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HOw can MINDFULNESS improve our PERSPECTIVE?

8/18/2020

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What is mindfulness and why is it important? 

Why be mindful? Is mindfulness enough? Obviously there is endless literature on the topic but hey, I'll give it a shot and try to explain the concept from my perspective. 

To be full of mind is what the word suggests but it is a little more complex than this. Our psycho-physical phenomena, the mind-body experience that we are having, is in constant fluctuation from one arising experience of consciousness to the next: experience, idea, experience, idea, experience, idea, etc.  

Our relationship with each arising moment conditions our relationship with the next and so on; with our mind relating information to the body and the body back to the mind; distinct but not separate experiences. 

The issue that arises for us all in this endless cycle of arising and passing, is that our attention tends to get stuck on the interpretation of one mind-body event, as the coming min-body events come and continue to pass.

We end up living in a near past or future that begins to stretch out into more and more distant ones, as we compare each new moment to our increasing collection of life experiences. In terms of frames per second, we are only catching about 10% of life on the regular. 

Life doesn't pass faster as we age but rather we slowly condition ourselves to pass over it more and more. In this sense the years do pass faster and faster but not because they need to. Mindfulness claims to aid us in reversing this process. But then what is it? 

In the most simplistic terms it is just a training of our attention to the arising moment as it arises. Our monkey mind runs us ragged at times, dreaming of the future and re-imagining the past; as if in a constant state of separation from what is happening to us. 

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Whether a smell, a sound, a taste, a touch, a sight or a thought, being present to the arising moment as it is, is the key. 
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How to mind the moment?

​When not present, when we are fixating on some object of perception, we tend to be reactive to new information. We are led around by this wild mind and reactive to the moment rather than in sync with it.  Such a mindless state is at the root of most of life's discomforts, not only for the individual, but also for those around us. As if constantly stepping on our dance partners toes and our own. 

Developing mindfulness in all facets of life, empowers us to make conscious choices. It empowers us to untangle the knots of our discord rather than to further bind ourselves.  The Theravada tradition from Burma where I learned some of this calls it the 5 posture practice. 

To be aware of our arising states in all states: sitting, walking, standing, laying down and everything in between! Meditation and other practices can help us to train this attuned state of present time presence. 

When our attention becomes to fixated on the objects of our perception and we incur an increasing sense of attachment to these objects we increase our base experience of suffering. In this state it is hard to act appropriately in a world that needs us. And that's just it, mindfulness, meditation, yoga are not ends in of themselves but allow the space to participate more fully in life. 
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I've always found the below parable quite interesting in contemplating my relationship with myself and the world: 
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Photo by Josh Hild from Pexels

An aging master grew tired of his apprentice's complaints. One morning, he sent him to get some salt. When the apprentice returned, then master told him to mix a handful of salt in the glass of water and then to drink it. ​

​​“How does it taste?” the master asked.

“Aweful,” said the apprentice.

The master chuckled and then asked the young man to take the same handful of salt and put it in the lake. The two walked in silence to the nearby lake and once the apprentice swirled his handful of salt in the water, the old man said, “Now drink from the lake.”

As the water dripped down the young man’s chin, the master asked, “How does it taste?”

“Fantastic”, remarked the apprentice.

“Do you taste the salt?” asked the master.

​“No,” said the young man. At this the master sat beside this serious young man, and explained softly,


“The pain of life is pure salt; no more, no less. The amount of pain in life remains exactly the same. However, the amount of bitterness we taste depends on the container we put the pain in. So when you are in pain, the only thing you can do is to enlarge your sense of things. Stop being a glass. Become a lake.” 


To be the vessel and not the ingredients we must be aware of our vessel and not lost in the compulsive reorganizing of the mentally construed 'parts'.

The mind is particularly good at objectifying and dividing. This is an excellent tool for navigation but not so much for connection. 

As my friend Alan Clements says, "do not look to the shadows between the peddles but the the light, the oxygen and the H20."
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Mindfulness is the first step in shifting our perspective. The constant process of marginalized living --- of separating and dividing and of cataloging our experience into likes and dislikes --- happens only in reflection to the ever arising moment. To be at the tip of the arising moment in what ever form it may come, brings freedom from the compulsive behavior that permeates most of our lives. 
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A Simple problem turned useful

There are many daily practices, reminders and social activities that enhance our mindful skills. Yoga, prayer, meditation, sport, work and pretty much anything that brings about an increased sense of mindfulness is a good thing. Making them intentionally mindful and finding what practices will work for you through your day are the key.

​Its not so much what you are doing but how you are doing it. Thinking isn't something to be stopped, just that you do it as an activity and not a compulsion. 


When I first started looking into mindfulness and meditation, I was about 23 years old.  I lived on the edge of a beautiful mountain lake with a handful of great friends.  Despite the beauty all around me I could not get my mind off the sound of the passing cars.  

​I lived over the local highway and every time a car passed, which was fairly often, it would get a rise out of me! It was as if I would grow more irritated by the sound as the days passed on.  This would not do I thought. 

​I certainly could not stop the flow of traffic though and the thought of moving from such a great situation seemed absurd.  Rather than block it out, I set to change the shape of my vessel and quite literally used the sound of passing vehicles to correct my posture. 

​Every time I heard a car, I mindfully shifted my reaction to the action of adjusting myself.  Almost a decade has passed and you could say I am no slouch.


Many of life’s experiences would seem way to salty to bear, but perhaps our perspective is more powerful than we think. With just the right salinity of self, we may soften and hone many of the tasks at hand into vessels of mastery. ​​​
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​I lived over the local highway and every time a car passed, which was fairly often, it would get a rise out of me! It was as if I would grow more irritated by the sound as the days passed on.  This would not do I thought. 

​I certainly could not stop the flow of traffic though and the thought of moving from such a great situation seemed absurd.  Rather than block it out, I set to change the shape of my vessel and quite literally used the sound of passing vehicles to correct my posture.  Every time I heard a car, I mindfully shifted my reaction to the action of adjusting myself.  Almost a decade has passed and you could say I am no slouch.


Many of life’s experiences would seem way to salty to bear, but perhaps our perspective is more powerful than we think. With just the right salinity of self, we may soften and hone many of the tasks at hand into vessels of mastery. ​​​

Epi-genetics and developmental psychology

Maintaining a fluid and consistently open perspective is the key to shaping our ship, according to the studies done by epigenetisist Bruce Lipton, . The video is here is pretty interesting and well worth the watch.

To encapsulate it in a sentence or two, much of how our genes is activated is the "result of an ongoing, bi-directional interchange between heredity and the environment".

​It is in fact our perspective of the environmental information we are relating too that controls how our genetic codes manifest in the body.


Perhaps, it is literally 'how you see' that shapes your destiny. 
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WHEN WE COME TOGETHER POWERFUL THINGS CAN HAPPEN
Jesse is the Co-founder and director of the ONE KIND MIND project.

"I believe in the human spirit to overcome and that we are one. Creating a beautiful future is within our grasp! Let's do it!" ​
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Mind over Matter: Mental health in a pandemic and beyond

8/4/2020

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A man standing in fog wearing a mask for the pandemic

The collective stress is real

Hi, my name is Jesse and I’m the co-founder and director of One Kind Mind.  I probably have a few more questions than answers when it comes to this vast topic of 'mind' but you gotta start somewhere.

​The mind and our mental health are central to the human experience and it is my hope that this series will help us to all get a bit closer to the freedom and happines our world can achieve. 


Maybe you have heard the saying that, “those who matter don’t mind and those who mind don’t matter” but it is evident in this unique moment of unexpected global pandemic and social unrest that many of those who matter to us most, do mind.

We all do it seems. Or at least with the world under various levels of lock-down, the stress on our mental health that people have been undergoing is evident. The tragedy of George Floyd's death on May 25th, 2020 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, at the hands of a white police officer erupted in racially charged protests for equality all around the world. 

One Kind Mind stands in solidarity with all kind movements towards justice and equality. Enough is enough and the corruption playing out globally on the back of in-quality, of all sorts, is a skin we believe society is ready to shed! 


The match has been struck! Our collective distress and frustration is no longer isolated to the screens of our homes. Navigating the 'mind' field of challenges in the modern world is becoming increasingly complex.  How do we keep our heads above the water? 

For some the loneliness has been the challenge and for others, the lack of space. Without our usual distractions and with the pressing need for adaptation, it would seem everyone's mental health has been challenged in some way. 

hat is to be mentally healthy? It seems inextricably linked to our idea of mind but what is the mind anyways?

Is it our brains and the nervous systems extension into the whole of the body? Does it end there where our skin meets the air? Or does it exist in the collective mind and memory of the planet? The cosmos? Is the mind just an emergent property of organization? A b
lock-chain consciousness? Or perhaps the mind is an interdependently co-originated event? A multi-dimensional narrative?

It would seem that if we do not get a grip on our narrative, that we are surely headed towards a cliff we might be well minded to avoid? Climate catastrophe, poverty....what is the direction of our dilemma? 

Where do we go from here? 

Maybe it is just me but it seems like the world is waking up in many ways. We have all been a little existentially shaken by the global pandemic and this has certainly shined a big light on how vulnerable our mental health is. Ok, maybe more that a little existentially shaken. Closed systems have limits and the planet earth is teetering deadly close to one! Getting our heads in check so to speak is crucial if we are to turn the necessary corner. 

Right now, the average individual is spending between 6-9 hours on screen and the our global state of affairs, statistically speaking in regards to in-equality and climate metrics, is noticeably getting worse??? If we are so attentive to such a power point of focus, technology, why is the obvious direction we should be taking not what is happening? Have we collectively lost our minds? 


Whatever is going on, it seems to control much of our lives.  In a world of the hyper-informed are we loosing sight of safe land in our quest for satisfaction? How deluded are we to allow the greed, anger and delusions of society ruin us? I wouldn't say there is an easy answer here but beginning to unpack how one person, a supercomputer in and of themselves, with a supercomputer in their hand, their phone, can become part of a real technological movement for personal and collective peace....is indeed the calling of our times! 

The below video by Alan Clements is call for us to question our strange complicity to the apparatus of conformity and to hear the voice of our times. It is call for us to confront our addictions and denial with the sacred rage of illumination! It is a call to beautify all aspect of ourselves, even the dark ones!
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How do we find freedom? 

Where is the handle of agency in our narrative?  Sometimes we are driving and sometimes we are a passenger but control is always the contention. 

​Our minds are often filled with more conclusions about how things must be, than with questions and wonder. When we are unable to control our narrative our mental health suffers on many levels.  But how easy is it truly be the author of our minds?  Who and how we are, is so often just a softball of conclusions about our place in the larger narrative. I am this. I am not that. A regular prison of conclusions to overcome at times. 

“A mind free of conclusions is truly free” U Pandita of Burma

​Understanding something conceptually is useful but it has its limits. Reading a book on swimming helps, but it could never substitute for the real thing. Often we can find ourselves so lost in the abstraction of life that we can miss living it to a sufferable degree indeed.  

We often people say "easy to say hard to do" and that's just it. Finding away into our highest selves is a lot harder that it sounds. Freedom is easy with a full tank of gas but a different story when our tank is empty. 
A monk meditating in the jungle listening to headphones
a mind free of conclusions is truly free
As we translate our direct personal experience into a language of subjective record with objective aims, what is the limit to the mind's skill in abstraction? of objectification? of conclusion making?

Like a fish in water asked to contemplate the nature of water, could the mind ever truly understand it’s container?  Will the container ever truly understand it’s mind?


In the article by Wait but Why, ‘Neuralink and the Brain's Magical Future’  The author compares our knowledge of the brain and modern neuroscience to standing outside a football stadium with a microphone, trying to find out what is inside.

Our best telescopes can zoom out to the outer edges of our universe but we can’t seem to locate one of our most precious assets. Are we looking in the wrong place? 


I remember hearing the physicist Dean Radin say in an interview that our modern knowledge for all its magic, “ simply amounts to an extrapolation of logical principle to infinite series”. 1+1=2 and so on.

Perhaps, in the spirit of abstraction, the mind is a combination of series, like the Game of Thrones and the Fibonacci series, both story and number? 
​Both wave and particle. 

​"The stream of human knowledge is heading toward a non-physical reality. The universe begins to look more like a great thought than a great machine."
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– Sir James Jeans

And so Where to focus? Is there a better way? 

Where are we to focus with so many obstacles or points of potential fixation? With the effect of suffering an unavoidable aspect of life, is the eradication of suffering a realistic aim? Or what gradient of it is achievable considering that the tool in our hands, the instantaneous global communication system at our fingertips, can be as addictive as heroin. Can we mind our phones like we mind our garden? 

Time spent at the core of every spiral or story seems to empower those who see it, turning the passive observer into an author of living. It puts the pen in our hand and we are able to sit at the tip of this undifferentiated self, decidedly open to renewal and with access to personal power.

The more we familiarize ourselves with this awareness of direct personal experience, the more we are able to generate insight into the nature of our inter-beingness; an experience that inspires and ignites our personal sense of responsibility in the world.  

​It gives us the courage to care and the free energy to do it. But getting sucked into our phone screens is easy even for the ‘enlightened’.  Let us not be DOPAMINE ADDICTS so deep in denial that we miss our chance for freedom.  

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Pray, meditate, do whatever it takes but get off your mat and find your niche of action!
A man wearing a hooded sweater looking at his phone

Embody the simple

To be full of mind, in the way that we attentively mind our garden, is ironically a focus on feeling not thought; to be present to the totality of you. 

My friend Alan Clements suggests that we become deeply intimate with the palate or colors of our mind. What does a thought feel like? What does the color yellow feel like? How can we beautify all states of consciousness, leaving the degenerative behaviors behind?

The more we become attuned to the present as it arises, the more we are able to choose how we deal with the ups and downs of life and in turn to make adjustments that orient us towards health and happiness; towards peaceful action. 

Of course we want to communicate our common kindness and to achieve our common goals of elevating global health and happiness but how do we ‘control’ ourselves with the array of options in the modern world that suggest we don’t?

How do we express our authentic selves through the lenses of modern media when they are so focused on being fake? How do we say no to the cult of conformity?  Mindfulness Meditation? Yoga? Therapy? Time in nature? More time online?


Often less is more and this is our great challenge in the world. Enlightenment isn’t an orgasm. It is realizing we were carrying around a backpack filled with rocks our whole life and taking it off.

​To still the body is to still the mind and to perhaps gain insight into that backpack of rocks. However, in this world of increasing speed and change, being able to just sit down and find stillness is ever more challenging. 

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Pray, meditate, do whatever it takes but get off your mat and find your niche of action!
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The OKM mission

It is OKM’s mission to help the world buy each other a little more space to have this option. It's easy to say of course but not so easy for everyone to slow down to find space or afford it. When we don’t recognize this luxury in the ‘developed’ world, our appetites for distraction and entertainment create illness and we end up in bed, with the flu of course; scheming up new business plans to sell, sell, sell --- often at the expense of others. Success, if blind, can become disaster! 

The consequence of mindlessness is a grave reality that we are seeing on the planet today. 

We will be able to come together in a meaningful way when it counts? OKM believes we will! If we can only recognize our points of fixation as opportunities for freedom, our future looks bright. 

Profile picture of Jesse Hodsman in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada
when we come together powerful things can happen
Jesse is the Co-founder and director of the ONE KIND MIND project.

"I believe in the human spirit to overcome and that we are one. Creating a beautiful future is within our grasp! Let's do it!"
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