week 2 theme
Mindfulness, also called wise attention, helps us see what we’re adding to our experiences, not only during meditation sessions but also elsewhere. We’ll spend this week in the world of touch sensations is one of the best places for us to be able to see the difference between what is actually arising, and what we are making of it.
These add-ons might take the form of projecting into the future (my neck hurts, so I’ll be miserable forever), foregone conclusions (there’s no point in asking for a raise), rigid concepts (you’re either for me or against me), un-examined habits (you feel tense and reach for a cookie) or associative thinking (you snap at your daughter and then leap to your own childhood problems and then on to deciding you’re just like your mom).
A very good place to become familiar with the way mindfulness works is close by – our own bodies. Investigating physical sensations helps us see clearly what we’re doing as we’re doing it, to be able to distinguish our direct experience from the add-ons, and to know that we can choose whether to heed them or not. Then in week three we’ll apply the tool of mindfulness to subtler realms of emotions and thoughts.
reflections
Take a few moments this week to look back over your week of practice with two guided reflections from Sharon.
Journal
recommended reading
Recommended reading for Week Two of the Challenge is pages 81 – 90 and pages 105 – 108 in the second edition of the book, “Real Happiness”.
sharon blog
Week Two of the 2020 Real Happiness Challenge
I know from so many years of teaching that some of you might be feeling discouraged right about now. We are challenging a lot of deeply held assumptions about success and failure, about being in control, about the efficacy of judging ourselves, so there are always a lot of ups and downs on a path. I know it is not easy, but the best thing is to go through the 28 days and then assess, rather than judging ourselves every single second of practice, which is more what we’re used to. For one thing, that means continually separating ourselves from the practice in order to judge it. It’s good to evaluate and decide if we’re getting any benefit and want to continue, but February 28th (or even March 1st) is a very good day for that. In the meantime, don’t buy into those discouraging thoughts that you can’t do it – you are doing it, and the momentum will reveal itself by the end.
My Burmese meditation teacher, Sayadaw U Pandita, had a trick question he used to ask people, “How many breaths can you be with before your mind wanders?” The reason it is a trick question is that they believe it takes a fair amount of mindfulness to notice how distracted we are. So a good answer might be, “three breaths.” If you answer, “I can be with the breath for 45 minutes, and my mind never wanders,” they believe you are so lost in space, and you don’t even notice what’s happening.
We want to see that the number of breaths climb from 3 to 20 to 200 to infinity, or we feel bad about ourselves and our practice. That success is measured differently – in how we are learning to let go of distraction more gently, and we’re learning to begin again with more kindness towards ourselves – is awfully hard to believe. But it’s true. And it takes some getting used to.
Week Two of the 2020 Challenge is devoted to Mindfulness of the Body. Here we are also challenging the conditioning of judgment –“I’m not feeling the right things, I’m not feeling enough, I’m feeling too much.” Our goal is a balanced awareness of whatever sensations we discover through mindfulness. It is because of the balance we have room to look more deeply into sensations in our bodies – to discover our conditioning towards pleasure (do we allow ourselves to enjoy it or are we only trying to keep it for the future?) towards pain (are we adding fear and anger and projection into a seemingly unchanging future, or are we with our experience with compassion?) and neutrality (do we basically fall asleep or numb out whenever our experience isn’t intense?). There is so much to be learned through mindfulness of the body, and it is a sensitivity and groundedness we can bring into our everyday lives.
Reflections Transcript
A TIME TO MIND YOUR BODY
Until it becomes second nature, try scheduling an intentional pause for mindfulness to “check in” with your body during a busy day. Set an alarm or write down a promise along the lines of, “Before I transition from this to this, I will pause.” When the moment comes, return to your breath. Then observe any predominant physical sensations—your feet against the floor or your hand holding an object. What do you witness as an actual experience? Take another breath before moving forward in your day.
OUR BODIES IN SPACE
Feel your body in space. I once had a teacher challenge those of us who had come to study with him, “Now touch space.” Each one of us picked up our hands and started poking the air with a finger. He laughed and laughed, saying, “You’re already touching space. Space is touching you.” Sit and feel how space is touching you on all sides. How does it feel?
Journal prompt Transcript
SUBTLE SENSATION
Bring your attention to your hands. Notice that the direct experience you have is not of “hand,” it’s of different sensations—pulsing, throbbing, warmth, coolness. You don’t have to name these things, but feel them. You can also notice that moving into the world of direct sensations brings us to see constant change. Perhaps we would see this as just a hand in the context of “yesterday, today, and tomorrow.” But in the realm of “pressure, vibration, warmth, coolness,” everything is constantly arising and passing away. Go back and forth between experiencing your hands through a conceptual framework and as a conduit of direct sensation and write down your experience of each.
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