The invitation of intimacy
If you choose intimate relationship as the crucible for your own awakening and healing, you extend an open invitation to *everything* that is unresolved within you to come to the surface – to show you in excruciating detail those areas of your heart that have been numbed and abandoned, and are now calling for your love, attention, and awareness. There are parts of you that have been crying out for your holding for so many years now; it is your beloved that will reveal these to you.
The beloved, like no other, will take you right into the unknown. She will root out all of your hiding places and reveal your nakedness. She will show you that even those most scary and disturbing parts of yourself are pathways home. This is her gift to you.
It can be helpful to look into each of your relationships to start to see the landscape of the (unconscious) agreements you’ve made with “the other” to avoid the experience of too much exposure, vulnerability, and uncertainty. It is quite natural to unconsciously start to define a “good” relationship or a “great” partner or “my one and only soul mate” as one who doesn’t really question these agreements, and who supports your enacting of the survival mechanisms which arose in your early environment. It doesn’t take much – just a few words or not returning a phone call or a particular glance or some apparent distance or simply seeing how your needs are just not getting met – and you are raw, tender, vulnerable, unprotected, and unsure; the ground has fallen away. The beloved has arrived, bearing gifts from beyond.
The survival-level panic comes rushing in, the anxiety has returned, confusion has filled the space between. Where did the beloved go? Where is the love? Am I safe? I have given so much; will I be met?
This is the opportunity of a lifetime, to metabolize that which the beloved has activated. By entering the unknown with your beloved, by stepping into the groundlessness together, you will meet these orphaned pieces of your own heart. They only want one moment of your holding, your care, and your touch. Be naked, be willing to fall apart, be willing to break open, take the risk that love always demands! Let love take you apart and put you back together again, over and over.
Love is not safe. The beloved’s touch is the end of your world. There is nowhere to hide for you have now come to see that your heart is everywhere! You will always be touched, you will care so deeply, you will remain vulnerable forever to the transformative movement of love. You are left as a transparent vessel through which love can pour out into this universe, reorienting everything it touches; everything that is less-than-whole within is burning away, friends, and the beloved is revealing your translucence.
Breathe and Be
Need more “Breathe and Be” Moments?
Excerpted from Breathe and Be: A Book of Mindfulness Poems. Written by Kate Coombs and illustrated by Anna Emilia Laitinen.
Kate Coombs is the author of numerous books, including picture books, novels, and books of poetry. Her collection of ocean poems, Water Sings Blue, won the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award for 2012. She’s a former teacher, and has taught both K-12 and college. Her favorite color is the blue-green at the top of an ocean wave, and she goes out of her way to step on dry leaves just to hear them crunch. For more, see katecoombs.com.
Anna Emilia Laitinen studied graphic design and illustration in Finland and Iceland. She has illustrated books, stationary, tableware, and textiles. In 2015, she received the Kaiku Award for illustration from The Association of Illustrators in Finland. Her favorite color is the Northern winter sky during sunset and her favorite sound is waking up in a tent in a forest full of birds singing. For more, see annaemilia.com.
Short on Time? Try Mindfulness
A new study suggests that just 10 minutes of mindfulness meditation changes our experience of time. A great way to learn the practice of mindfulness, requiring no previous experience, is through the groundbreaking new book from Jon Kabat-Zinn, Mindfulness for Beginners, and also through the new online course in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction.
From our friends at the Greater Good Science Center…
Short on Time? Try Mindfulness
Bogged down with responsibilities at work and at home? Many of us wish we had more time to get it all done—and still steal time to relax.
While adding more hours to our day may not be possible, a recent study suggests a little mindfulness meditation can help us at leastfeel like we have more time in our lives.
Researcher Robin Kramer and his colleagues trained students at the University of Kent in the United Kingdom to link different shapes to either a short and a long period of time. Shapes shown on a computer screen for 400 milliseconds represented a short duration, while shapes shown for 1600 milliseconds represented a long duration. Next, all of the participants were presented with shapes held on the screen for a variety of durations and had to determine whether the duration was more similar to the short or the long period of time.
Half of the participants then listened to a 10-minute mindfulness meditation exercise, which guided them to concentrate on the movement of their breath throughout their body. The other half listened to the audiobook version of The Hobbit for 10 minutes. Immediately afterward, the researchers again presented them with varying durations of time.
The results, published in the journal Consciousness and Cognition, show that the meditators were more likely to report that durations of time were “long” after they had meditated. In contrast, participants didn’t report any difference in time duration if they had listened to theHobbit recording. The researchers conclude that mindfulness meditation made participants experience time as passing more slowly. Remarkably, they saw this effect after just a single 10-minute meditation, among participants who had no prior meditation experience.
Though more study is needed to explain this finding, the researchers suspect that the mindfulness meditation altered time perception because it induced people to shift their attention inward. In the paper, the authors write that when people are distracted by a task in the world around them, they have less capacity to pay attention to time passing, and so experience time as moving more quickly. Because the mindfulness meditation exercise cued participants to focus on internal processes such as their breath, that attentional shift may have sharpened their capacity to notice time passing.
Kramer thinks that this finding could be used in everyday situations, to help people gain control over their experience when they feel short on time. “If things feel like they’re running away,” he says, “slowing things down might help you deal with them more easily.”
Kramer also speculates that while a mindfulness exercise that shifts attention to internal events extends one’s experience of time, a mindfulness exercise that shifts attention to an external event could potentially make time feel like it’s passing more quickly. If this were true, mindfulness could have clinical applications for people who feel like time is moving too slowly, such as those experiencing depression, who tend to overestimate the duration of negative events.
Though Greater Good has previously reported on many positive effects of mindfulness, as well as on how experiencing awe can alter how we perceive time, this study is one of the first to investigate the relationship between mindfulness and time perception. In the future, the researchers aim to uncover how long mindfulness meditation’s effects on time perception last, and to explore further the precise causes of this shift in time perception.
The miracle of autumn
To walk in the early morning on what appears as another ordinary Sunday, with the summer and the fall still in dialogue about who will take it from here. Looking up into the unfolding sky, it is so clear that I know nothing at all, that I have no idea what the beloved wants of me, until she whispers it through the birds, through the falling leaves, through the orangeness of orange, the yellowness of yellow, and through this body as it feels the shakiness of being wildly alive.
Each arising moment, more revelation as to how little I actually know, other than this erupting now moment and this tender heart, raw and unprotected from love and its sweet and fierce activity. I really hope to make it all the way through this day, and to be in awe at what might be shown tomorrow. But if not, for now I am left only with an unexplainable, erupting gratitude to have been shown even a tiny sliver of love. I have been given so much.
It is early morning in the mountains – and fall is arriving. Something new is asking to be met, to be allowed, to be held in and as luminous awareness. Whatever form arises into translucent consciousness is revealed to be none other than that consciousness itself. It is breathtaking, really, to watch as love emerges as this sensual world, as these feelings, as these colors, all laid out as one harvest feast of grace for lover and beloved and their union.
To be here in this special world is the only miracle. We’ve been given everything we need: a beating heart to feel so much, arms to reach out and hold another close, words to speak kindness, and eyes to gaze sweetly into the depths of our lovers. Behold the grace-harvest that is this life, and the endless bounty of love as it emerges out of the unknown and takes shape as the miracle of autumn.
Deconstructing Yourself: Mindfulness Meditation for Modern Mutants
Friends, we wanted to make sure you knew about Deconstructing Yourself, a cutting edge, super informative, and provocative website on the nature and application of mindfulness in the modern world. It is run by Sounds True author and former editorial director, Michael W. Taft, who is currently editor-in-chief of Being Human, an organization exploring what evolution, neuroscience, biology, psychology, archeology, and technology can tell us about the human condition.
Michael created Deconstructing Yourself as a way to share the life changing force that is meditation (he’s been at it for over three decades). He and his colleagues strive to extend beyond any particular religion or technique in order to welcome anyone into their community. Their original articles are written with honesty and curiosity, in hopes of encouraging and inspiring your meditation practice. They cover issues that affect us all: heartbreak, death, love, sex, religion, art, and how meditation can help to enliven and transform them.
We hope you enjoy this wonderful portal for all things mindfulness, and wish you the very best with your own practice, wherever it takes you.
Give Yourself a 10-Day Tech Detox
This tech detox is a 10-day sneak peek of the full 30-Day detox plan offered in The Power of Off. Here’s how to use your phone as an opportunity to wake up instead of a source of constant distraction. Give yourself the gift of being truly present during the hectic holiday season.
DAY 1
Pay attention to and internally note every time you feel the impulse or hear the thought to check one of your devices or computer. When you notice this, ask yourself, “Am I checking out of habit?” and “Is this checking necessary right now?” (For example, is it necessary for work?) If the answer is “Habit” or “Not Necessary,” then repeat to yourself, “Stop” and do just that. Simultaneously, designate three times in the day when you are allowed to check your device, whether necessary or not.
DAY 2
Refrain from any tech use when socializing or otherwise interacting with people (except at work, if needed). This includes everyone—shopkeepers, waiters, and service people, as well as your family and friends.
DAY 3
Refrain from holding your device in your hand or keeping it in your pocket when it’s not in use. Store it out of sight elsewhere.
DAY 4
Refrain from using any of your devices during the first hour after you wake up in the morning. If your smartphone is also your alarm clock, treat it as such. Turn it completely off as soon as it’s sounded your morning wake-up.
DAY 5
Refrain from using tech devices during the last hour before you go to bed.
DAY 6
Turn off all alerts and notifications on your device. If your cell phone is your alarm clock, leave only the alarm notification intact.
DAY 7
Refrain from using your devices on public transportation or in taxis.
DAY 8
Write down four activities or experiences that nourish your spirit. Keep these simple and accessible—not the climbing-to-the-summit-of-Mount-Everest sort. Give yourself one of these experiences today, and get one on the calendar for each week to come. This practice should continue weekly after your detox as well.
DAY 9
Refrain from using your devices while waiting in line—any kind of line.
DAY 10
Refrain from using technology in the car, except when you need GPS assistance.
Looking for more great reads?
Excerpted from The Power of Off by Nancy Colier.
Nancy Colier is the author of The Power of Off. She is a psychotherapist, interfaith minister, author, and veteran meditator.