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Mindfulness: Wake up and Smell the Coffee!
By Colleen Deatsman and Paul Bowersox
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“Mindfulness is the miracle by
which we master and restore ourselves.”
~ Thich Nhat Hanh
Mindfulness is bare awareness in the
present moment. In the singular silence of the present
moment there is no past or future. A still mind, without
the whirl of churning thoughts, anchors the heart in the
present and opens the path to clear vision. Clear vision
facilitates self-knowledge, relaxation, inner peace,
joy, and calmness and is the foundation for the
development of a liberating wisdom that Zen Master Thich
Nhat Hanh refers to as the “Great Awakening”. In this
great awakening, we become aware of our true self, in
all of our beauty and in all of our limitations. We
learn who we are inside of our kind-heartedness,
compassion, greed, pride and judgments. We learn about
our motivations for what we think and how we act, and
the inner landscape of our psyche. In this mindfulness,
we become aware of our powerful strengths and the
patterns and training that limit us. As we get to know
ourselves in our true nature, we become aware of the
details and the true nature of our surroundings, our
families, our work, our hobbies, our world. In this
awareness, there is freedom from masks, veils, and
illusions. We can find a peaceful centeredness in this
freedom. In this quiet state of being, we are open to
receive and listen. Once honed, mindfulness is an
attitude and an awareness that permeates every aspect or
our lives.
The times we live in and the days
to come require that we pay attention to what is going
on. It might not seem like it, but paying attention is a
radical and subversive act. It always has been, and is
even more so now. Paying attention, whether to your
internal or external world, strips away layers of
illusion and brings you into the “real” just as it
positions you in the present moment. Why radical and
subversive? In a very real sense, we are conditioned in
our culture to not pay attention. We are told
what to think, how we should act or dress, and what we
should consider to be important. We are even told what
to fear and what to love. We are told everything we need
to know. We are also told everything designed to
influence and manipulate us. Justifications for wars or
civil liberties violations, contrite apologies from
politicians or religious leaders caught in disgrace, and
national security alert levels are all reported to us to
achieve a tone, a feeling in society which directs our
attention to the point where we are told to look, rather
than where we might look if left to our own devices.
Paying close attention allows us to observe what is
really going on. It eliminates editorial slant, spin,
and media influence. In essence, it reveals the real and
dismisses the illusion. Paying attention is an
undeniably subversive act to those who would shape
public opinion, those who would tell us what is to be
believed to be true. It is also a subversive act to your
own ego when that observation is cast inward to
determine what is truly real and what you merely think
is real. Paying attention is a fundamental skill that
must be cultivated. The key unleashing the power that
you alone can wield begins with paying attention; to the
world around you; to events; and to the nature of the
Self.
Nothing in our society prepares people to be able to be
mindful effectively. We have been taught to look for
easy, quick fixes rather than to savor the victory of a
well-honed discipline. As simple as it is to institute
an attitude of mindfulness, it is amazingly difficult to
nourish and sustain it. We often become too busy,
distracted, tired, bored, or feel we aren’t
accomplishing anything. People also are surprised to
find that mindfulness brings them face to face with
themselves. The thoughts that they attempt to shut out
through a constant barrage of activities, television,
and background noise, are suddenly in their face. This
rush of thoughts is often a convenient distraction that
deters us from being a mindful person. If we can just
sit quietly through these initial moments of “monkey
mind”, we will witness a beautiful soul emerge from
behind the chatter.
Mindfulness is a useful tool for monitoring your status,
a critical step in achieving and maintaining health.
Begin by checking in regularly with yourself to see how
you are feeling. Take a deep breath and quiet yourself.
Pay attention to everything going on around you,
noticing whatever details jump out at you. Observe
everything going on within you, noticing every aspect of
yourself, your mind, emotions, soul, and body. Inhale
another deep breath and take a few more moments to look
even further. Be observant and notice all the sensations
that you can feel. Notice if anything hurts, aches, is
stiff, blocked or numb. Notice what feels neutral and
okay. Notice what feels wonderful and healthy. Take a
mental inventory. And then go deeper. Become aware of
any other sensations that you might have missed. Notice
the minutiae as detailed as you can go. If you have
discovered any imbalances, go deeper into your body and
psyche to learn the message of these imbalances. Ask
yourself why the imbalance is present, and then sit
quietly and allow the answer to bubble forth from your
inner wisdom. Be patient, it sometimes takes awhile,
maybe even days for the answer to register in
consciousness. Remain aware of the symptom and allow the
knowledge to cook within you. Soon you will know what it
is telling you. 
Mindfulness requires focus. It doesn’t happen any other
way. You must train yourself to pay attention, to be
observant, and to notice everything, inside and out. You
need to make bare awareness a priority until it becomes
a routine habit. Consciously pinpoint various times
during the day that you will stop and notice what you
are feeling, thinking, doing, seeing, and experiencing.
You may or may not have to stop what you are doing, but
you will probably have to make a point to remind
yourself to do this. Hanging notes in various places
where you go throughout the day acts as a helpful
reminder. When you look in the mirror, go to the laundry
room, or jump into the car, wherever, whenever you see a
note, take a few minutes to look around and check in.
For some people, the natural ability to
connect in mindfulness may have become lost or hidden
through the process of indoctrination used in our
culture to produce educated, responsible citizens that
generate some kind of work or product. We were told that
“daydreaming” or seeing our invisible friend was wrong,
so many people shut down these gifts. In fact,
daydreaming, properly cultivated, allows us to see
potential in the present moment that might otherwise
elude us, just as broadening our spectrum of observation
allows us to see beings and energies that normally elude
the casual observer. Because you already have the
natural ability to connect, it isn’t hard to retrain
yourself to become receptive to these subtler
observations. You need only cultivate, activate and
enhance your natural skills. For some it helps to unplug
from of the machine of the everyday world, and get out
into nature. Being in nature, and the contemplation of
nature, provides a much needed shift in perspective.
Nature wears no mask. It is primal and direct. There are
no dichotomies in nature, no good/bad, right/wrong,
happy/sad, foolish/wise. There is only the soul of
nature, shining pure and clear across an enormous
spectrum of which we normally observe only the smallest
fraction. By placing ourselves in that environment we
can step aside from our programming and simply be.
Faced with the masklessness of nature, our own mask
falls away, helping us to become awake and alert.
Bringing this awake and alert self back into our
everyday world helps us notice and experience things we
usually take for granted or hadn’t even noticed before.
Relaxation and the conscious silencing of mind chatter
are also typical avenues for opening to perception. Mind
chatter and the content of our habitual thoughts limit
our perception and hold our idiosyncratic version of
reality in place.
When first beginning to awaken your
mindfulness abilities, you will experience the most
success when you are relaxed and quiet physically,
mentally and emotionally. This is achieved through the
following five-step process that
cultivates a state of mindful bare awareness; 1)
intention, your desire to become calm and quiet, 2)
focus, mindfully directing your attention and
placing your thoughts on relaxing, 3) releasing,
stopping mind chatter and everyday worldly thoughts, 4)
allowing, availing yourself to be fully present
in the experience and being receptive to all of the
feelings, sensations and insights that come to you
during this time, and 5) acceptance, performing
all steps without judgment or analytical censoring.
In this state of mindful, bare
awareness you can access one of the most potent
faculties you have for perceiving - your felt
sense. Your felt sense is the combination of all
of the feelings, sensations and realizations that you
experience at any given time from your multiple senses.
To become conscious of your felt sense, notice what you
feel everywhere in your physical body, paying particular
attention to the center of your torso. Notice
everything that you are thinking, then everything that
you are feeling, then notice what you feel energetically
inside and around your physical body, then what you feel
intuitively, and then notice everything in your whole
being all at once. You don’t have to be aware of every
tiny nuance going on within you to experience your felt
sense. In fact, this would be quite impossible at this
stage. Rather, to become conscious of your felt sense,
just be aware and notice the overall feelings,
sensations and realizations of all of the individual
senses working collectively within you.
To illustrate, here is a brief example of an exercise
you can use to hone your mindfulness skills: I chose
to focus on a freshly bloomed dandelion. I relax, use
the five-step process and sink into my second attention.
I notice that the golden yellow vibrates in my solar
plexus and feels warm like the sun. I feel that the
dandelion is happy to be blooming and soaking in the
sun. A gentle breeze blows and she dances on her milky
stem. I recall the bitterness of child-hood
taste-testing and remember the yellow pollen being
rubbed onto my chin and nose. I pay attention to all of
these sensations of my felt sense and allow them to
resonate in my awareness. I draw in the energy of the
dandelion and feel that I too am happy to be blooming
and soaking in the warm sun.
Perhaps this exercise will help you begin to experience
your felt sense. Choose an object that you would like to
use as a focal point. Set your intention to relax. Use
the five-step process and notice the messages you
receive from your felt sense. Release your mind chatter
and allow your mind and emotions to become quiet. Take
in a deep breath and relax your body. Drop down out of
your thinking mind into your body by surrendering your
thoughts and sending your attention into your body,
heart and soul. Some refer to this as sinking into the
second attention. A simple physical movement to help you
accomplish this is to reach up and put your hands on
your head. Gather the energy from in and around your
head and sink it down into your body and energy field by
moving your hands down the front of your body and
bringing them to rest on your heart, then your solar
plexus just under your rib cage, and then on your belly.
Notice what you feel. Allow yourself to relax into your
body.
Once you have become relaxed, mentally focus your
attention on the object you have chosen. Intentionally
open up all of your senses and allow yourself to see all
of its characteristics and aspects and feel its energy
or vibe. It may help to soften your eyes. Feel with your
felt sense - don’t just think with your head. Notice
what you are experiencing. Notice all of your
sensations. Take your time. When you can sense the
object, receive this energy by allowing it to flow into
you and through you. Take in a deep breath and open your
body, mind, and personal energy field. Consciously draw
in the energy without judgment or conditions, accepting
everything that you notice and feel. Do this for as long
as you have time. When you are finished don’t shut back
down. Try to stay open for as long as you can and remain
aware of the different sensations you are having. This
will help you be more aware in your everyday life.
Felt Sense is one of a trio of practices designed to
free the mind. It represents an expansion of a
constricted awareness. The other two components -- still
point and honesty -- represent ways we unclutter our
busy and crowded minds, freeing ourselves of societal
conditioning and our own self-induced illusions.
Emptiness is the essence of still point. By centering
ourselves in the unvarying quiet of a blank slate mind,
we empty ourselves out of all of our pre-established
points of view. Meditation, especially Zazen, is an
example of this kind of discipline designed to empty out
the mind’s clutter. Unflinching honesty works to clear
away the distractions of fantasy and subterfuge that
sometimes control our lives. By eliminating those places
where we lie to ourselves and others, vast areas and
energies within our mind become available for use in
observation of the world around us. By not having to
keep track of our personal stories, mythologies and
“little white lies”, we can attend to the larger and
more interesting task of living from our soul self and
seeing beyond the ends of our noses.
As Sir Arthur Conan Doyle once
said, “The world is full of obvious things which nobody
by any chance ever observes.”
Free your mind and you will become
present and aware of the world.
© Copyright 2009
Colleen Deatsman and Paul Bowersox.
Adapted from Seeing in the Dark:
Claim Your Own Shamanic Power Now and in the Coming Age
(Red Wheel Weiser 2009) and Inner Power: Six
Techniques for Increased Energy and Self-Healing
(Llewellyn 2005).
All Rights Reserved.
Colleen Deatsman
is the Co-Author of Seeing in the Dark: Claim Your
Own Shamanic Power Now and in the Coming Age
(Red Wheel Weiser 2009), Author of Energy for
Life: Connect with the Source
(Llewellyn
2006), Inner Power: Six
Techniques for Increased Energy and Self-Healing
(Llewellyn
2005), and numerous on-line and print magazine articles.
She holds a Masters Degree and is a Licensed
Professional Counselor, Licensed Social Worker, Shamanic
Practitioner, Energy Movement Healer, Reiki Master,
Certified Hypnotherapist, and Certified Alternative
Healing Consultant at Circle of Life Counseling and
Healing Services in Mason, Michigan. Colleen is also an
expert by personal experience. She has healed herself
from chronic fatigue immune deficiency syndrome (CFIDS),
fibromyalgia, hypoglycemia, hypothyroidism and asthma.
You can email Colleen at
cdeats3@gmail.com.
Paul Bowersox
is the Co-Author of
Seeing in the Dark: Claim Your Own Shamanic Power
Now and in the Coming Age
(Red Wheel Weiser 2009). He holds a Bachelor’s Degree
in Biomedical Engineering, is a Shamanic Practitioner
and Teacher, Reiki Practitioner, Writing Coach, Editor
and Contributing Writer for a number of on-line sources,
publications and authors including authors Colleen
Deatsman (Red Wheel Weiser and Llewellyn) and Mark
Stavish (Red Wheel Weiser and Llewellyn). You can email
Pail at
pbowersox@gmail.com.
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