How to Train a Wild Elephant_ And Other Adventures in Mindfulness - Jan Chozen Bays [5]
4. MINDFULNESS CREATES INTIMACY
Our essential hunger is not for food but for intimacy. When intimacy is missing in our lives, we feel isolated from other beings, alone, vulnerable, and unloved in the world.
We habitually look to other people to fulfill our needs for intimacy. However, our partners and friends cannot always be there for us in the way we need. Luckily a profound experience of intimacy is always accessible to us—all it requires is that we turn around and move toward life. This will require courage. We have to intentionally open our senses, becoming deliberately aware of what is going on both inside our body and heart/mind, and also outside, in our environment.
Mindfulness is a deceptively simple tool for helping us to be aware. It is a practice that helps us wake up, be present, and live life more abundantly. It helps fill in the gaps in our day, the many times we go unconscious and are not present for big chunks of our life. It is also a practice that will help us close the frustrating gap, the invisible shield that seems to exist between ourselves and other people.
5. MINDFULNESS STOPS OUR STRUGGLING AND CONQUERS FEAR
Mindfulness helps us stay present with experiences that aren’t pleasant. Our usual tendency is to try to arrange the world and other people so that we are comfortable. We spend a lot of energy trying to make the temperature around us just right, the lighting just right, the fragrance in the air just right, the food just right, our beds and chairs just the right softness, the colors of our walls just right, the grounds around our homes just right, and the people around us—our children, intimate partners, friends, coworkers, and even pets—just right.
But, try as we might, things don’t stay the way we want them. Sooner or later, our child throws a tantrum, dinner burns, the heating system breaks down, we become ill. If we are able to stay present and open, even to welcome experiences and people that aren’t comfortable for us, they will lose their power to frighten us and make us react or flee. If we can do this over and over again, we will have gained an amazing power, rare in the human world—to be happy despite constantly changing conditions.
6. MINDFULNESS SUPPORTS OUR SPIRITUAL LIFE
Mindfulness tools are an invitation to bring attention to the many small activities of life. They are particularly helpful to people who would like to nurture a spiritual life in the midst of all the distractions of modern living. Zen master Suzuki Roshi said, “Zen is not some kind of excitement, but concentration on our usual everyday routine.” Mindfulness practice brings our awareness back to this body, this time, this place. This is exactly where we can be touched by the eternal presence we call the Divine. When we are mindful, we are appreciating each moment of the particular life we have been given. Mindfulness is a way of expressing our gratitude for a gift that we can never repay. Mindfulness can become a constant prayer of gratitude.
Christian mystics speak of a “life of continuous prayer.” What could this mean? How could it be possible when we are swept along in the speedy traffic of modern life, cutting corners continuously, without enough time to talk to our own family, let alone God?
True prayer is not petitioning, it is listening. Deep listening. When we listen deeply, we find that even the “sound” of our own thoughts is disruptive, even annoying. Letting go of thoughts, we enter a more profound inner stillness and receptivity. If this open silence can be held at our core, as our core, then we are no longer confused by trying to sort out and choose among our myriad competing inner voices. Our attention is no longer caught up in the emotional tangle within. It is directed outward. We are looking for the Divine in all appearances, listening to the Divine in all sounds, brushed by the Divine in all touches. As things