Monday Mindfulness Minute: Treat your inner weather like outer weather

"... like the weather, what you think is unpredictable and subject to change." Awakening the Buddha Within p 82

Weather and meteorology have fascinated me since I was a child. My parents joked for the longest time that they thought I would grow up to be a weatherman because when a storm would roll in I would head outside to provide my stormchaser analysis. It wasn't until I was much older that I began to notice that inner weather seemed to have as much if not more impact on my life than outer weather.

I have found it increasingly useful to think of the thoughts, feelings, and emotions that arise inside as nothing more than internal weather with characteristics similar to the weather we experience outside. As it turns out, so much of what we find in nature outside is reflected inside each of us, and here are just a few of the ways our inner and outer weather relate:

1. Temporary: Has there ever been a rainstorm that has lasted for more than a few hours or days? The same goes for our thoughts, feelings, or emotions. We should experience them fully while they are with us but should rest in the knowledge that whether good or bad, they aren't going to last.

2. No need to figure out why: Just as there are countless reasons why outer weather is the way it is, there are just as many reasons why we think and feel a certain way inside. Of course, there may be an opportunity to get down to the root cause of why we feel a certain way if it lingers, but more often than not our thinking about and trying to figure out why we feel or think a certain way just amplifies the issues.

3. Know where your storm shelter is: What is the top thing meteorologists tell us to do if a tornado is near? "Get to an interior room of your house and get as low as possible." The same goes for us. We must know that when we are triggered or extremely upset about something, we must find a solid point within us that we can rest in without wreaking havoc outside like a tornado would. Usually, this inner storm shelter is a place where we can just be quiet and not say anything until the storm passes over.

Monday Mindfulness Minute: "I am never upset for the reason I think."

“One of the most amazing things you will ever realize is that the moment in front of you is not bothering you—you are bothering yourself about the moment in front of you.” Living Untethered: Beyond the Human Predicament

Life outside moves at such an incredible pace that it can be hard to pinpoint the source of our frustration, and we end up almost exclusively blaming our upset feelings on some external happening. What if the source of our frustration was something that lived inside of us?

In The Boy, The Mole, The Fox, and The Horse, the little boy remarks, "Isn't it odd. We can only see our outsides, but nearly everything happens on the inside." As it turns out, what happens on the outside can stay with us on the inside. The Sanskrit word for this is a Samskara. Samskara translates as an impression or imprint that remains with us after an outside event is over (I remember it because -skar reminds me of scar, and it's like an inner scar we take on).

These internal scars are like internal wounds that we spend our lives protecting. Ever wonder why we get so defensive when we get called out in a meeting or a driver cuts us off in traffic, it's because we are protecting some open wound from the past that hasn't had a chance to heal. The insidious nature of these open wounds is that because they are on the inside, and we never look inside, we blame the effects of them getting hit on what is happening outside. This misdirection leads to a lack of healing and leads to us having the same negative feelings over and over.

It might sound like we're arguing semantics, but this shift in our perspective can be the difference between living as a victim our entire lives, thrown here and there by what's happening outside, and living from an elevated perspective where our automatic reactions aren't one of upset at what's happening outside but one of gratitude because it is showing us an internal wound that needs to be healed.

Monday Mindfulness Minute: Appreciating The extra Ordinary Is Extraordinary

"The great lessons from the true mystics, from the Zen monks, is that the sacred is in the ordinary, that it is to be found in one's daily life, in one's neighbors, friends, and family, in one's back yard... To be looking everywhere for miracles is a sure sign of ignorance that everything is miraculous." Abraham Maslow (as cited in Pronoia p. 207)

Breathing

Having enough food to eat

Getting clean water from the fountain or the refrigerator

Having a roof over our heads at home and work

Hanging out with friends

Walking the dog

Reading a book

I don't think any of us would necessarily define these items as extraordinary. How often do we see pictures or videos of these posted on social media? Hardly ever. (Unless of course we are hanging out with friends on a tropical island, eating a fancy meal at the hot new restaurant in town, or showing off our fancy new fridge that keeps water at a glacier level of coldness)

It seems that in our panic for greatness and growth, we are steadily overlooking the ordinary happenings which may be the only true calories that leave us fulfilled, alive, and ok.

I fall into this trap all the time - believing the mind that tells me what I'm doing is not enough and too ordinary. Feeling this existential crisis of not good-enough-ness and ordinariness seems to correlate to when I overlook and forget all of the seemingly ordinary things I have to be grateful for right now.

We are taught repeatedly to be extraordinary, to do extra, get extra, be extra, and that if we accomplish these we will receive the ultimate gift: aliveness. But what if the extraordinary feeling of being alive on earth right now can only be accessed by focusing on the extra ordinary life that surrounds us daily?

The Boy, The Mole, The Fox, and The Horse

Let's commit this week to being extraordinary by focusing on the extra ordinary around us.