A 17-minute meditation followed by a stream-of-consciousness journaling practice.
When the pressure to figure it all out, to get ahead of the mystery, to escape discomfort of uncertainty, and to plan one’s way into freedom becomes too heavy or stops working all together, there is only option left; trade strategy for practice.
My life always sweetly revolts when I try to outsmart her. Yet in kind moments, happening more often than not lately, when my practice takes hold and helps release the grip of ‘needing to know’, a different kind of spontaneity emerges, one that doesn’t rely on control, but on intimacy.
In mindfulness teachings, beginner’s mind is neither complacent nor naïve. It is an engaged attempt to meet life with less interference from assumptions. A moment-to-moment attempt to let go of a little bit of the carefully crafted identity built from habit and reactivity. It is the innocence of curiosity cracking light into the tightest thought: “I know how this will go.”
The path toward this kind of innocent intimacy moves through three steps: know nothing, pay attention, and take action, if needed.
When mindfulness moves to skillful action, one is guided to move awareness slowly through the feeling body, the breath, the thoughts, and the undercurrents of emotion. Each layer reveals the complex design of the self in motion: chemical, emotional, energetic. This is the skill of bearing witness. It offers space to perceive, rather than diagnose. To let the animal body and creative mind communicate with less interruption and interrogation.
Be extra careful at this time not to confuse constant motion for skillful momentum. Slow down - always slow down until you can feel a sense of aligned direction beginning to surface. Not the kind driven by urgency, but patient movement rooted in something essential: choice-filled, subtle, and trustworthy.
The stream-of-consciousness writing practice allows the distillation of the sit to emerge. This writing practice gives voice to any discoveries in your quietude; the wants, the insights, the tensions between where things are and where they long to be. In this space, the next best action often reveals itself. Not because it was figured out, but because it was felt.
When the four layers; body, mind, heart, and spirit are brought into the same conversation, something shifts. Less compartmentalization. More integration. Like an ecosystem remembering how to self-regulate and thrive.
This is not a practice of fixing.
It is a practice of weaving presence into movement.
Of creating a life that emerges from attention, rather than control.
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