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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.

-Jon Kabat-Zinn

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Most Of The Time,

Jon Kabat-Zinn

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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.

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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.

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He Who Dies Before He Dies Does Not Die When He Dies.

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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.

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When Awareness Embraces The Senses, It Enlivens Them.

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You Could Think Of Mindfulness As Wise And Affectionate Attention.

Just Watch This Moment, Without Trying To Change It At All. What Is Happening? What Do You Feel? What Do You See? What Do You Hear?

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

Writing Can Be An Incredible Mindfulness Practice.

The Real Meditation Is How You Live Your Life.

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

Meditation Practice

Mindfulness Is A Way To Rebalance Ourselves. Instead Of Being Lost In Thought, Or Caught Up In Emotional Upheaval, We Can Tip The Scale In The Direction Of Greater Equanimity, Clarity, Wisdom, And Self-compassion By Actually Learning How To Inhabit That Other Dimension Of Our Being.

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.

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Make A List Of What Is Really Important To You. Embody It.

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Meditation Practice

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Can You Question Who You Are? And Are You Comfortable With Not Knowing?

Life On Earth Is A Whole, Yet It Expresses Itself In Unique Time-bound Bodies, Microscopic Or Visible, Plant Or Animal, Extinct Or Living. So There Can Be No One Place To Be. There Can Be No One Way To Be, No One Way To Practice, No One Way To Learn, No One Way To Love, No One Way To Grow Or To Heal, No One Way To Live, No One Way To Feel, No One Thing To Know Or Be Known. The Particulars Count.

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.

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So, In Meditation Practice, The Best Way To Get Somewhere Is To Let Go Of Trying To Get Anywhere At All.

Meditation Practice

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

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

Science Is Now Documenting That It's Not The Objects Of Meditation That Are Important, It's The Process Of Paying Attention To Them - The Attending - That Actually Influences The Organism In A Whole Range Of Different Ways. The Brain Changes Significantly Enough To Impact Thought, Emotion, And Other Biological Functions. Today, People Recognize That They're Not Going To Find Well-being From The Outside, Or From A Pill; They're Going To Find It By Looking Inside. All The Suffering, Stress, And Addiction Comes From Not Realizing You Already Are What You Are Looking For.

The Funny Thing About Stopping Is That As Soon As You Do It, Here You Are.

Mindful Parenting Is The Hardest Job On The Planet, But It's Also One That Has The Potential For The Deepest Kinds Of Satisfactions Over The Life Span, And The Greatest Feelings Of Interconnectedness And Community And Belonging.

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

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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.

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.

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.

You Are Only Here Now; You're Only Alive In This Moment.

Live In The Moment

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