Mindfulness teaches us to be attentive to our senses, so that we can keep our mind and body connected in the present moment. We learn to do this by free choice – not to leave this up to chance. Mindfulness frees our mind from being chained to the past or the future. We learn to consciously avoid pain that we suffer from our mind drama and from escaping into destructive fight or flight modes, instead of turning inward to see our needs.
Practice leads to mastery. Wherever we choose to place our attention is what we will occupy our mind with. In other words, we train our mind what to focus on. And our body literally forgets patterns we haven’t used in a while. So this is really about “mind hygiene”: If we adopt mindful self-compassion (MSC, by Neff & Germer) and stop our destructive escapes, we will reprogram ourselves to a more healing way of life.
In the following days, we will learn more about our human suffering and self-compassion. We will recognize how suffering develops inside us, and how we can dissolve it again. We will learn what we can do to control that process, rather than feeling helplessly exposed to it.
In sum, this is all about learning how to live a self-determined, benevolent life – where we choose to live every moment with our attentiveness purposefully directed at to those things that serve us well, for our inner healing, health and happiness.
Our Happiness and Suffering
Every living being strives to be happy and wants to avoid conditions of pain.
– Dalai Lama
This also applies to humans.
As humans, we all share the same basic needs and fears. Underneath our “mask” that serves to set us apart as individuals from others around us, we are actually all the same. We need – and, we fear.
The more we fight our fears, the more we will suffer. It’s a natural consequence.
Sogyal Rinpoche has an explanation for this dilemma:
“One of the main reasons why we fear so much lies in the fact that we still deny our impermanence. And then, when change comes about, we try our best to numb ourselves.”
A rational solution to this dilemma then would be to just end the denial of our impermanence, and to take a look at our fears. Without downplaying or dramatizing them. Just to see them – to see that we suffer because we didn’t see our impermanence as part of our existence. To let go of that sense of security we had in our fantasies. And once we do that, then we will encounter a soft, tender core inside us that rests beneath that wound. There, we learn to stay by our side, particularly in our suffering. Like we stay by a friend’s side when she suffers – we don’t leave us alone with this wound. We learn to take care of ourselves. To approach ourselves rather than abandoning us or making others responsible for how we feel. Compassion means suffering-with. It means that we stay here. We stay in touch. Without drama or exaggeration. Without shutting ourselves down so we don’t have to feel our suffering. We feel ourselves.
And then, suddenly, we see ourselves. We will sense a soft tenderness for our self and, after a while, also for others around us.
It’s that simple.
It’s a “being-touched” in a way that doesn’t hurt us. Our touch heals us. Once we have gotten in touch with our pain, then we can rest here. This is where we will find our human qualities again, such as our heart and caring – for ourselves, and for others around us.
The genuine gratitude we feel in that place makes us healthier people. Mindful self-compassion leads to emotional well-being, improves coping with challenges, lowers anxiety and depression, and triggers healthier life habits and happier relationships. It is an inner strength that allows us to become human again – to embrace us just like we were born as humankind.
So for now, practice the exercises and allow them to reveal their effects! You only need to provide the soil, humidity and warmth for the seed to grow. The rest comes naturally, with time. You have the seed in you. You are the seed! And if you provide proper care, the seed will come to fruition as soon as it’s time.
Maxims of Mindful Self-Compassion
The following are some maxims about mindful self-compassion (MSC) after Kristin Neff and Christopher Germer. You don’t need to memorize them, but try to feel each of them. Internalize these maxims. This will support you in learning the MBSR skills, as the maxims will continue to penetrate your mind and body while you practice your exercises.
1. Stay neutral – Just observe what happens. What do you see? What do you hear? What do you smell? Don’t judge, just observe – as if you are documenting what’s going on, here and now, on a checklist.
2. Watch with patience – Each living thing needs its time to grow and eventually pass away again. Everything comes, everything goes. Everything has its time on this planet. You do too. You will need this same exact patience for turning our exercises into fruition.
3. Each moment is new – We’ve never lived it before, and we will never live it again. Thus, look at each moment with a fresh eye. None of it is anymore to be taken for granted!
4. Have faith – Recognize that nothing is just here. Everything has a cause and effect. You will learn to steer yourself, to regenerate, and to take good care of yourself – and you will notice what the healing effects of that will be.
5. Be open – Allow everything that happens to come and go naturally. Observe it consciously, but without holding onto it. Without identifying yourself with it. Let it happen! Notice it consciously with all your senses. Let it come, and then let it go again when it wants to.
6. Accept – Take things as they are. There is no need to make more or less out of them. We don’t need to judge situations as great or as terrible. It’s enough to just let them be like they are. This is not about adopting a fatalistic attitude. It’s about practicing an awake, conscious recognition of what is. We look at it, not away. We don’t dramatize or downplay it. We just take things like they are. That’s acceptance – the fundament for any change and healing to take place.
7. Let go – Loosen your grip. This is the skill of not holding on to obsessiveness and getting stuck in grinding thoughts. Ending such harmful processes is a true act of self-compassion! Things don’t get better if you torture yourself thinking things over a hundred times. The opposite is true: The sooner you notice that you’re mind-looping, the easier you can stop it, and the shorter will be your suffering.
8. Have love and self-compassion – They are an attitude of wanting well for yourself! We often criticize ourselves more harshly than anyone else. We push ourselves for more performance. Observe what words you are telling yourself! What tone of voice do you use when you talk or think to yourself? What does your way of communicating with yourself trigger in you? Ask yourself: “Who talked to me like this in my life?” Find a new tone of voice and language that is more healing to you. Remove words that push or overwhelm you from your vocabulary. It doesn’t happen immediately, but you will eventually learn to adopt a more benevolent, understanding attitude toward yourself and, as a result, also toward others around you.
In summary, we want to be able to steer our attentiveness and no longer be enslaved by our mind’s fictional travels. This is not about shutting off our suffering. It’s about allowing it to be there and to understand it. The stories we tell ourselves in our mind cause our suffering. If we consciously stop these stories, then we stop our suffering and the resulting physical symptoms. Blocking or numbing our fears and discomforts causes our body tension and pain – and more suffering, as a result. If we learn to gently look at and allow what’s happening and what is, then our blockage stops, and with that, our suffering under that situation.
Our Exercise for Today
Take a few minutes now to write down the key messages you would like to remember from this blog until this date into your notebook. Then, draw a picture to process what you’ve learned so far. It doesn’t matter whether you draw it in an abstract or figurative form. The drawing will help you intensify your processing and memory of the content you’ve accumulated over these past three days. Let your pen guide you, and have fun!
After you are done, there is only one small task I ask you to do: Eat one meal (or snack) today with mindfulness, like you learned to do it with the raisin meditation.
Tomorrow, we will practice a mindful self-compassion (MSC) exercise with the “Body Scan”.
— Annegret Hannawa