Archives for posts with tag: mindfulness for beginners

Flavor, Color, Scent, Sound

May 21, 2019 //

I’m awake. Rested. Sipping hot coffee. All the usual morning stuff, in the morning. It is a Tuesday. I’ve got an appointment before work, and I’m working very hard at not forgetting that. 🙂 I’ve been trying for awhile to get this appointment, so I definitely do not want to just… forget I have it. (Yeah, that’s a thing. lol) I sip my coffee, meditate, scroll through the news, and consider the day ahead.

Blossoms near a train station. Some other moment of observation and awareness.

When I find my thoughts wandering off, to events and moments that are not “now”, I pull myself back to this present moment with observation of some detail here, now. My breath. This cup of coffee, and the mug warming my hands. The glow of the monitor, illuminating a photograph. The scent of early morning flowers on the pre-dawn breeze filling the apartment through the open patio door. Sounds of my neighbor, through the wall, starting his own morning. Sensations. Awareness. Experience. First person, present tense.

Mmm… this really is a good cup of coffee, this morning. 🙂 I sit quietly, hands wrapped around the warm mug.

Roses don’t mind the rain.

Minutes pass. I am content. Relaxed. Enjoying this particular moment, for no obvious reason besides it being a pleasant one. Isn’t that enough? 🙂 The clock ticks slowly. I sip coffee and listen to the sounds of morning as the sky turns from darkness to a moody gray overcast sky. Rain today? I’m okay with that. I don’t mind the rain.

My mind wanders to daydreams of futures unknown and unknowable. I pull it back to this moment, right here, already rich with potential. My mind wanders to recollections of the past, fraught with inaccuracies and emotional baggage. I pull it back to this moment, and make room for these feelings, and this experience. I sip my coffee, and glance at the time. I remind myself of my appointment, again. I wonder, for a moment, if I ought to drive into the office… and deal with the chaos of downtown driving and parking. I chuckle out loud, facing the obvious; there is no need to drive downtown. Public transit will get me there, just fine. 🙂 Less stress. No parking cost. It seems the smarter choice. I sip my coffee feeling grown-up and practical, capable, and prepared for the day.

I think over my “everyday carry” items, and the day ahead. I make some changes, mentally, trusting myself to make those changes, in fact, before I leave the house for the day. It’s not a given, and I remind myself to double-check the details before I go. Backpack. Keys. Work badges. Card case. Cell phone. The book I’m reading. Some relevant paperwork for this appointment. My vape. Spare batteries for that. There’s a nagging feeling that I’ve forgotten something – but I nearly always feel that way, and the sensation is not reliably associated with an actual experience, so I make the attempt to let that go. I remind myself that my earbuds are laying loose on the seat of the car; I’ve forgotten to grab them several times now, and I’d really like to have them for the train ride.

None of this planning or preparation is the future. It’s all “now”. Maybe it improves the future in some way, maybe it does not. It’s easy to conflate the planning and preparation with the future moments themselves. They are not really related in such a direct way. I take a deep breath. I let it out. I notice that I feel sleepy, or fatigued, or… distant. I feel as if I am avoiding the moment, just ahead, when I step out the door, into a new day. Suddenly, I’d rather go back to bed. Inconvenient. There are things to do. I shake off the sensation, and finish off my coffee.

It’s time to begin again. 🙂

Tags begin again, breathe, emotional self sufficiency, I am my own cartographer, meditation, mindfulness for beginners, perspective, practicing the practices, ptsd, sufficiency, taking care of me, TBI, The Art of Being, the map is not the world, there are verbs involved, walking my own path, we become what we practice, what matters most?

Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Spring, Summer, The Art of Being

The Damage Is Done

May 16, 2019 //

Yesterday, along with my morning coffee and some hang out time with my Traveling Partner, I was relaxing and found myself appreciating how easy life feels, and how far I’ve come… Lovely feelings for what they are, but of course, these too are transitory parts of the experience of life. Later in the day, I got a healthy reminder; the damage has been done.

Sometimes it’s sunny in the garden of my heart, sometimes it rains. Roses can bloom, rain or shine.

No kidding. It’s possibly not about where I am in life now (rarely is, really), and when I find myself faced with a moment of struggle, a challenge, a bit of emotional bad weather, I sometime forget in that moment, that a lot of this chaos and damage was built so long ago that the “schematics have been lost”. I don’t easily understand why, sometimes, old hurts surface, or why shitty programming is still a thing, ever. It is what it is. I don’t lay down and die over it – that seems excessive. Still. I have moments when I feel hurt, or confused, or struggle with learned helplessness in a great relationship – over shit that damaged me decades ago, in shitty relationships. That’s just real.

…Some of the damage we sustain in the course of a lifetime is quite permanent. I know, I know, hardly the usual message of positivity, but hear me out here; that’s still okay. We become what we practice. It’s nearly always improvable. It’s not that I can’t heal – I know incremental improvement takes time. When I’m feeling really fine, and quite excellent, comfortable in my skin – and in my relationships – that is 100% when I am least watchful for life’s next lesson. There definitely is always a next lesson. lol

An otherwise lovely moment went sideways for me in a moment of learned helplessness colliding with my brain injury. I dithered. I stalled. I literally could not act upon an otherwise routine bit of circumstance. Embarrassing and a tad scary for me. Frustrating and probably hurtful for my Traveling Partner, taken by surprise by my absolute failure to “use my words” or affirmatively respond to this particular situation in any effective way. We let it go, with effort, both realizing it likely wasn’t something I could have done anything about, just then. It felt exceedingly awkward. The rest of the evening passed, for me, somewhat laboriously; I felt self-conscious, raw, insecure, and that I had failed to successfully adult in any legitimate way.

This morning, I let it go, again. It’s a new day. An entirely fresh start. A new beginning. That really matters this morning. I grab that opportunity with both hands, and hold on, then laugh at myself… because this, too, will pass. lol I sip my coffee, breathe deeply, and practice non-attachment, however unskillfully… lots of things take practice. 🙂

Tags anxiety, be love, breathe, choose wisely, emotional self sufficiency, experience, listening deeply, love, love and lovers, MBSR, mindfulness for beginners, p.s. I love you, perspective, practicing the practices, ptsd, relationships, TBI, The Big 5, there are verbs involved, we become what we practice

Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, forgiveness, Free Will, Frustration, Love, Mindfulness, Moments, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Spring, Summer, The Big 5

Taken Out of Context

May 14, 2019 //

An ordinary enough Spring morning. I’m sipping coffee. Minutes are ticking by. The cool dawn air fills the apartment. My fingers click rhythmically on the keyboard. Traffic swooshes by, beyond the driveway. I am considering the “blank page” in front of me – both actually, on this monitor, and metaphorically, this day ahead of me.

Ask the questions. Do the verbs.

Yesterday’s work day was productive, and felt… short. Very short. The evening that followed was delightful, connected, and relaxed. I slept well. I woke easily, just minutes ahead of the alarm clock, feeling rested. This cup of coffee tastes delicious. My clothes feel quite comfortable. Given this context, the fact that I feel content, merry, and relaxed, this morning, is no particular surprise, right?

This gets me thinking about context, generally. When I find myself feeling miserable for one reason (or many), it changes my outlook on everything that touches my experience. I tend to take more things personally when I am in pain, for example, even though there’s no direct connection between the physical experience of pain, and other qualities of other experiences. It colors my mood, and thus, colors my perception of my experience. If my mood, itself, can alter the way I see my experience, and if the experiences I have in life have the potential to alter my mood… is this a trap – or an opportunity? I used to feel it was a sort of sick joke, and emotional Catch-22 wherein, no matter what, the outcome was always that life sucked. One way or another, I was back to misery, pretty inevitably.

Mindfulness practices, and specifically meditation, unraveled that “trap” – turns out I set that trap myself, and caught myself regularly, fair and square. lol I did most of that to me. I mean, sure, I learned all of it somewhere, but that is so much less significant (for me) than the idea that I built that trap, maintained it with great care (and many verbs), and resisted treated myself any better for a long time with the sort of will and commitment that one generally sees from the eager or ambitious. Sort of scary, looking back, how very skillfully done all that was, and how ferociously I protected myself from any sort of healing progress, for so long. Choices.

Context matters. Where am I right now? Am I okay, right now? How do I feel? Pulling my awareness to this present moment, again and again, and allowing the bullshit narratives to fall away until I am only this human being, breathing in this moment, uncomplicated by assumptions, expectations, and clinging to what is not, there is so much less misery in my experience. This helps me sort out random frustrations, hurt feelings, poorly managed fury, dark days, weird sorrows – nearly all that mess is just made up bullshit, and I can choose differently. It’s often about context. The assumptions I make about this or that detail (or person) really fill it out and make it seem so real. It generally isn’t. I giggle, imagining a world in which everyone around us was truly the embodiment of my assumptions, my thoughts about them, instead of being who and what they actually are.

When I allow others around me to be who they are, without my assumptions and expectations clinging to me, them, or the connection we share, I can also relax and let go of any ludicrous notion about changing them, or fixing them, and just enjoy (or not) who they are, themselves. I can be who I am, too. We can share that time together authentically, and maybe even learn things from each other, and grow. If I’m clinging to a golem built of my assumptions and suppositions about them, filtered through my experience of life and projected onto them, we aren’t even really together, are we? I’m just hanging out with a different version of myself. lol It’s also much easier to be open to people, letting them be them, staying firmly “me”, myself… fewer verbs needed to be real, than to shore up an image.

Context… and authenticity. Perspective. Consideration. Awareness. Presence. All good words for a Tuesday… I think I’ll go out there into the world, with a handful of words, and a gentle heart. It’s a good beginning. 🙂

Tags authenticity, awareness, be here now, be real, be the change, begin again, breathe, choose wisely, consideration, Context, emotional self sufficiency, get real, meditation, mindfulness for beginners, perspective, practicing the practices, presence, ptsd, relationships, sufficiency, TBI, The Art of Being, The Big 5, the map is not the world, there are verbs involved, we become what we practice, what is real?

Categories Brain Injury, forgiveness, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Spring, Summer, The Art of Being, The Big 5, Words

Resistance is Futile

May 11, 2019 //

I am thinking about change, this morning. This has been a year filled with change. Some of it has been small stuff of little consequence, some of it has been major change of the sort that feels as if “nothing will ever be the same”. Change is. Resisting change has little chance of success, generally speaking. Embracing change is no easier, sometimes requiring a huge commitment to non-attachment on this whole other level that doesn’t ever seem to get more comfortable. It seems silly when I contemplate how often I fight the smallest changes while being fairly accommodating about the big ones. I sometimes cling to small things that seem peculiarly defining, in some way, of the life I most want to live. An arrangement of paintings. A particular piece of furniture. A color, shape, or particular placement of an object. The world could be descending into chaos, and I’d likely still be fretting about whether too much sunlight falls on a watercolor hanging in a bright location, or whether my favorite rug will look okay with a new couch. lol

It’s all trivial. Almost all of everything, in fact, is both quite trivial, and mostly made up bullshit we carefully craft in our heads. Assumptions. Expectations. Judgments. Things we “know”. We cling ferociously to these, without regard to what is “real”, or what has legitimate value. Our emotions arrive ahead of us to every meeting, every evening at home, and every interaction, whether friendly or contentious. We build all of it up in our thinking as things that matter – events with urgency, and import. We don’t review that too closely, either, and we’ll fight to defend our notions, even in the face of mountains of properly documented actual facts. lol We’re complicated, very fancy, notoriously incorrect, highly reactive primates.

We can do better than we do, often. It’s just so many verbs involved…

I smile to myself quietly. The sun is up. The morning feels cool. My coffee is hot and strangely delicious. I’m still tired, and if I were not distracted by my plans for the day, I’d go back to bed for awhile. Maybe a nap later? Maybe. The day is over-planned. I sip my coffee and wonder briefly how that happened; I’m usually so careful about my plans. I let it go. This, too, is trivial. Really, there’s only “now”, and this cup of coffee, and that’s enough. 🙂

I hear my Traveling Partner cough in the other room. I smile. My favorite distraction. 🙂 It’s time to begin again.

Tags be here now, be love, be the change, begin again, choose wisely, emotional self sufficiency, good self-care, I am my own cartographer, meditation, mindfulness, mindfulness for beginners, p.s. I love you, perspective, practicing the practices, ptsd, relationships, sufficiency, taking care of me, TBI, The Art of Being, there are verbs involved, walking my own path, we become what we practice

Categories Brain Injury, forgiveness, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, Love, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Spring, Summer, The Art of Being

Sometimes It’s the Small Stuff

April 25, 2019 //

This is a good cup of coffee. The morning is quiet, relaxed, and pleasant. I am, in general, physically comfortable. Nice start to the day, so far. 🙂 It’s enough.

My sleep quality has degraded somewhat, notably with considerably more dream activity, difficulty falling asleep, and waking ahead of the alarm. I consider it all of that for a moment or two, while I enjoy my coffee. It’s not all that rare or strange. After a pointless couple of moments of thought, I let it go. Too nice a morning to be spent ruminating over what is not strange. lol

I think about friends far away. I think about the long weekend coming up – my first planned time away from the new job since it started. My Traveling Partner and I celebrating anniversaries. It’s our 10-9-8; 10 years of a great friendship, 9 years as lovers, 8 years married. Wow. Nice milestone… although, admittedly, the “10” starts more as coworkers, and genial associates, becoming a close friendship a bit late in the year… LOL. I stretch it to fit because I’m just that eager to count it a decade with this human being who is so dear to me. 😀 (It’s my romantic anniversary narrative and I shall do the math as I please! LOL)

The lovely sunny weather yesterday has me thinking about the garden, and I’ll be out on the deck among the containers this weekend, putting things right after the landlord’s visit to give the deck a thorough pressure-washing. It wasn’t at all convenient, but the deck does look very nice, and I’m over being irked by the inconvenience. 🙂

Someone commented recently about my positive attitude. I remember laughing; I wasn’t always in this place, or so easily able to “be positive”. It is kind of a state of being at this point. Enough choices that favor a positive approach, enough choices to let bullshit go, to compliment authentically instead of give “negative feedback”, to help or support instead of tearing someone down, to politely refrain from mean humor even when I’m hurting so much it seems funny, to make the day-to-day attempt to be – in every interaction – respectful, considerate, compassionate, reciprocal, open, and mindful, has eventually resulted in a fairly enduring positivity, just generally. I didn’t really “see that coming”. It was, initially, mere compliance with a request that I “be” less negative. I started studying up on what that could mean, what it could “look like”, and what sorts of characteristics people perceived as “positive” demonstrate. I started changing choices. I adopted new practices. I explored different styles of humor, of conversation, evening making new choices about viewing material, reading material, even the clothes I wear… and over time, in small increments that felt entirely natural in the moment, I became… still me. Yep. I’m still me, from my insider perspective, only… I’m generally contented, generally pleasant (so I hear), generally positive, even notably inclined (per my associate yesterday) toward lifting others up, and explicitly supporting their personal and professional growth through positive reinforcement. 😀 Wow. Nice.

…Most mornings, all of that just comes out as contented coffee consumption and a few minutes of writing… I finish my coffee, my curiosity nudges me in the direction of reading those earliest posts, to look for “clues” or “signs” or “early indications of change”, a chance to study the actual mechanism of getting from “there” to “here”… only… yeah. I check the time. It’s already time to begin again. No turning back. 😉 There’s an entire life ahead of me to live. 🙂

Tags are you going my way?, be here now, be the change, begin again, being and becoming, breathe, choose wisely, emotional self sufficiency, good self-care, I am my own cartographer, MBSR, meditation, mindfulness, mindfulness for beginners, mindfulness matters, perspective, practicing the practices, ptsd, relationships, TBI, The Art of Being, The Big 5, the map is not the world, there are verbs involved, walking my own path, we become what we practice, what matters most?

Categories Brain Injury, forgiveness, Free Will, gardening, gratitude, Healthy Living, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Spring, The Art of Being, The Big 5

Flavor, Color, Scent, Sound

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The Damage Is Done

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Taken Out of Context

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Resistance is Futile

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Sometimes It’s the Small Stuff

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