Mindfulness for Beginners by Kabat-Zinn Jon

Author:Kabat-Zinn, Jon [Kabat-Zinn, Jon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781604077742
Amazon: B007L659U2
Publisher: Sounds True
Published: 2012-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

Of course, this takes investigation and looking where we most don’t want to look. That is one virtue of the cultivation of mindfulness and the intentionality behind the practice — to help us to turn toward that which we are most impelled to turn away from.

Is My Awareness of Suffering Suffering?

You might ask yourself at some point when you find yourself hurting: “Is my awareness of my suffering suffering?”

You might try looking at what is arising in your experience in a moment of suffering and sustain the looking for a few moments longer than you feel comfortable with, as if you were dipping your toe in the water, with a light and gentle touch, but you’re still determined to feel what is here and apprehend the quality of your awareness. With practice, you might try extending the exploration over longer periods, so that your investigation of what we identify as suffering has a chance to stabilize in awareness. It would be good to try this out on a number of different occasions. This is a way to befriend unpleasant and difficult experiences.

You could investigate anxiety in a moment of fear in a similar way by asking: “Is my awareness of my fear, my trepidation, my worry, my anxiety frightened?” and then looking deeply. Or, you could investigate a moment of pain by asking: “Is my awareness of the pain in pain?” Or, “Is my awareness of my sadness sad, my depression depressed, or my feeling worthless worthless?” Of course, it is best to do this when the feeling is strong, and not as a theoretical or conceptual exercise.

I am not saying that this is easy. Nor am I saying that it will magically make anything better. It’s not supposed to. But it is a way to work with enormous pain and harm in potentially transformative and liberative ways.

As a next step, you might then experiment with dropping the “my” altogether and see how that feels, so that it is no longer my suffering, my anxiety, my sadness. In other words, letting go of the selfing, which simply means to be aware of it. Perhaps you are getting the sense that awareness can, in a moment, turn the tables on our deepest beliefs about our experience as we investigate the full extent of that experience, as opposed to merely living in a habitual reactivity colored and perpetuated by old, worn-out patterns of thought with little or no awareness.

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