I’ve written and spoken about the many and profound benefits of mindfulness practice many times (Use the search window on the right to find other ‘mindfulness’ posts). In this piece, I want to highlight yet another benefit.
I was recently guiding a mindfulness circle. I invited people to think of something they would be doing between our practice session (about 8pm) and when they would go to bed. I suggested they think of something that they didn’t particularly enjoy. A couple of people said they found this difficult since they generally enjoy everything they’d typically do following our weekly sessions.
Okay, I said, would it be possible to enjoy them even more?
The two people shrugged their shoulders. I got the sense that they thought it would be a waste of time. Kinda like ‘If it ain’t broken why fix it?” And that does make sense, doesn’t it?
But, let me suggest one reason why you can always get more out of something even if you’re already experiencing satisfaction and joy in it and why you would want to.
You see, there is no limit to the depth or height or breadth of joy you can feel. No limit to excitement, thrill, awe, rapture, delight, greatness, power, laughter…that you can experience in any given moment and in any given activity.
But the conditioned mind will tell you otherwise:
How silly! Why would you expect to feel thrilled while brushing your teeth? Why should you feel anything but relief or quiet satisfaction while getting into bed? Why should you feel anything other than what you normally feel when you do anything? Isn’t feeling normal good enough?
Friends, there’s an infinite ocean of possible states and dimensions of states that’s available to you. And they’re all available in the infinite bandwidth of Life, of Love.
It doesn’t take more effort to feel ecstasy than to feel satisfaction. It’s all available to you, every bit of it. Why deny yourself just because of a limiting belief? All of Life is always available to you. Why pinch yourself off from it? Why ration yourself as if there’s a chance it might run out?
Now, perhaps you’re thinking, Well, I don’t want to be greedy or appear to be ungrateful or dissatisfied with what I already experience.
No, no, no.
All of Life is always available to you and you can never possibly use it all up. Never! Life is infinite! Besides, ‘good enough’ is the Ego’s polite rejection of Life’s limitless wonderfulness.
You see, if you restrict yourself in any given moment, at some point, that restriction will have accumulated to such a level that you will feel the need to make it up with certain other activities and in certain other ways.
What do I mean?
Have you noticed how your expectations tend to build up around certain events in your life? Like the monthly live theater you attend with friends or the weekly trip down the bay or the evening beer or wine that you look forward to? Nothing wrong with that except that maybe you might get cranky or disappointed if something got in the way of these events.
In fact, as you may have noticed, the greater the anticipation and expectation, the greater the crankiness and disappointment. Not to mention how you might wastefully be subconsciously directing cognitive resources to begrudging the moments in between these events, these treats, these holidays…(How many people can honestly say they don’t look forward to the weekend and mostly because it’s so much better than what they’re doing the rest of the time?) But that’s alright, you say, I’ll get over it pretty quickly. It’s no big deal.
Sure, it’s no big deal. But wouldn’t it be great if you didn’t get cranky or disappointed at all, or didn’t begrudge the time you spend on things not so attractive or appealing, not because crankiness or disappointment is a bad thing but because you know how to enjoy so many more moments in so many other activities and events that these ‘setbacks’ are not even seen as setbacks?
As I have said so often, in this physical, time-space reality,
Life happens from moment to moment, breath to breath, NOT event to event. But we live as if Life happens event to event so that we miss countless moments where all of Life is available to us. And so we expect to be enlivened by some events that we deem more significant than others. We pin much of our hope and energy and attention on those few events (which include our goals) while mindlessly missing out on the fullness of all Life’s goodness and wonderfulness in the countless moments in between these events.
Now, people often look at me with incredulity when I speak about this and I understand why. After all, haven’t we been conditioned to ignore most moments and fixate on particular events/goals as we go through our daily routines?
If I asked you to tell me about your day, would you mention the moment when you bent down to pick something off the floor? Or how about that moment when you felt a gentle breeze on your cheek as you walked in the park? Or what about how the keyboard felt as you were typing at work?
So, tell me, did those moments not happen? Or were they so ‘insignificant’ than you didn’t think to mention them? Or were you absent from them so that you don’t remember them? Perhaps all of these.
My friends, we may not be able to be fully present in every single moment, and especially with the frantic pace of life that we have willingly or unwillingly agreed to participate in, it may seem impractical. It does make sense to allocate the best and bulk of our cognitive resources to more complex tasks rather than routine activities. However, there are profound benefits to being more and more mindful in more and more moments of each day.
By interrupting the circuit of overthinking, repetitive thinking, uncreative and unproductive thinking, we give our mind-body/brain a fresh start each time we become mindful which results in greater efficiency and creativity. But, more than that, each mindful moment avails us of all the goodness that Life is offering. Not just some of the time but all of the time.
Balance
One last thing. By reducing the difference between ‘insignificant’ or ‘mundane’ moments and ‘significant’ and ‘exceptional’ events, we live with greater balance. But, and here’s what’s so marvelous, we don’t balance out to some ho hum level, we balance out to an elevated, more joyous, more enthusiastic, more invigorating, more empowered, more receptive, more open, ever more possible and ever more alive level. Our emotional, cognitive and physical base lines actually shift to higher levels! After all, haven’t we been feasting on Life’s wonderfulness moment to moment?
But don’t take my word for it. Find out fpr yourself!
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