calm

MoK: Patience as Kindness

Scott McPhersonLeave a comment

Thank you for bearing with my late posts while I traverse a few challenging days on the family health front. Fortunately, today’s act in the March of Kindness is one that suits your willingness to wait perfectly. Patience is all too often invisible when it should be seen as the loving act of kindness that it truly is.

From letting little passive aggressive statements go by unchallenged, to taking care of something that was someone else’s duty, we all express a lot of quiet patience each day. The problem is that we often only note our behaviour when it feels beneath us, meaning you’ll notice the few times you’re impatient far more than the times you are patient.

Even knowing that everyday life requires all kinds of patience, it is nevertheless a kind and generous act, and so adding one more act of conscious patience can do nothing but good for all involved.

Today your March of Kindness assignment is simple: Keep your awareness up, and find just one opportunity today where you feel an impulse to offer a suggestion or you feel you’re going to react in an impatient way, and then divert that impulse into non-action. Let your action be stillness.

Interestingly, the time we choose to show extra patience might coincide perfectly with when a person really needed something to go well or they’d snap. We all know how good it feels when someone shows us patience when we know we didn’t act in a way that encouraged it. We might as well create more opportunities for those things to happen.

Make your own displays of patience more conscious, and find a way to add just one more act of patient kindness to today and you will have made the world better with your presence. Thank you for that. And thank you for your patience in receiving these last few posts. Enjoy your day.

peace. s

Scott McPherson is an Edmonton-based writer, public speaker, and mindfulness facilitator who works with individuals, companies and non-profit organisations locally and around the world.

Holding Onto Peace

Scott McPhersonLeave a comment

1042-relax-and-succeed-the-world-is-full-of-magic-thingsRemember I told you earlier this week about my friend going through the enlightenment process? As expected, he’s had to circle in after a few days for a debrief. He’s starting to understand that he really has changed; that the glow he felt that night isn’t going away. He’s worried he’ll forget, and yet he can feel that fear isn’t really founded on anything. He can already see his fearful thoughts arising and they seem harmless.

Why this is confusing to him is that he’s currently aware enough that his ego can tell him something but now he hears it from this new clear-headed perspective. He knows those are just thoughts. So he feels in his nature compelled to be afraid because that’s what his ego did with anything worthwhile; it worried he would lose it. He had some significant confidence suddenly removed from him at a young age, so it makes sense that he has a fear of repeating those feelings.

His weird challenge now is that he hears these voices that he used to always do battle with, except now the big, real part of him is no longer believing the story of weakness so rather than being the battle we’re thinking, we’re more detached. We’re more a witness to it.

1042-relax-and-succeed-the-mind-that-perceivesSo now my friend can see how his ego used to conjure pain for himself and he can see himself trying to do that same thing about losing his wisdom. But whenever he tries to go to the habitual fear he can no longer maintain his belief in that fear. He knows now it comes from thought. Reacting to it seems silly now. He’s just worried he might start reacting like he used to.

I actually told him he most certainly would. Being enlightened doesn’t get him all yin and no yang, it makes him accept the yang and yin as two sides to one valuable coin, rather than opposites. The difference now is he’s seen the full circle. Now, if he’s desiring all good things then he knows that’s ridiculous and rather than being lost in jealousy or envy or some other egotistical pursuit, he just looks at himself like some innocent kid wanting something impossible. Now he sees those actions the same way I do. They no longer make sense.

He can take his thoughts seriously for a while now. He can get lost in ego for chunks of time. But you can’t forget things you know. You know your name, you know how to multiply numbers and you know who your dog is. Those aren’t things you can forget. Well he can’t forget this either. He’s seen the universe at too fundamental a level. When he looks at anyone now, they all just look like people who are strangely acting as though other people see their internal thoughts.

1042-relax-and-succeed-whenever-anything-negative-happensHe can see everyone trying to reconcile everyone else to their perspective, yet he can also see that each perspective is a separate reality describing a different manifestation of their own thoughts, very much as if two LSD patients compared their trips. That’s essentially what egos do when they try to reconcile realities. It looks that weird when you’re healthy.

Once you’ve seen the truth you still have to practice it to have it alive in your life. But that’s not work, that’s less work that living through ego, but the awareness is a kind of effort at the start. Eventually it becomes more natural to be that peaceful.

Right now my friend feels like he’s on the greatest, happiest holiday ever, and when his ego does show up it just panics that he might not get to stay. I told him that’s part of his journey. But he actually understood me when I explained that now he’ll like problems because he’ll know they’re not real and all he’ll do with them is take them apart like puzzles. And that alone is infinitely less painful than trying to treat them like they’re an objective reality.

My friend is done. He’s learned that big lesson. He has the key to the big secret now. From here on in it’s just how much he uses that key. But just like he didn’t lose it from when he was a baby, he can’t ever really lose it now either. His struggles are now games. It’s just so good it’ll take him a while to believe that the universe really is that generous and beautiful. It’s important for you to remember dear reader, the one thing you do share with my friend and I, is that you live together with us in that generous universe. Your only job after that, is to appreciate that fact as much as we do. Why not start today? What’s good about right now?

peace. s

Scott McPherson is an Edmonton-based writer, public speaker, and mindfulness facilitator who works with individuals, companies and non-profit organisations locally and around the world.

A Daily Dose of Peace

Scott McPhersonLeave a comment

828 Relax and Succeed - You are the skySingers warm up their vocal chords. Athletes warm up and stretch their muscles. We’ll lift weights to get bigger, we’ll study for exams but for some reason we don’t feel that our mental health needs any tending. And yet when we see others and wish we were as stable and strong as they are, the only difference may be that they set their day up to succeed and you did not.

The first thing to do is to recognize the value of the morning. Your mind has been busy at night, weaving together all of the linkages between your daily thoughts. It wires in all the metaphors and chronological stuff and leaves us in the morning having integrated the previous day, but we’ve done nothing to set this new day up to be great. Don’t leave it to chance. Design it as a part of your life.

To use some of those metaphors I’ve wired in over the years: think of the brain like a muscle. New things it’ll be bad at, things it knows well it can almost do without you needing to be conscious about it. This is why things like driving seem so much easier after we’ve done it for a while. We have the wiring already built in our minds and we are merely using it. It’s the building that just takes a bit of time–for all of us.

828 Relax and Succeed - Don't tell us what you're againstKeeping up with the metaphor, the big tubes for electricity are the ones you use the most. So if you get angry a lot that anger impulse will be trying to slam dunk the basketball of mental energy through hoop that you could fit a car through. If you want to be more peaceful you’ve got to jam less stuff down that tube and use the one at the other end of the court instead–the tube for peace and tranquility and calm.

Set your alarm for a half hour before you get up, but know that when it turns on the next day that you have a leisurely full half hour to go through the waking process. Leave a note for yourself–whatever you have to do–but stay in bed or sit somewhere comfortable and just slowly wake up by thinking about your favourite things; things you’re grateful for. Really practice your gratitude. Widen that tube. Because during the day, as events unfold, that simple act in the morning will drastically impact whether you send your energy towards anger or calm.

Your brain likes to repeat things. Do not beat yourself up and think that you are worthless or a failure. No one is. The only question is: are we using our incredible capabilities to create something great or something we’ve created before? Because we can just keep getting mad and always blame it on the other person place or thing. Plus it’s us feeling the anger and that sucks. So feel love and connection instead. It’s not that hard.

828 Relax and Succeed - Periodically during your dayTune your mind like a radio. If you’re listening to half-static on a station playing angry death metal–hey that music can be fine in the right setting, but first thing in the morning whether you like it or not, you’d do better with a ballad or some Vivaldi. Actively “remember” that the day you’re going to have is going to be filled with great things. Expect them. Stretch your tubes. Tune your mind to watch for fortunate things. Get it ready to receive a signal of peace and patience.

During the day divide your day into segments. Make it a habit to check in with yourself mentally between them. Ask yourself periodically: what is my emotional state and what does that tell me about my state of mind? If you find you’re tense, or just before a big call or meeting follow this simple practice: Stand still in a comfortable pose and simply breathe 3-5 times using a 3 count inhale, a 7 count hold, and an 8 count exhale. This is very similar to your sleeping rhythm and your body knows that from years of practice so it will respond. Just stay still, do the breathing. You’ll oxygenate your brain and you’ll calm your jangling nerves. You’ll feel your chemistry change.

Feeling good will lead to good things. It’s funny, people want to go to the gym and start some new big thing just so they can feel better than they do, when it’s the other way around. If they feel better they’ll naturally want to do more with life. All they really have to do is start setting their day up the same way that most of the happy and successful ones do: by truly expecting it to be great and never giving up on that idea even in the face of challenges to that belief.

If you seek good fortune in your life you will find it. There’s no shortage of it. You simply have to watch for it. Why not start now?

peace. s

Scott McPherson is a writer, public speaker, and mindfulness facilitator who works with individuals, companies and nonprofit organizations around the world.

Human Doing or Human Being? 2

Scott McPhersonLeave a comment

Too much rushing, too much worrying, not enough peace. We must take control of our psychological landscape. We just slow down, breathe deeply, and let go. This holiday re-blog is a meditation on relaxation. Pour a beverage, sit back and read it as slowly as you like. It’s just a few minutes out of your busy day. Enjoy:

Slowing Down to the Speed of Life

Scott McPherson1 Comment

258 Relax and Succeed - Pig in a blanket

Today’s video blog will surprise you. Its inspiration and beauty comes in an unexpected form. It succeeds in connecting us to the present moment by dropping any expectations we might have. There is nothing for our ego in this experience. This is quietly, profoundly spiritual in nature.

When people have spiritual insights they often find that their realizations at first feel counter-intuitive. The same idea seemed backwards until they saw it from their new perspective. So in a culture obsessed with speed and productivity it might seem unusual that I would be suggesting that, to get more done, you should consider actually slowing down.

How can you get more done by doing less? The trick is to change your priorities. You need to stop making doing so important and instead start putting some value on simply being. You can’t be harvesting full time. Not only do the furrows of your mind need planting, they also need time to lay fallow—they need time where they are still and empty because no tea can be poured into a full cup. If you want to grow, you have to surrender something you currently believe in favour of something new.

258 Relax and Succeed - Just slow down

We all need to pay less attention to what’s going out outside of us and more attention to what’s going on inside of us. We need to stop being so busy inside and out, and we need to start being still. We need space, openness, and light. We don’t need more data, more challenges, more strength. We do need more understanding, more rewarding experiences and more flexibility.

The answers you’re looking for in life do not need you to achieve more. You don’t need to climb anything. You don’t need to earn, strive or gain. You need to relax into knowing. You need to simply be. As the Zen poet Dogan said, “If you cannot find truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?”

This video is only two minutes and thirty-seven seconds long. Strangely, even the sound is valuable. Like the photo of the pig a blanket, it has no purpose, no aim and no point. It simply is. And that simple status is what makes it so profoundly beautiful. Enjoy:

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Think about bookmarking this video. It might be nice to take a moment to spend time with this little guy every now and then. This is a creature without guile. This is a video of being. And precisely because it aims to accomplish nothing, it manages to accomplish a lot.

Have a wonderful day.

peace. s

Scott McPherson is an Edmonton-based writer, public speaker, and mindfulness facilitator who works with individuals, companies and non-profit organizations locally and around the world.