativeness brings, does engender a degree of danger. However, the survivors of this danger, are those who’re able to find balance and a calmness of mind inbetween their creativeness. Sting would be a fine example.

    And so we can experience happiness, growth and contentment if we have a healthy balance between our need for stimulation, and our need for calm. Learning to meditate, in order to find improved mindfulness, is the easiest way to begin finding this kind of balance. The alternative, could well be a lifetime seeking to understand the conflict, caused by our addiction.