Finding the Center Within: The Healing Way of Mindfulness Meditation. Read Online Free PDF

Future
    Another reason we lose our center is that we postpone life rather than live it. Planning is unavoidable to some degree, and planning is no more the enemy than desire is. But when planning for the future takes over the present to such an extent that the present becomes unreal, insubstantial, and ghostlike, we have lost our center. Planning mindfully means knowing we are just planning. We do not confuse it with the present reality. When done in the right spirit, there’s a lightness about planning. You know reality is endlessly complex and endlessly evolving beyond our capacity to foresee. And since our plans therefore need continual refining and adjustment—if not total revision—there is no sense to get too caught up in them.
    Can you enjoy future food? Can you drink tomorrow’s water? Most of us try to do just that, yet you can only nurture yourself with the food and water that are here and now.
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F I N D I N G T H E C E N T E R W I T H I N
    Judy avoids living today by focusing on the next retreat or workshop. The student postpones life till he gets his degree, the businessperson till she achieves some imagined height of financial success. Is that person out running around the track truly happy? Perhaps not. His head may be filled with visions of what he will be like six months from now, when he can run farther and faster, when his body-fat percentage is even lower. And in the meanwhile, all of us are missing it. We are missing our lives. The irony is, a life full of so-called purpose and planning and goals is ultimately without point. For while we are preoccupied with our plans, life is happening. Life is not waiting until we are done planning. And while we are defining our goals, we are missing the whole thing. For life consists only of this present moment—the very one we are so busy running away from.

PRACTICE
    Where Are You?
    Right now: Where are you? Come back from your worries and plans, to where you are now as you read. How are you breathing? How are you sitting? How does your body feel? What is the quality of your thinking, your self-talk? Don’t criticize or try to change any of this. Just spend a few minutes being quietly aware, as much as possible without judgment.
    This is it. This is your life.
    THE EXPERIENCE (TOM)
    As I write this, my fingers feel cold. I feel the precise resistance of the computer keys, feel the pressure of my wrists where they rest on the edge of the desk. My stomach anticipates lunch. I hear birds outside my window trying to sing spring a little closer while the cold, March New Mexican winds try just as hard to keep it winter. There’s a slight tightness in my abdomen as I focus intently on writing. There is both a sense of curiosity about how this 01 BIEN.qxd 7/16/03 9:44 AM Page 9

K N O W W H E R E Y O U A R E
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chapter will turn out, and the effort to get the sentence and the paragraph to come out right.
    Become Aware of Fragmentation
    A special problem of present-day life that detracts from our well-being is the fragmentation we experience as we are pressed between conflicting roles and tasks. The many masks we wear and the roles we play can lead us away from the center.
    Our work can be fragmenting, and it doesn’t matter how complicated the job is. Sometimes other people’s work looks enviably easier than our own. But when you’re in that apparently simple job, it still has many aspects and demands. Being a homemaker, for example, is not the simple task others romantically imagine: “What is most important for me to do now? Should I do the grocery shopping or go to the cleaner’s?
    Do the banking or vacuum the carpet? Have I done enough now to be able to take a break and do something I enjoy, like watching my favorite program, reading my book, listening to my favorite symphony, or just calling a friend and talking for a while? Or do I need to do more first?
    And, oh, I forgot to defrost something for dinner tonight.” And