Being Human Rather Than Doing Human

I saw this today:

"Everything changes once we identify with being the witness to the story, instead of the actor."

...and it brought me back to myself. Much like the waves of energy that constitute everything in existence across galaxies, time and space, so do we slip into and out of the illusions we create for ourselves. It's easy to fall asleep in your life, start to feel separated from your true self and believe the stories all around you.  We know The Four Agreements but we relearn them all the time.

For many people I know right now, they are receiving their final performance evaluations for ALL of the previous year's work.  If I were back at the office instead of out on leave,  I would be too. These evaluations affect your bonus' and your salary increases and thus your perceived financial quality of life. So you place great value on them, wrongly. No matter what story you have for how you performed, others will have a different one, and sometimes it can seem like that perspective is from another planet.  And, it is. Trapped within these bodies, we all come to the table with our different perspective and that is our personal truth. Here's where mindfulness comes in. Your thoughts create your truth.  So be mindful and choose your thoughts carefully. Dr. Joe Dispenza tells us to say, "Change", to those thoughts that don't serve you and create yourself anew.

Thich Nhat Hanh said, "Each one of us has to ask ourselves, What do I really want? Do I really want to be Number One? Or do I want to be happy? If you want success, you may sacrifice your happiness for it. You can become a victim of success, but you can never become a victim of happiness."

Trying to remain a human being is hard work.  It takes practice.  Mindfulness can help you by raising your awareness and providing you with the opportunity to focus on the moment between stimulus and response thus capturing intention and setting it accordingly.  Old Brazilian Wise Saying (from my mother), "If you don't know what to do, do nothing."  Just be with it for a while.

You can change your mind.


For more about mindfulness and loving-kindness meditation, contact us at mmPowered. 
maysa@mmpowered.com
kim@mmpowered.com

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Here's a summary of Jon Kabat-Zinn's seven principles of mindfulness from his book, Full Catastrophe Living:

• Patience - “To be patient is simply to be completely in each moment, accepting it in its fullness” and bring your mind back to your body
• Non-judging - When it comes to your thoughts, “judgements of mind tend to dominate our minds and make it hard for us ever to find any peace” so just recognize, become awake of those thoughts, identify them with a label
• The Beginner's Mind - “Too often we let our thinking and our beliefs about what we ‘know’ prevent us from seeing things as they really are” and the Beginner's Mind tells us to remain open, empty and available to the many possibilities out there 
• Acceptance - “You have to accept yourself as you are, before you can really change” and you are divine love
• Non-striving - “Almost everything we do, we do for a purpose, to get something or somewhere" but in mindfulness practice there is no where and no thing to do, just be with yourself
• Trust - Learning to trust your own personal experience, feelings and intuition — freeing yourself from the tyranny of authority, the stories of others and ourselves with our own inner judge
• Letting go - “Cultivating the attitude of letting go, or non-attachment, is fundamental to the practice of mindfulness” and that refers to letting go of the pleasant and the harsh; just breathe

Namaste.