Mindful Thought pt3

 

Today we explore more what emotions are and how they steer our reactions and our life. 

Let's take a look at the evolution of our emotional programming and processing.

Emotional competence is a developmental process that has 3 components: 1) emotion expression; 2) emotion knowledge; and 3) emotion regulation As we grow up we go through different levels of cognitive ability.:

As a newborn baby we are not aware we exist, emotions are purely based on survival, to influence our caregivers and surroundings.

Often you can see on a baby's face how nature trains the right muscles to communicate the emotions they will need to express themselves later in life.

Gratitude Diary on Discord

Come join us on Discord and write in our Gratitude Diary what you are grateful for today

https://discord.gg/xw9u7ME

'Gratitude is like most desirable traits and qualities in that it is usually not enough to simply decide to be grateful—we must actively practice it to cement its place in our lives.

There are many reasons why gratitude is such a desirable quality, aside from its inherent goodness. As we recently wrote in a piece on the benefits of gratitude, performing simple daily acts of gratitude can have a big impact on your health and happiness.

These effects are particularly evident in the practice of gratitude journaling. It only takes a few minutes a day, but it can give you a lasting mood boost that can take you from feeling “okay” to feeling “great” on a more regular basis."  ~https://positivepsychology.com/

 

The Kindness Club: What Is Your Life's Purpose?

Today we watched a video called, "Seek Life’s Purpose with Your Guardian Spirit," by The Honest Guys.  They are two brothers from the UK who have been creating meditations since 2009.  You can find them on the web and they also have a channel on YouTube.

Like most of us, I have often asked myself  – what is my true life purpose? Am I fulfilling that purpose to the best of my capacity, or do I avoid it by being busy and distracted out of fear of failure or not measuring up? 

When I was a mother of young children, my purpose was clear – take care of their needs, teach them good values, encourage their natural curiosity, and love them in all the best ways I could. At other times, I found satisfaction and personal fulfillment by writing, being a mentor to those in 12 step programs, activism in social justice causes, and being a loyal friend and confidante to loved ones.  But were these really my life’s purposes?  

Yes, because one's true purpose is about recognizing your own gifts and using them to contribute to the world.  Pablo Picasso once said, “The meaning of life is to find your gift.  The purpose of life is to give it away.”

We are all continually evolving and growing as we make our way through life, and so it is important that we remain open to continually discovering - and giving away - our gifts.

New at the Center: a mailbox and a need help button

 

The Center is an immersive experience that allows you to take a step back from all the stress and strains in your daily life, the soft ambient sounds and hazy colors allow you to focus on your meditation or just relax to regain your balance and spiritual well-being. We are here to support and inspire you therefor we placed the mailbox at the landing spot, (ctrl drag your notecard to the box) we want to hear your story, comments, suggestions and questions ♥

However we are not professionals so if you find yourself in a crisis situation and need rl help or support we added the need help button, on touch it will give you a notecard with useful links to sites, information, chat, phone numbers for your region. 

Mindful Thought: Side Note

On Friday late I had a conversation with someone who asked me if Mindfulness makes you a better person and if that means she had to 

transform in a Sister Theresa like personality.

I have two answers for this question. Mindfulness makes you a better person and no, you do not transform into a saint.

In our Western world Mindfulness has evolved to a wellness type movement focused on being better, working better, feeling better etc. 

In Buddhism the Pali word for "mindfulness" is sati. Sati can also mean 'retention, recollection, or alertness. Mindfulness is a whole-body-and-mind awareness of the present moment. To be mindful is to be fully present, not lost in daydreams, anticipation, indulgences, or worry.

Mindfulness also means observing and releasing habits of mind that maintain the illusion of a separate self. This includes dropping the mental habit of judging everything according to whether we like it or not. Being fully mindful means being fully attentive to everything as-it-is, not filtering everything through our subjective opinions.

Here the big difference is we completely let go of the ego and therefor feel no judgment towards others as we see them not separate from ourselves 

therefor love and kindness for everyone becomes possible. What you perceive as yourself you can not harm.

This state of enlightenment is hard to achieve for most of us as we run the treadmill of our Western society and are bombarded with so many things constantly fighting for our attention. That does not mean we can't adopt and integrate the beginnings of these teachings in our lives. 

The reason why I share this with all of you is that even those small beginnings do change our life. And no, not to turn us into saints. 

Human life is suffering, on top of all things most of us have to go through there is the awareness of our own inevitable death. 

This death anxiety subconscious influences our behaviors on a psychological, spiritual, and cultural level. 

There is a relation between human violence and death.

Yet in our society aging and death are almost a taboo and we all join the race to ignore it and not talk about it. Infinite youth is a relic and worshiped 

as the ultimate goal. And this while facing and/or discussing death can actually be a meditation for living fuller lives.

Mindfulness can not cure any of the challenges we face as human beings but it can help us how to perceive them and how deeply we let them affect us.

If you have a car accident today and your car is wrecked, this can be an example human suffering. In Buddhism the car accident is not the suffering, the car accident

is an experience, what the mind does with the experience is the suffering. You can feel depressed and lost in negative thoughts for a week about your car or

the trained mind would be grateful to be alive, that it was not worse and learned from the experience. 

This is two perspectives of the same event.

Most of us do not have the trained minds of Buddhist monks so we will probably feel the more negative experience. Mindfulness can make it less worse, because

we are in the moment and aware of our thoughts and get faster out of that state of mind and at the end perhaps come to the conclusion we are grateful we are healthy and no one got hurt.

This example goes for almost everything in our lives. You will still feel sad, angry and disappointed even if you meditate every day and practice being in the present moment a few times a day. The same misfortune and negative events will still happen to you. Mindfulness will help you perceive them from another angle, 

be aware of the thoughts you have and adjust those thoughts to what is helpful.

So this does make you a better person over time and those around you will benefit from it and notice the change in you. It is however a process of win and fail and learning every time. The good thing is every day is a new day to start over ♥