The model of mindfulness that I want to present involves these three core elements of intention,
attention, and attitude. And I want to talk about each of these. This is the definition
from our book:
Mindfulness is the awareness that arises out of intentionally paying attention in an open,
kind, and
discerning way. So this is all we’re trying to do. It doesn’t necessarily have to do
with meditation
practice. We practice so we can remember to be this way moment by moment.
So, first I’ll speak about intention. Intention is simply knowing why you’re doing what
you’re doing
– what is your aspiration, your vision, your personal goal? Intention really sets
the compass of our heart.
It says this is the direction I want to go in – not necessarily, I must get there – but
this is the direction
I want to head. It’s not a destination. It's not goal-oriented. We’re not striving
to get a certain place.
We're just setting the compass of our heart. Jon Kabat-Zinn says: Your intentions set the
stage for what
is possible. They remind you from moment to moment of why you are practicing. He says:
I used to think
meditation practice was so powerful that as long as you did it at all you would see growth
and change.
But time has taught me that some kind of personal vision is necessary.
I'll give you a very simple example that happened last year. I was teaching in Europe for two
weeks, and it was the longest I'd been away from my little boy, Jackson. And as I was
flying home, I was
having all these feeling of guilt. He was 7 at the time, and I felt like it was too
long to have been away,
and should I have done this and it, was it wrong? And I realized guilt wasn’t really
helping, so I made a
very clear intention – when I get home, I just want to be with my son.
And I want him to know mom’s home and that I love him and he’s safe. And that's it.
I'm not going to
check email. I’m not going check my mail. I'm really going to focus. I was getting home
on a Friday night,
and I figured Saturday we were going to spend the entire day together and that was it. And
we were
going to go to the beach.
So we woke up the next morning, and I start packing up for the beach and making the perfect
lunch, the perfect picnic, and getting all his stuff and really excited to show him how
much I love him.
And he, you know, in the meantime was like, ‘Hey Mom, come look at this. Hey Mom, Mom.’
I was
like, ‘Okay, just a second,’ still doing my thing. Yeah, you know this isn't going
to turn out well. And so
we’re starting to go, get ready to the beach and I’m like, ‘Hey Jackson, let’s go,’
and he’s like, ‘I don’t
really want to go to the beach.’ I was like, ‘Honey, come on. It's beautiful. It's sunny.
We’re going to the
beach.’ He’s like, ‘Okay,’ puts on his bathing suit. We’re walking out the
door, and I’m, like, five steps
ahead of him. And I get to the car, and I look back, and he’s sitting down on our
front porch, and I'm
like, ‘Jackson.’ And I feel that kind of contraction in my body, a little bit of
impatience. And he's just
sitting there, and I start noticing the tension in my body, of I have an agenda, and I have
a plan, it’s going
to be wonderful.
Luckily, I'd been teaching mindfulness for the past two weeks straight. So I had this
moment of
awareness and I reflected: What’s my intention? Oh yeah, I just want him to know that I love
him, that
I'm home. And so I walked back over, and I sat down next to him. And he was looking at
these ants –
that’s actually why he was sitting there. And they were pretty extraordinary. And I
sat down next to him,
and I just sat there quietly, and I was breathing, and I was with him. And he kind of leaned
his little body
into my body, and I could feel the sun on our backs, and I could feel us resting, us
connecting. And that
was, that was it, that was the most important thing. So our intention reminds us what is
most important.
And it can be that simple.
So present-moment awareness is essential if we're going to see clearly, right, that’s
the definition
of mindfulness. And yet, what we found – in fact, this study was published I think two
years ago, with
650,000 subjects – is that our mind wanders approximately half the time. They found that
46.9% of the
time your mind is wandering. That’s a lot of your life. So part of this practice is
learning how to attend
in the present moment. And it doesn't mean we shut out our thoughts. It doesn't mean
we no longer
have any thoughts – we have 12 to 50,000 thoughts every single day. You're not going
to make those
go away. What we start to do is change our relationship to thinking so that we can rest
more in the
actuality of the present moment. So we don't believe our thoughts so much. I love this
quote from Emo
Philips. He says, “I used to think the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then
I realized
who was telling me this.”
Right?! Right. Don't believe your thoughts.
So the intention with mindfulness is that we train and stabilize our attention in the
present
moment so that we can see clearly. I actually believe one of the most healing dimensions
of mindfulness
is just that our mind and our body are in one place. It’s exhausting – it's exhausting
to be sitting here and
have your mind racing all over the place. So part of this practice is learning how to
just let ourselves rest
in the present moment and know that where we are is okay. This is enough.
So this is a picture of a monastery that I visited when I was first learning about
meditation. And
when I first went there, I didn't know anything about meditation. I was about 19 or 20 years
old, I didn’t
speak any Thai, and this beautiful monk invited me in for this 12-day silent retreat, and
he didn't speak
any English. So he kind of, you know, made it clear that I was supposed to attend to
my breath going in
and out of my nostrils. I said, I could probably handle that – pay attention in the present
moment to the
breath. So I’m sitting there, and guess what I noticed?
It's not so easy. My mind wandered. And it would wander off, and I’d bring it back.
And I
would try harder, and I would try harder, and I would try harder. And I got really impatient
and really
frustrated, and I would sit there, and I would breathe, and my mind would wander off. And
eventually
I was like, damn it, Shauna, what's wrong with you? Why can’t you do this? And who
do you think you
are to try to be a meditator? You’re not a meditator; you don’t know what you're
doing. And then all
of the sudden, by like, the second or third day, I was looking around at everyone else
at the monastery,
and I’m like, who do they think they are? And, you know, just this judgmental mind of
like, tension and
contraction. And then this monk, on day four, flew in from London, and he spoke English.
And I said, ‘can
I please have an interview with him?’ Because you’re in silence the whole time too, so
it’s just you and
your mind. It’s uncomfortable.
Yeah. I remember now, Anne Lamott, who is one of my favorite authors, she says, “Your
mind is
like a dangerous neighborhood, you don't want to go there alone.”
So, it’s me and my mind alone, and it was dangerous. And this monk came in, and he said,
‘How's
it going?’ and I was like, ‘Not so well. This is what's happening: I’m getting really
angry at myself and
anxious and judgmental and striving, and I’m trying.’ And he looks at me, and he goes,
‘Oh dear.’ He’s
like, ‘You're not practicing mindfulness.’ He said, ‘You're practicing frustration,
anxiety, impatience.’
And then he said these five words that really changed my life. He said, ‘What you practice
becomes
stronger.’ What you practice becomes stronger.
We know this now from neural plasticity. We know that your repeated experiences shape
your
brain. What he said was that when you practice paying attention, how you practice is important,
attitude. Are you paying attention with acceptance, with openness, with curiosity – what does
it feel like
to be hot or to have your mind wander off? With kindness, with gentleness, with warmth,
with a sense
of trust. This is what's happening right now, and it's okay, because it's just what's happening.
I might not
like it, but it's already happening, so can I be present with it and kind?
These qualities, these attitudes, it doesn't mean that you feel happy all the time. It
doesn't
mean that everything's okay all the time. What it means is that you have this big pot
of experience and
that whatever is arising, you're holding with kindness. You're holding your fear with kindness.
holding your sadness with kindness and with curiosity. You’re interested in your own
experience. You’re
interested in what it feels like to be alive.
Sometimes I think of it as like I'm my own parent and like my little Shauna’s coming
to me and
saying, like, ‘I'm really angry right now.’ And I’m like, ‘Tell me about it. What's
going on?’ Right? I’m not
trying to make it go away.
I’m not trying to tell her she needs to feel happy and joyful all the time. And I'm
holding it with kindness,
and it’s okay.
With my patients, there's a way in which whatever they bring into the room is absolutely okay.
It’s
absolutely okay. I first have to get there with myself, though. I first have to allow
myself to be absolutely
okay with however I'm feeling. This is just what I'm feeling right now. This is just what's
happening right
now. And it's okay. And I can be with it.