A couple of times a year I try to attend an Oxford Insight Meditation day retreat as an opportunity to practice with others for a longer period. The talks and reflections given as part of these days are also always interesting.
This Saturday's retreat was led by Yanai Postelnik with a theme of fully waking up in our bodies and our lives --- rather than becoming disconnected, rather than seeing our bodies (other people, the Earth...) as objects somewhere over there to be put to our use, for our gain. Yanai quoted Mary Oliver's poem, 'When Death Comes': "I don't want to end up simply having visited this world." Thought provoking stuff. Noticing many of my old friends during the practices... loads of mind wandering, a sense of expecting things to change and be different, striving, journaling, aversion to the cold and rain, the thought "oh this feels good!" in a particularly clear mind moment, judging myself, judging others, hunger and wanting the feeling to go away yet believing it would not, disappointment to hear the bell (wanting to carry on practising), restlessness (wanting to be done), surprise after initial anxiety to find standing meditation was ok, even a pleasant experience...
0 Comments
Presence, understanding, acceptance
(excerpted from Eline Snel's Sitting Still Like a Frog) 'There are three fundamental qualities that have a relaxing effect on the often demanding task of parenting: presence, understanding, and acceptance. For yourself as well as for your child. Presence enables you to be simply here - in contact with this moment. With these feelings and thoughts - open, curious, generous, and without an immediate opinion. Present with that small hand in yours. Present with the temper tantrum. Present with the daily school run... Understanding enables you to better relate to your children and put yourself in their shoes, especially when things take an unexpected turn... Acceptance is the inner willingness to recognize your child's thoughts and feelings the way you recognize your own - without wanting to change them or manipulate them, and without excluding or rejecting any aspect of either your child or yourself. Acceptance of all those moments when they fail to meet your expectations, yell when they ought to be quiet, forget to say thank you, appear to be ungrateful or assume you have an extremely thick skin. It is also about accepting all those moments when you are not present or kind, when you do not have the patience of a saint... Acceptance is not the same as "putting up with everything". Instead it is the profound realization that as a parent you don't need to have an opinion on the feelings, thoughts and actions of either your child or yourself... Practising acceptance will give you endless opportunities to open your heart and welcome everything that arises and work with it as mindfully as you can.' Oh it would have been lovely to stop for longer and admire to our hearts content these mist-covered webs on the school run this morning.
Time pressures, commitments and schedules do frequently suck. Or put another way, why a walk to the shops and back with a toddler and no time pressures regularly used to take two hours... happy days Children are naturally engaged in the present moment - sadly the pressures of modern life drum this sense of joyful wonder out of many of them too soon. Sessions 7 and 8 of the 8-week MBCT course: how can we best take care of ourselves, and maintaining a practice. A special day yesterday, marking the end of this part of our course, but not the end of our working together as a group - we have the rest of the teacher training year ahead of us.
When I prepared to revisit the 8-week course for a second time, I was excited to 'deepen my practice'. I hadn't anticipated quite how significant an impact it would have on me once again. It has not felt at all like retracing footsteps, and deepening doesn't really do it justice either. There have been fresh breakthroughs and frustrations, lightbulb moments and smacking my forehead moments... I have come out the other side with a more sustainable way of practising and with new, deeply personal hopes. It hit me yesterday that it has been one big practice in beginner's mind. Sharing practice and enquiry with others helps to keep that beginner's mind alive. I feel very lucky to have participated in the 8-week course twice. |
AuthorI'm Claire - and I (re)learn something every day from practising and teaching mindfulness... Archives
March 2022
Categories |