Monday Mindfulness Minute: Can you hear the static thoughts?

"There's a radio playing in our head, Radio Station NST: Non-Stop Thinking." Silence (Thich Nhat Hanh) p. 3

As an avid Spotify user, I rarely listen to the radio in my car and have never preset any radio stations. This means there is usually a cacophony of static for a few minutes before the Bluetooth connects. I used to hate the noise and would turn the volume down as quickly as possible, but I've started to enjoy the little bit of irritation that starts to build in the mind and seeing that I don't have to immediately make it go away. The static has come to serve as a wonderful reminder of what is usually going on inside my mind most hours of the day.

Have you heard the static of the mind? You know, the inside voice that is constantly comparing, criticizing, and complaining (labeled as the "3 Cancers of the Soul" in Think Like a Monk) and never seems to stop. In his book The Untethered Soul, Michael Singer describes this voice as an inner roommate. The static voice can make what should be a perfect moment not so much. The static voice tells us we’re not there and will never be there. The static voice is unable to fully live in the present. 

But just as we can change the station in our cars, we can learn to tune our inside voice to different frequencies. But what are the different stations of the mind? In his book, Map of Consciousness, Richard Hawkins does an expert job of describing what stations our minds can be tuned to.

So what radio station of mind are you tuned to? Do you enjoy the music? If not, have you ever tried to change the station?

As we enter this week, let's remember that our minds don't have to play the same static over and over and that it is completely within our power to not buy into the repeated narratives of the mind as we evolve how we see and hear life.

Monday Mindfulness Minute: Can you see the sunflower in the sunflower seed?

"...charity is a way of perceiving the perfection of another even if you cannot perceive it in yourself... it's a way of looking at another as if they had already gone far beyond their actual accomplishments in time." A Course in Mircales p. 27

It blows my mind to contemplate how vessels as tiny and seemingly dull as seeds contain the potential to grow into beautiful flowers and mighty trees. Consider a sunflower seed for instance. Could you imagine the surprise on the Native Americans' faces when they compared the sunflower seed with what it could become?

Examples abound in nature of seemingly tiny things containing mighty potential or things that appear to be dull turning into beautiful stories. So, why do we seem to forget that the same holds for us and those around us?

Of course, it's much easier to judge somebody for where they are, what we deem to be the truth from our limited vantage point, and then lock them into that position. But this would be the same as throwing out the sunflower seed because it wasn't "beautiful." It might not be beautiful yet, but it contains beauty. We/they might not have it figured out yet, but the answer is somewhere inside of us/them.

Let us consider this week how we may limit ourselves and those around us (family, friends, neighbors, etc) because we are limiting them to what we see in front of us instead of the potential that is within them. Let's extend some grace and trust the natural flow of life that magically got us to this point from a cell smaller than a seed.

Monday Mindfulness Minute: "Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I'm wise, so I'm changing myself."

With the New Year comes a renewed focus on self-growth. Whether we hope to make a more consistent effort at the gym, reduce frivolous spending to achieve our saving goal, or make a concerted effort to put our family first, we know our success will hinge on consistency.

But what fuels consistency? And why does the fuel needed to maintain our resolution seem to run out after only a few weeks?

One of the biggest hidden inhibitors to achieving our goals to start the year, and throughout, is that we absent-mindedly expend our energy trying to control those around us (the "changing the world" part in Rumi's quote above). As Mel Robbinson relays in her new book The Let Them Theory, "Instead of wasting my energy on something I can't control - what others say, think, and do - I poured my energy into what I can control: me. The result? I gained more control over my own life than I ever had before."

Letting them ranges from the small things like letting them not do the dishes or letting them cut you off in traffic, to bigger things like letting your friends not invite you to go out with them or letting your best friend leave you on read via text. As should be apparent, we can't stop them in the first place, so we save our energy by our response being one of acceptance. This doesn't mean we don't respond to them directly eventually, but when/if we need to, we do so in a mindful way where we aren't giving all of our energy.

As we return to the office and to our general flow of life following the Holiday Break, let us let them more—they are going to do what they want to do anyway—and save our breath and energy to invest in our fuel tank to achieve the goals we have set.