mindfulness

We cannot stop desires and cravings ans some of them are more skilful: So why not do those activities. Love with tenderness,  meditate, and show compassion - even towards yourself... The last thing is important if you start meditate: If you suddenly start to listen to your thoughts and feelings you may be surprised. So you have to accept everything and understand that this thoughts have a cause. What you can do, is to let them go and go back to the breath. You should be comfortable when you meditate - otherwise you should wait or join a group. Mr Shopenhauer was inspired by the Upanishads and probably by Buddhism. He also saw that we are driven by desires. He called it a blind will to live. He also wanted to stop it all - he thought music was a way, but just temporarily. Probably poor  angry Arthur didn't try mindfulness... Anyway he now is famous as he back in the 1900-hundred century thought he one time would be...

Questions lead to answers which lead to meditation which leads to silence which leads to a smile which leads to body and mind together which lead to craving to be good which leads to no smile which leads to mind and body separated - and so on...  Constant Craving  - K. D Lang http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i16deO9QW-M&feature=related

The words are made by a dualistic thinking; You - me. Life -death. Good- bad. My nation-Your nation. My opinion- Your opinion. Mind-Body. And so on... Probably this kind of thinking have been necessary  for us in some way. But perhaps it´s time to use them with less sureness...

When you meditate your thoughts diminish. So also dualism - you will see that east end west, life and death, good and bad etc go together. An example; each day a lot of cells die in you, but also a lot of cells are born. That means; each day you die and each day you are born. In that sense you don´t have to be afraid of death...its already here. Also your parents, even if they no longer physically are with you, they still are present - in your DNA but also as memories and experiences. In that sense, the are still alive...

So Descartes was wrong. He said that he could doubt everything about himself except that he was thinking. That proved that he existed. The word "I" is the central point here. What does it mean? Perhaps we are sure that we know the answer. Is it the thoughts? In that case - where are you when you aren't thinking? Is it your job, your title? In that case - what happens if you loose your job or change job? Is it your house, your nation? Under my course to be a mindfulness instructor, the teacher, Ola Schenström, made us ask to each other; "Who are you?" After each answer the question was repeated by the questioner.We soon discovered that there were no end to the answers - or maybe an adequate end could be; "I don't know."Or maybe; "It seems I have no essence." Other thinkers have come to the same conclusions; Buddha, Sartre and more recently Damasio and Parfit. Sartre, for instance, has said that we are the sum of our actions. We ha

Sometimes we all become sad and have feelings of emptiness. That´s a part of life. In mindfulness you will learn not to suppress those feelings. If you suppress them you can lose yourself in drugs, consumption or religious fundamentalism. If you really are depressed or sad, it's best to visit a doctor. But pills won't cure the depression, only hide it. In meditation you can learn how to look at the sadness - it's one of many feelings in you and it will fade away. Perhaps it is inherited from your ancestors. A way is to smile to the sadness. This method can be very important ; You don't condemn yourself, you don't feel pity of yourself. You can treat the sadness as a little brother or sister - be with him or her, take him or her out for a walk in nature, watch a funny film. Be active but don't hurry - try to be in the moment, even in everyday life. If you have a time for yourself to meditate everyday, it will spill over in the rest of the day. But do it in a

Mindfulness has it's roots in Buddhism. In this radio program in Swedish you can listen to the story of a former monk. You don't have to be a Buddhist to practise mindfulness - but it's good to know where it all started. Björn Lindeblad has even invented a new Swedish word for it ; varsevarande  http://sverigesradio.se/sida/sandningsarkiv.aspx?programid=2071

We all have desires. They are neither good nor bad - but the can led us astray. They are inherited in us from very long ago. From stone age and even and further away in time. We can all easily feed the seeds of desires - we all now them: Food, status, revenge, jealousy, fear and so on. They will stay with us and we shouldn't hide from them. They have constructed words like I, mine, ours, my group, my nation, my true religion - your fake beliefs, and so on. In stone age they probably have helped us to survive. Nowadays they often is a hindrance - they make us eat to much, to look to much at pornography, to feel agony towards strangers and they make us hate. And in our actions we are guides for our children. Our actions will pass on. But the gut feeling is not always the best guide - perhaps it's a feeling that has come to us from our ancestors. With a mind that has practised meditation it is possible to look at our own desires - not condemn them, but perhaps give them a name.

If you fish, you probably know what meditation means. A Swedish and known politician who likes fishing, Tomas Östros, was quoted in a newspaper today, he said; when you are fishing you need to be quiet and concentrated. He probably doesn't know that he is meditating. But you don't have to go fishing to meditate. Don't make it complicated, you just need some time for your self, a chair, a relaxed but worthy position, don't lean towards the back of the chair. Just follow the breath for some minutes, you don't have to breath in any special way. If the thoughts come and you are lost for a moment, you just go back to the breath. Otherwise you will miss the fish! Sometimes you can fish with other people, but don´t talk too much, you will disturb the fish (but I know some fishers who don't want to have a bite). If you read Swedish you can learn more about meditation in a series of articles in the newspaper SVD;  http://www.svd.se/nyheter/inrikes/inre-varld-lika-ve

We are lucky to live on this planet. We haven´t yet seen any other planets with living being on it. Life is quite fragile. If the Earth has been only five percent nearer or 15 percent longer away from the Sun, it had been impossible for life to grow here. It has a glowing inside witch has caused the mountains - without them it would be water all over the planet, it would no atmosphere at all  and no magnetic field around the planet witch gives a shelter against cosmic radiation. Without the moon the Earth would have a chaotic dance around the sun. And so on... Now we are so many inhabitants so we have to be like gardeners for the Earth. We cannot use the planet  as a big refuse tip. With mindfulness we can learn how to be pleased without so many material things. When we do a walking meditation we can with each step say to ourself; I' m already here. When we wash the dishes we can be just there without longing to another place and time. When we practise mindfulness in the right

Mindfulness is no miracle cure for everything. But something happens in your brain when you practise mindfulness regularly. For instance, read this from Google scholar; http://www.psyn-journal.com/article/S0925-4927%2810%2900288-X/abstract But you should practise with a group or with instructions from a cd. It´s not hard to do it - but you need time and space and of course motivation.

It´s not difficult to practise mindfulness - probably you already do it quite often.You don´t call it mindfulness, but when you do something you like with full concentration, it have the same effect. Perhaps you practise on an instrument or you take photographs; all your mind is included in the moment. All your worries and memories have stopped. You live in the moment and often it´s moments of joy. Of course you have to come back to everyday life that includes planning and feelings like fear. The problem can be that you worry instead of plan and that you feel fear when it´s not necessary. Of course it´s relevant to feel fear when you are in a dangerous situation, like climbing a mountain and so on. But fear can also be a big hindrance if it´s overwhelming. By mindfulness you can make contact with, for instance, your fear of illness.

The headline is another quote from Shakespeare's Othello. Iago speaks about himself. It´s often possible to interpret Shakespeare's texts in different ways, but here it´s quite clear. Iago speaks about his own ability to seduce and manipulate people - he is not what he seems to be. He seeds the seed of jealousy in Othello and the tragedy begins. Iago is the bad guy in the play, but he is bright and interesting. He knows the weak spots in people. In the context of mindfulness the headline means something else; Iago is not what he is. In fact no human being is. In the light of mindfulness we are not our thoughts, neither our body. That´s because the have no separate existence. For instance; a bad upbringing has planted thoughts of shame, bad confidence or extreme lust of revenge in you. But this thoughts have been planted long ago - not only by parents or teachers, but perhaps by ancestor long ago or by society. The thoughts live in you know, but they are not you. But as an

In Shakespeare's play Othello he lets Iago say: "I never found man that knew how to love himself.". Perhaps he is right. It's very hard to be good to oneself. But of hatred comes hatred and of love comes love. If you don't know how to love yourself, it's very hard to really love another. And if you cannot love yourself, perhaps you at least can accept yourself as you are; that is - to have self-compassion. You don't have to be anyone better. If we become angry at someone else it's often a projection of the feelings we have towards yourself  If we are understanding towards ourself, we also can understand others. So taking care of yourself, both mentally and physically is not a selfish act.

The meaning of meditation is to end all concepts. We all now how easy it is to misunderstand each other when we use word and concepts. We need them, but not always - we need to plan for the future, but not always. Sometimes it´s more easy to relate to an animal than to a human being- that´s because animals don´t use concepts, and therefore they cannot tell a lie. For a cat, body and mind are one. You feel hurt and with words and thought you exaggerate the feeling. If you for some seconds concentrate on your breath, you instead often can see that the one who hurts you in some way have wounds too.

Take a walk with yourself in nature. Be really there, walk slowly, look and smell and listen, go outside the paths and your thoughts. Feel the Earth under your feet - you  are a part of the Earth, of nature. People have been there long time before you existed. But in some way you are a part of them too.

We are chased by our thoughts - all day and even when we sleep at night. They are like monkeys jumping from branch to branch - never still, never quiet. It's very hard  to quiet them. But it's possible to look at them, accept them and let them go - let them disappear like clouds in the sky. When you are on a bus or on a train, you can concentrate on the breath, follow it and if the thoughts are coming; just let them be. You can do it for  for just some minutes. Notice how you feel about this - is it comfortable, do you feel sad or does it produce a good mood?

To be mindful means to be in the here and now. This means, for example, when you drink your coffee or tea, you should just do that, also with your mind; you can hold your cup with both your hands, drink slowly and really feel the taste and the liquid at your lips and mouth and even feel when you swallow it. That means that you just exist in that moment, you don´t think of others things - your mind and body are one.Very simple and yet quite hard to do. But if you in some way feel uncomfortable or stressed, it´s worth trying it. Bot you need some discipline and perhaps some friends that are willing to live in the same way.

Suffering is a part of life - you cannot escape it. You don´t have to call for it, it will come anyway. But you don´t have to let it drown you. You have to learn to swim, to let suffering carry you to another shore . Suffering can led you to to more compassion and wisdom. And if you are open to what will come, even to luck, you will meet it a new and more mature way.....

My first blog. I want to share some of my thoughts. As my main interest is mindfulness, I mostly will write about this subject. Everyday I try to be more mindful. Why? Because I find it a good way to feel more free and less lost. And if you become happier, you also will be better for others, including nature - and we all are nature....