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Initiate Giving. Don't Wait For Someone To Ask. See What Happens - Especially To You. You May Find That You Gain A Greater Clarity About Yourself And About Your Relationships, As Well As More Energy Rather Than Less. You May Find That, Rather Than Exhausting Yourself Or Your Resources, You Will Replenish Them. Such Is The Power Of Mindful, Selfless Generosity. At The Deepest Level, There Is No Giver, No Gift, And No Recipient . . . Only The Universe Rearranging Itself.

-Jon Kabat-Zinn

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Initiate Giving. Don't Wait

Jon Kabat-Zinn

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Initiate Giving. Don't Wait For Someone To Ask. See What Happens - Especially To You. You May Find That You Gain A Greater Clarity About Yourself And About Your Relationships, As Well As More Energy Rather Than Less. You May Find That, Rather Than Exhausting Yourself Or Your Resources, You Will Replenish Them. Such Is The Power Of Mindful, Selfless Generosity. At The Deepest Level, There Is No Giver, No Gift, And No Recipient . . . Only The Universe Rearranging Itself.

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Initiate Giving. Don't Wait For Someone To Ask. See What Happens - Especially To You. You May Find That You Gain A Greater Clarity About Yourself And About Your Relationships, As Well As More Energy Rather Than Less. You May Find That, Rather Than Exhausting Yourself Or Your Resources, You Will Replenish Them. Such Is The Power Of Mindful, Selfless Generosity. At The Deepest Level, There Is No Giver, No Gift, And No Recipient . . . Only The Universe Rearranging Itself.

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Mindfulness Is About Love And Loving Life. When You Cultivate This Love, It Gives You Clarity And Compassion For Life, And Your Actions Happen In Accordance With That. All Ethics And Morality, And A Sense Of Interconnectedness, Come Out Of The Act Of Paying Attention.

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In Asian Languages, The Word For Mind And The Word For Heart Are Same. So If You’re Not Hearing Mindfulness In Some Deep Way As Heartfulness, You’re Not Really Understanding It. Compassion And Kindness Towards Oneself Are Intrinsically Woven Into It. You Could Think Of Mindfulness As Wise And Affectionate Attention.

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One Way To Look At Meditation Is As A Kind Of Intrapsychic Technology That's Been Developed Over Thousands Of Years By Traditions That Know A Lot About The Mind/body Connection.

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People Say Things That Get You Ramped Up. I Find Myself, As My Body Clenches Up When Somebody Says Something That I Know Is Wrong Or I Wanna Catch Them In A Lie Or Whatever, That Just, "calm Down. When It's Your Turn, You Make Your Point."

When We Let Go Of Wanting Something Else To Happen In This Moment, We Are Taking A Profound Step Toward Being Able To Encounter What Is Here Now. If We Hope To Go Anywhere Or Develop Ourselves In Any Way, We Can Only Step From Where We Are Standing. If We Don't Really Know Where We Are Standing—a Knowing That Comes Directly From The Cultivation Of Mindfulness—we May Only Go In Circles, For All Our Efforts And Expectations. So, In Meditation Practice, The Best Way To Get Somewhere Is To Let Go Of Trying To Get Anywhere At All.

The Mind That Has Not Been Developed Or Trained Is Very Scattered. That's The Normal State Of Affairs, But It Leaves Us Out Of Touch With A Great Deal In Life, Including Our Bodies.

It Is Remarkable How Liberating It Feels To Be Able To See That Your Thoughts Are Just Thoughts And That They Are Not 'you' Or 'reality.' For Instance, If You Have The Thought That You Have To Get A Certain Number Of Things Done Today And You Don't Recognize It As A Thought But Act As If It's The 'the Truth,' Then You Have Created A Reality In That Moment In Which You Really Believe That Those Things Must All Be Done Today.

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Once In Awhile Throughout The Day...let Go Into Full Acceptance Of The Present Moment, Including How You Are Feeling And What You Perceive To Be Happening... Give Yourself Permission To Allow This Moment To Be Exactly As It Is, And Allow Yourself To Be Exactly As You Are. Then, When You're Ready, Move In The Direction Your Heart Tells You To Go, Mindfully And With Resolution.

Mindfulness Practice Means That We Commit Fully In Each Moment To Be Present; Inviting Ourselves To Interface With This Moment In Full Awareness, With The Intention To Embody As Best We Can An Orientation Of Calmness, Mindfulness, And Equanimity Right Here And Right Now.

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Sometimes Shutting Off The Sound On The Television Can Allow You To Actually Watch The Game And Take It In In An Entirely Different And More Direct Way - A First-order, First-person Experience - Rather Than Filtered Through The Mind Of Another.

There Are A Lot Of Different Ways To Talk About Mindfulness, But What It Really Means Is Awareness.

Awareness Is Not The Same As Thought. It Lies Beyond Thinking, Although It Makes No Use Of Thinking, Honoring It's Value And It's Power. Awareness Is More Like A Vessel Which Can Hold And Contain Our Thinking, Helping Us To See And Know Our Thought As Thought Rather Than Getting Caught Up In Them As Reality.

Mindfulness Means Moment-to-moment, Non-judgmental Awareness. It Is Cultivated By Refining Our Capacity To Pay Attention, Intentionally, In The Present Moment, And Then Sustaining That Attention Over Time As Best We Can. In The Process, We Become More In Touch With Our Life As It Is Unfolding.

The Little Things? The Little Moments? They Aren't Little.

You Might Be Tempted To Avoid The Messiness Of Daily Living For The Tranquility Of Stillness And Peacefulness. This Of Course Would Be An Attachment To Stillness, And Like Any Strong Attachment, It Leads To Delusion. It Arrests Development And Short-circuits The Cultivation Of Wisdom.

When You're Walking, Just Walk. When You're Eating, Just Eat. Not In Front Of The Tv, Not With The Newspaper. It Turns Out, That's Huge.

The Real Meditation Practice Is How We Live Our Lives From Moment To Moment To Moment.

Meditation Practice

When Your Alarm Goes Off And You Jump Out Of Bed, What Is The Nature Of The Mind In That Moment? Are You Already Like, "oh My God," Your Calendar Pops Into Your Mind And You're Driven Already, Or Can You Take A Moment And Just Lie In Bed And Just Feel Your Body Breathing. And Remember, "oh Yeah, Brand New Day And I'm Still Alive." So, I Get Out Of Bed With Awareness, Brush My Teeth With Awareness. When You're In The Shower Next Time Check And See If You're In The Shower.

Too Much Of The Education System Orients Students Toward Becoming Better Thinkers, But There Is Almost No Focus On Our Capacity To Pay Attention And Cultivate Awareness.

Becoming Better

The Only Time That Any Of Us Have To Grow Or Change Or Feel Or Learn Anything Is In The Present Moment. But We're Continually Missing Our Present Moments, Almost Willfully, By Not Paying Attention.

It Is A Form Of Violence, To Not See A Being For Who He Or She Really Is. You Think, "oh, That's My Son." But The Lens, "my Son," Completely Obliterates The Multi- Dimensions Of That Being. Maybe You Only See Your Disappointments In That Child, Or You Aspirations For That Child, But That's Not The Child.

You Make Problem, You Have Problem

Mindfulness Is Not About Getting Anywhere Else.

Mindfulness Meditation Is The Embrace Of Any And All Mind States In Awareness, Without Preferring One To Another.

Perhaps We Just Need Little Reminders From Time To Time That We Are Already Dignified, Deserving, Worthy. Sometimes We Don't Feel That Way Because Of The Wounds And The Scars We Carry From The Past Or Because Of The Uncertainty Of The Future. It Is Doubtful That We Came To Feel Undeserving On Our Own. We Were Helped To Feel Unworthy. We Were Taught It In A Thousand Ways When We Were Little, And We Learned Our Lessons Well.

When Awareness Embraces The Senses, It Enlivens Them.

Perhaps Ultimately, Spiritual Simply Means Experiencing Wholeness And Interconnectedness Directly, A Seeing That Individuality And The Totality Are Interwoven, That Nothing Is Separate Or Extraneous. If You See In This Way, Then Everything Becomes Spiritual In Its Deepest Sense. Doing Science Is Spiritual. So Is Washing The Dishes.

Discipline Provides A Constancy Which Is Independent Of What Kind Of Day You Had Yesterday And What Kind Of Day You Anticipate Today.

Practice Moment To Moment Non-judgemental Awareness.

The Only Time You Ever Have In Which To Learn Anything Or See Anything Or Feel Anything, Or Express Any Feeling Or Emotion, Or Respond To An Event, Or Grow, Or Heal, Is This Moment, Because This Is The Only Moment Any Of Us Ever Gets. You're Only Here Now; You're Only Alive In This Moment.

Intelligence Is The Door To Freedom And Alert Attention Is The Mother Of Intelligence.

But You Cannot Have Harmony Without A Commitment To Ethical Behavior. It's The Fence That Keeps Out The Goats That Will Eat All The Young Shoots In Your Garden.

We Are Continuously Bombarded With Information, Appeals, Deadlines, Communications... We Are Continually Being Squeezed Or Projected Into The Future As Our Present Moments Are Assaulted And Consumed In The Fires Of Endless Urgency.

From The Point Of View Of The Meditative Traditions The Entire Society Is Suffering From Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

Simply Put, Mindfulness Is Moment-to-moment Non-judgmental Awareness.

Another Way To Look At Meditation Is To View Thinking Itself As A Waterfall, A Cascading Of Thought. In Cultivating Mindfulness, We Are Going Beyond Or Behind Our Thinking, Much The Way You Might Find A Vantage Point In A Cave Or Depression In The Rock Behind A Waterfall. We Still See And Hear The Water, But We Are Out Of The Torrent.

There Are Certain Ways In Which I Cultivate Awareness, Both Through Mindful Yoga And Taking Care Of My Body And Taking Time To Actually Drop As Deeply As Possible Into Stillness, Into Whatever Is Unfolding In The Present Moment.

The Real Meditation Is How You Live Your Life.

Arriving Someplace More Desirable At Some Future Time Is An Illusion. This Is It.

Allow Your Attention To Gently Alight On Your Belly, As If You Were Coming Upon A Shy Animal Sunning Itself On A Tree Stump In A Clearing In The Forest. Feel Your Belly Rise Or Expand Gently On The Inbreath, And Fall Or Recede On The Outbreath.

Acknowledging That Sometimes, Often At Very Crucial Times, You Really Have No Idea Where You Are Going Or Even Where The Path Lies. A The Same Time, You Can Very Well Know Something About Where You Are Now (even If It Is Knowing That You Are Lost, Confused, Enraged Or Without Hope).

For Men And Women Alike, This Journey Is A The Trajectory Between Birth And Death, A Human Life Lived. No One Escapes The Adventure. We Only Work With It Differently.

You Could Think Of Mindfulness As Wise And Affectionate Attention.

Generosity Is Another Quality Which, Like Patience, Letting Go, Non-judging, And Trust, Provides A Solid Foundation For Mindfulness Practice.

Perhaps The Most "spiritual" Thing Any Of Us Can Do Is Simply To Look Through Our Own Eyes, See With Eyes Of Wholeness, And Act With Integrity And Kindness.

The Importance Of The Development Of The Emotional Body Is Hardly Recognized Today. We Are Pretty Much Left To Our Own Devices To Come To Full Adulthood, Whether Man Or Woman. Our Elders May Have Become So Denatured Themselves From A Lack Of Such Nurturance That There Is No Longer A Collective Knowledge Of How To Guide The Awakening Emotional Vitality And Authenticity Of Our Young People, Our Children. Mindfulness May Contribute To A Reawakening Of This Ancient Wisdom In Ourselves And In Others.

But When We Start To Focus In On What Our Own Mind Is Up To, For Instance, It Is Not Unusual To Quickly Go Unconscious Again, To Fall Back Into An Automatic-pilot Mode Of Unawareness. These Lapses In Awareness Are Frequently Caused By An Eddy Of Dissatisfaction With What We Are Seeing Or Feeling In That Moment, Out Of Which Springs A Desire For Something To Be Different, For Things To Change.

The Best Way To Capture Moments Is To Pay Attention. This Is How We Cultivate Mindfulness. Mindfulness Means Being Awake. It Means Knowing What You Are Doing.

Most Of The Time, If You're Not Really Paying Attention, You're Someplace Else. So Your Child Might Say, "daddy, I Want This," And You Might Say, "just A Minute, I'm Busy." Now That's No Big Deal-we All Get Busy, And Kids Frequently Ask For Attention. But Over Your Child's Entire Youth, You May Have An Enormous Number Of Such Moments To Be Really, Fully Present, But Because You Thought You Were Busy, You Didn't See The Opportunities These Moments Presented. . . . People Carry Around An Enormous Amount Of Grief Because They Missed The Little Things.

When You Pay Attention To Boredom It Gets Unbelievably Interesting.

Healing Is A Coming To Terms With Things As They Are, Rather Than Struggling To Force Them To Be As They Once Were, Or As We Would Like Them To Be, To Feel Secure Or To Have What We Sometimes Think Of As Our Own Way.

If You Look At People Out On The Street, If You Look At People At Restaurants, Nobody's Having Conversations Anymore. They're Sitting At Dinner Looking At Their Phone, Because Their Brain Is So Addicted To It.

Paying Attention And Awareness Are Universal Capacities Of Human Beings.

See For Yourself Whether Letting Go When A Part Of You Really Wants To Hold On Doesn't Bring A Deeper Satisfaction Than Clinging.

Meditation Is Simply About Being Yourself And Know About Who That Is.

Mindfulness Is About Love And Loving Life. When You Cultivate This Love, It Gives You Clarity And Compassion For Life, And Your Actions Happen In Accordance With That.

There Is Just This Moment. We Are Not Trying To Improve Or To Get Anywhere Else.

Meditation Is The Only Intentional, Systematic Human Activity Which At Bottom Is About Not Trying To Improve Yourself Or Get Anywhere Else, But Simply To Realize Where You Already Are.

Meditation Practice

Most People Don't Realize That The Mind Constantly Chatters. And Yet, That Chatter Winds Up Being The Force That Drives Us Much Of The Day In Terms Of What We Do, What We React To, And How We Feel.

Generosity Is Another Quality Which, Like Patience, Letting Go, Non-judging, And Trust, Provides A Solid Foundation For Mindfulness Practice. You Might Experiment With Using The Cultivation Of Generosity As A Vehicle For Deep Self-observation And Inquiry As Well As An Exercise In Giving. A Good Place To Start Is With Yourself. See If You Can Give Yourself Gifts That May Be True Blessings, Such As Self-acceptance, Or Some Time Each Day With No Purpose. Practice Feeling Deserving Enough To Accept These Gifts Without Obligation-to Simply Receive From Yourself, And From The Universe.

"resting In Awareness" Is One Of Those Phrases Used A Lot By People Who Practice Mindfulness. But When I Tried To Do It, It Wasn't Restful And I Worried I Wasn't Doing It Right. I Kept Thinking About Work.

Buckminster Fuller Himself Was Fond Of Stating That What Seems To Be Happening At The Moment Is Never The Full Story Of What Is Really Going On. He Liked To Point Out That For The Honey Bee, It Is The Honey That Is Important. But The Bee Is At The Same Time Nature's Vehicle For Carrying Out Cross-pollination Of The Flowers. Interconnectedness Is A Fundamental Principle Of Nature. Nothing Is Isolated. Each Event Connects With Others.

It's Okay That The Mind Drifts Away But You Just Bring It Back.

Wherever You Go, There You Are. Whatever You Wind Up Doing, That's What You've Wound Up Doing. Whatever You Are Thinking Right Now, That's What's On Your Mind. Whatever Has Happened To You, It Has Already Happened. The Important Question Is, "how Are You Going To Handle It?" .... Like It Or Not, This Moment Is All We Really Have To Work With.

Meditation Is Like Farming... The Right Soil Is Required To Grow Anything, Nothing Will Grow If The Soil Is Polluted By Striving Or Pushing Too Hard.

It’s Interesting To Look At Your Children As Line-in Zen Masters Who Can Put Their Finger On Places Where You’re Resistant, Or Thinking Narrowly, In Ways Noone Else Can. You Can Either Lose Your Mind And Your Authenticity In The Process Of Reacting To All That Stuff, Or You Can Use It As The Perfect Opportunity To Grow And Nourish Your Children By Attending To What Is Deepest And Best In Them And In Yourself.

Any Really Good Scientist Is As Much An Artist As A Scientist. All The Interesting Stuff Is Found On The Edge Between Knowing And Not Knowing. I Know That Sounds Like A Meditation Teacher Speaking, But When You're In The Laboratory, Or You're Theorizing About Physics, You Need To Know What You Know, But If You Can't Get Out From Under That, You Won't Be Able To Make That Insightful, First-time Connection That Nobody Else Has Seen Before.

Mindfulness Means Paying Attention In A Particular Way: On Purpose, In The Present Moment, And Non-judgmentally.

"what Is My Job On The Planet?" Is One Question We Might Do Well To Ask Ourselves Over And Over Again. Otherwise, We May Wind Up Doing Somebody Else's Job And Not Even Know It. And What's More, That Somebody Else Might Be A Figment Of Our Own Imagination, And Maybe A Prisoner Of It As Well.

In Letting Go Of Wanting Something Special To Occur, Maybe We Can Realize That Something Special Is Already Occurring.

Awareness Is Not The Same As Thoughtmore Like A Vessel Which Can Hold And Contain Our Thinking

This Is Something Called "walking Meditation." The Goal Is To Learn To Be Aware Of Each And Every Movement And Feeling. I Know It Seems Ridiculous, But It Does Change The Way You Experience Walking.

All The Suffering, Stress, And Addiction Comes From Not Realizing You Already Are What You Are Looking For.

How We See And Hold The Full Range Of Our Experiences In Our Minds And In Our Hearts Makes An Enormous Difference In The Quality Of This Journey We Are On And What It Means To Us. It Can Influence Where We Go, What Happens, What We Learn, And How We Feel Along The Way.

You Can Bring Together The Body's Various Systems To Fine Tune The Body And Mind In Order To Navigate Life's Ups And Downs In A Way That Minimizes Stress And Maximizes Well-being And Satisfaction.

Societal Transformation Isn't Going To Happen In One Month, One Year, Or Even One Lifetime. But We See It Happen Person By Person In Front Of Us, And We Don't Have To Worry About The Future If We're Taking Care Of The Present. In Some Sense, That's The Best Insurance Policy We Can Have.

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Nikolaj Coster-Waldau

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