As we settle into a regular mediation practice we begin to glimpse a part of ourselves that we likely haven’t experienced before and a whole new inner life opens up to us. At its center is the awareness that we are interconnected with everything and everyone, and each a facet of the perfection of everything that is. We feel expanded and in the flow. We are imbued with the life force and steeped in stillness. There is a timeless quality to our awareness.
Unfortunately this sense of illumination is fleeting as we get up and go about with our day. We return to our habitual existence of separation instead of interconnection. We move out of present moment awareness and return to seeing the world not as it is, but as we want it to be or how we are afraid that it is. Stress and anxiety seep in as our expectations and fears take over our thoughts. We lose sight of who we really are and our connection to the whole. Our habits distant us from our soul and clouds our sense of purpose. From a biological perspective we can say that we’ve forgotten our niche which is an ecologist’s way of saying our calling – our unique gift or offering to the world. The stress, anxiety, addiction, and even illness that arises in us is the result of losing track of our niche. Finding it will bring joy, flow and well being back into our lives. It changes us at our core and along with it our relationship with everything around us is changed.
But how can we best find our niche? We start by reconnecting, with ourselves, each other and the natural world. We let science inform us and use the principles of nature as a model to re-design our lives. This is the rationale underlying the four steps of the Fire, Wire and Inspire practice. We set our intention. Then renew our relationship with ourselves through meditation and other contemplative practices. We open our hearts to others with the compassion response and then with an open heart we connect with nature.
There is plenty of evidence that meditation plays a powerful role in reducing stress and increasing wellbeing and this is because it guides us toward intimacy with our inner life. It spurs personal growth, teaches us to live in the present moment and makes us aware of the role of projection in our lives. Further we now know that we can change brain structure and improve its function through our thoughts and behavior. This empowers us to literally reinvent ourselves and move further along the developmental path to higher levels of our consciousness.
We also renew our intimate relationship with the natural world which has nourished us for thousands of years and, in modern society, is lost from our daily lives. We go for walks, hikes and bike rides in nature to connect and appreciate the natural beauty around us. We bring nature into our daily experience by creating bouquets for shear enjoyment and nurturing plants for food. As we restore our relationship with the natural world its mystical nature, and ours, reveals itself most unexpectedly: time stops, we see the world as it is. We are moved by wonder, beauty and awe the emotions we feel when we are touched by grace. Over time we find that positive emotions are stabilized and negative ones no longer rule our lives. We find ourselves living in the moment and in the flow without effort. Try it! On this wonderful spring day just open your heart and take a walk. Notice what is all around you. Appreciate the beauty and miracle of this moment.
There’s much talk these days about happiness and it is the topic of our last week in meditation boot camp this week. So I’ve been thinking about it quite a bit myself. There are a number of best selling books out. It’s being written about in blogs and is all over the Internet – just Google happiness and you’ll see what I mean. It’s a funny phenomenon really because it’s hard to put our finger on what it actually is but we know it when we see it. And we know it when we feel it. When we ask parents what they want for their children we usually get that they want them to be happy. But with all the talk are we any closer to finding happiness? Is there a short cut?
One book that is getting a lot of press these days is ‘The Happiness Project’ which is number 15 on the New York Times Best Seller List. This is a book that, true to its title, treats happiness as a project. The author, Gretchen Rubin, by all external criteria, such as affluence, career, marriage, children and friends comes out high on the happiness scale. Yet she decided that her reasonably happy life could be happier so she spent a year test-driving panoply of theories about how to make it so. As a writer, Yale graduate and editor in chief of the Yale Law Journal she is well qualified to conduct her exhaustive search of happiness down through the ages. She read every novel she could find on the subject, evaluated everything she could find about happiness in the positive psychology, philosophy, and the popular press, and consulted with everyone she could that might help her learn how to become happier, from Oprah to David Allen. She then sifted through all the materials, identified the major topics she wanted to address and organized the material by theme. Each month she tried all the advice and suggestions for that theme and developed resolutions that she felt would make her happier. Her themes for January through December in order were: vitality, marriage, work, parenthood, play, leisure, friendship, money, eternity, books, mindfulness, attitude and happiness. For each theme she read everything she could find on the subject, and created resolutions, tips and action plans. By year’s end she wrote the book and has been blogging about it ever sense.
“This is about ordinary happiness.” She said in an interview in the New York Times. She is already happy she explained. “I just want to appreciate more of what I already have.” She says. The book’s intent is to give you a framework for changing your life by identifying what makes you happy and what doesn’t. It promotes making resolutions to boost your happiness and then ways to keep those resolutions. She wants each of us to develop our unique happiness project. Now that the book is published she posts suggestions on her blog, website and other Internet venues. There is a great deal of activity, list making and resolution creating to make this come about. As I read I couldn’t help but notice that much of this happiness was to come about from the external world, from the outside in. While anyone that has been reading my newsletter knows my own approach is the other way around, from the inside out. I think it’s more about being than doing. It was enough to make my head spin and for me. She had missed the point.
Last week I read her latest blog entry. She mentioned that she had recently taken a mindfulness test and not faired well. Actually she faired poorly even thought she’s been working on her happiness project for several years now. Which I think brings me to my point: Happiness is an inside job. It starts with me and my inner life. Simple practices such as meditation and mindfulness are the place to start. Just ask the students who have just gone through the 8 week meditation program. I have. Meditation and mindfulness gives you clarify in the present moment. It helps you feel centered and grounded in your day to day life and empowers you to make the choices that create joy, meaning and purpose in your life. For me that IS the definition of happiness. Save yourself a year in the happiness project and take the fast track to happiness, take up a contemplative practice such as meditation and begin to live a mindful life. The transformation will unfold from there.
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each a facet of the perfection of everything that is. We feel expanded and in the flow. We are imbued with the life force and steeped in stillness. There is a timeless quality to our awareness.
contemplative practices. We open our hearts to others with the compassion response and then with an open heart we connect with nature.
restore our relationship with the natural world its mystical nature, and ours, reveals itself most unexpectedly: time stops, we see the world as it is. We are moved by wonder, beauty and awe the emotions we feel when we are touched by grace. Over time we find that positive emotions are stabilized and negative ones no longer rule our lives. We find ourselves living in the moment and in the flow without effort. Try it! On this wonderful spring day just open your heart and take a walk. Notice what is all around you. Appreciate the beauty and miracle of this moment.
