Goals, which are inherently future-centered, can make you painfully aware of the gap in reality between your current state and where you want to be. That can lead to feeling even more discontented with the current moment, which is no way to go about life!  The trap is that you can end up feeling that you’ll only be happy when you’ve achieved x, y and z, and therefore, you stop being happy now.

For some people, discontent may be a motivator, but it doesn’t have to be. You can still achieve things and work toward different outcomes while remaining present, mindful, and at the very least, content.

Mostly we have goals because we think they will make us happier, more free etc. You know, “I’ll be free when I make x amount of money per year”; “I’ll be happy when I get a promotion”, and so on. This type of thinking implies that where we are right now is not good enough. So the more you think of your goal, the more annoyed you become with the present.

So I think the key is realizing that everything is now.  That in this present moment, you can choose to feel happy, liberated etc, no matter your life circumstances. In one of his audio programs,(I think it’s Living The Liberated Life)  Eckhart Tolle says that the quickest way out of your current situation is to actually more fully and deeply present to it, to bring a new consciousness to it. You won’t get trapped in this problematic moment, but rather you will connect with a deeper power and be able to transform the circumstance. As you think about your goals, you have to see and feel yourself living that reality as if it were now. If you are always striving for something, the reality of having it will always seem elusive. Having determined what future outcome you would like, and what steps you can take that will help you get there, you must then take those actions, but with mindfulness and presence, so that they are infused with real power.

Do you find goals helpful? Or distracting? How do you balance present moment happiness with creating change for the future?

Useful reading:
Illuminated Mind – Do Your Goals Improve The Present?

Our motivation can be to awaken and cultivate beautiful qualities of the heart and mind—love, peace, courage, compassion, insight, understanding, the pursuit of the truth and liberation. Developing these qualities does not need to be for oneself. Sometimes my primary motivation to practice has been not for my own sake but for other people. In fact, I believe that if you do it only for yourself, you are unlikely to sustain your motivation over many years. A significant way to fuel meditation practice is to do it with the wish that it will somehow benefit others as well as yourself.

There are long-term and short-term motivations. Experiences of realization may be worthy long-term goals, but in the short term it can be useful to have modest aims such as cultivating small but noticeable improvements in concentration, nondistraction, compassion, or patience, as well as small, immediate movements toward letting go and experiencing freedom. I have found there is a beautiful way in which practicing with immediate, realistic goals allows for a steady maturing into some of the more developed areas of meditation practice.

Read the full article here

For a long time I think I was under the impression that happiness meant that everything in your life was perfect. You had the right job, a comfortable amount of money, friends, a partner etc etc.  So naturally, happiness felt like an elusive concept. Or like somehow I was doing it ‘wrong.’ Now I realize that perfection is not the goal, or the point. In fact if you stop looking for everything to be perfect I think you will find more contentment – a general ‘ok-ness’ with the way things are.

I think that everyone has a different baseline for what happiness means and feels like for them. I think we have a natural pre-disposition to a certain level of happiness, or lack thereof, which constitutes a comfort zone, regardless of whether or not we’re truly happy.  As with many other personality traits, this is probably mostly conditioned by family, society etc. This is not to forego responsibility, but more to realize that our default mood or level of happiness is not intrinsic to our nature, but just like anything else, we can work with what we’ve been given. Like other of our thought patterns, I think happiness must be cultivated and practiced.

What does happiness feel like?

For me this is a chicken/egg scenario. When I’m more content I have less negative thoughts and judgments. When I have less negative thoughts the world seems a little better, brighter, kinder, lighter.  Is the contentment causing the change in thought patterns, or vice versa?  I can’t say, but I know that when these moments happen I know that nothing in reality has actually changed – only my outlook has changed. I like to refer to this as feeling moments of happiness for no particular reason. If you are struggling with being happy, liberating yourself from the notion that things in your life must be a certain way for you to be happy, is perhaps the biggest step to take.

Let me know in the comments what happiness means to you? Are you happy? Does it come naturally or is it a learned habit?

The scientific world went into spasms last week when a Nobel laureate announced that he had, in effect, teleported DNA.  That was the sound bite, but of course the story was more complicated.  A French team headed by Luc Montagnier, previously known for his work on HIV and AIDS,  took two test tubes, one of which contained bacterial DNA, the other pure water. After the test tubes were surrounded by an electrical current, analysis showed that an imprint of the DNA was detectable in the water. The outrageousness of this claim echoes a finding from over a decade ago that water has memory.
…
Fact #1: Everything in existence is experienced through our consciousness, including subatomic particles and distant galaxies. The universe exists in our consciousness. There is no proof of an objective universe, which is taken on faith, as pure assumption. Fact #2: If there is a universe outside our consciousness, we can have no knowledge of it.

You can perform thousands up thousands of experiments while still ignoring these two facts. But eventually there’s a limit, and when you reach it, you have to ask some key questions: Is the universe conscious? Is everything happening in the mind of God? Does the mind exist outside the brain? Once preposterous, these questions seem to hold the key to the future, in both physics and biology. There is much more to say on the subject, but for the moment, we can at least afford a smile at the notion that DNA can teleport itself and that water can remember things. Out of delight and imagination most of the world’s great ideas were born.

Read the full article by Deepak Chopra: Spirituality Is the New Science | Intent.com.

The discussion has largely been around second selves ,digital personas and the like. I’m won’t rehash the whole topic except to summarize that clearly the importance of digital is ever expanding in our lives, and enabling whole new income streams, lifestyles and concepts of self. The thing that got me thinking was Everett Bogue’s use of the term ‘second self’. From reading his blog I know he’s an avid yogi, therefore presumably seeking oneness, so I’m wondering how the ‘second self’ concept fits in with that, or how he reconciles the two. After all the phrase has duality built right in. So perhaps it’s just semantics, or perhaps I’m missing his point in some way, but I can’t help but feel that a second self isn’t the answer. Most of us have a hard enough time uniting the one self we already have. Whatever we create is an extension of ourself but if we think of it as separate it seems problematic.

Mars Dorian’s discussion on digital personas eventually brings it back to oneness, (and admittedly his focus is marketing, not spirituality) but again, that seems like a roundabout way to get to the core point of it all – oneness, dissolution of ‘self.’

I love how Jan Stewart explains the #ibc concept less as a concept of individuals developing second selves, but more as a way that we can use digital/mental tools to merge more fully into a shared consciousness, another gateway into the oneness of ALL (digital + analog):

Enter Twitter. Some of us are starting to connect in such a way that I think is facilitating the emergence of this deeper consciousness. As we begin to relate to ourselves primarily (not only) as our digital self, we will come to see this digital self more as a stream of consciousness than a fixed entity. And as these streams of consciousness engage and intermingle with one another more and more, my sense is that more humans will start to experience this shift in consciousness into this ecstatic realm, that leaves the primitive structures of survival in the cosmic dust. This unified consciousness is of another order, still beyond the comprehension of most. However once you have experienced this shift into this radically deeper and unified collective flow state, you cannot go back from that awareness and knowledge of this deeper human potential.

Some of us on Twitter are beginning to experience something called #ibc, intuititive back channel, where we are deeply connected in a sense of collective knowing and understanding. It is connection on a deep level, and I believe it is being facilitated by some of us letting go and giving ourselves over to our deeper authentic spontaneous responses.

The whole topic is fascinating, challenging and fun to think about and wrap your mind around. What seems to emerge is that in our increasingly digital lives, any perceived boundaries of reality blur,  and we must be ever more mindful and questioning of what is real and what is illusion and continue to fine tune our ability to see through it all.

I invite you to explore the discussion and leave your thoughts below.

“A university professor went to visit a famous Zen master. While the master quietly served tea, the professor talked about Zen.

The master poured the visitor’s cup to the brim, and then kept pouring. The professor watched the overflowing cup until he could no longer restrain himself.

“It’s overfull! No more will go in!” the professor blurted. “You are like this cup,” the master replied, “How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup.”  via RenegadeZen

I am trying to be more humble, more like the empty tea cup. It is forcing me to look at how I relate to the world – things I think I’m knowledgeable about (for me it’s usually work-related things), situations where I think I know what’s up, or where I think I’ve got somebody all figured out (whether or not I actually know that person!) or any number of other ways in which I take for granted my own point of view and my own essential right-ness about things.

Certainly there are areas where I know that I know nothing and can’t help but be empty. But in areas where I think I know a little something – that’s where I’m most dangerous  My ego wants to be right and sometimes leaves little room to consider otherwise.

But the point, and the real struggle is – even when you think you know, even believe you are ‘right’ or know something about whatever the matter at hand happens to ne – can you still empty your tea cup mind and be open to something else, to someone else’s point of view and to the possibility that being ‘right’ is not even the point? Being humble, to me, means that you examine and hopefully leave behind your need to be thought knowledgeable, important, right etc. It’s not a lack of self-esteem but just a willingness to put down preconceptions, and the needs of one’s own ego. It’s dis-identifying with whatever knowledge or experience we have gathered and resisting the temptation to make our world and point of view the primary one at any given moment.

Sounds like a lot of ‘giving up’ stuff. But here’s what the empty teacup mind seems to let in instead:

• A fresh view of the world
• Less combativeness
• Less grasping to be right, less defensiveness
• More ease
• Seeing people in a different light, not through the labels I impose on them
• Spaciousness rather than narrowness

How often do you enter a situation with a full teacup? How does empty-ing your teacup mind feel?

Find the time of day that suits you best

I experimented meditating at various times of the day. I found that in the evening I was apt to fall asleep, or just skip it if I was already too tired. Midday or afternoon meditations were pleasant but on days where I was busy or felt stressed about work, I found that I didn’t allow myself the time to meditate.  Mornings turned out to be the best time for me. I get up, go set the coffee-maker (doing this activity wakes me up so that I don’t fall back asleep on the cushion!), then settle down to meditate.

Adjust your schedule accordingly

Once I discovered the time of day that worked best, I realized that I needed to change my schedule a little to accommodate the extra time for meditation. So basically I get up around 6 or 6:30 and that leaves me at least 30 minutes to meditate before I start my workday around 7 (I work at home). Carving out this regular time and scheduling it into my day made all the difference for me. It relieved me of any underlying guilt – thoughts like, ‘I should be working.’  And this puts me in a better frame of mind to dedicate myself to the meditation session.

Commitment

My level of commitment to wanting to meditate deepened and gave me the impetus to create my schedule around it. If you are not truly committed to wanting a practice, you’re much less likely to make the necessary changes. Without being prepared to adjust your schedule and create the time for it, it just won’t happen. If you are currently not meditating because you’re ‘too busy’, you won’t suddenly find the time unless you actively make room for it. Once you create and adjust to your new routine, meditation will become a part of your every day life instead of something you just ‘squeeze in’ when you have the chance.

Drop attachment to “progress”

I think this is another really important factor. I don’t look at my meditation practice like something I’m trying to ‘achieve’ or with some tangible end result in mind. Yes, I have intention to develop more mindfulness etc but I don’t expect each day’s meditation to be ‘better’ than the last. While there’s definitely a deepening of practice and technique that happens over time; on a day-to-day basis each session is different. Some days my mind doesn’t seem to settle at all, while other days I can drop in much more easily. I try to look at every session as a good one simply because I did it.

Do you have a regular meditation practice? If not, what is holding you back?

I’m paraphrasing but this is what was basically said:

“The more you practice meditation, the less focused on your breathing and thinking you are. Eventually you just become an expanding and contracting being.”

I’ve experienced this sensation for a few moments here and there. It’s interesting to see how the mind reacts. Usually something along the lines of  ”Wow, I’m not doing this (breathing)…something else is.” The I here is the thinking self that assumes it does everything!

Have you experienced this?