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Mindfulness is not just about finding that still place. Something uncontrollable awakens in you. You are not just taking a course, you are quite literally rewriting your own script. Like an addictive television series. Once it becomes a part of your life, you can’t turn away from it. You find a new love, a love so deep that at some times you hurt, and hurt like you feel like you are losing your mind, and within that is life’s greatest lesson.
I understand that awakening, enlightenment or becoming empty is the most divine state for spiritualist, Buddhists and Hindus, or getting in touch with God as all other religions will preach.
But that emptiness starts being filled with fears and hurts. After addressing these hurts you become emptier until you can become truly present in every moment. Carefree and happy in the knowledge that life’s karma has been addressed, that societies boundaries have been hurdled and your family and friends own beliefs that have helped build an armoury for this life has been shed.
As a parent, listening to these amazing spiritual guides and teachers having these unbelievable experiences, truly amazing, but for those with young families, like I do, that 2+ year retreats are something that could only be seen as a dream rather than a reality. How does dealing with these empty thoughts, from your lounge room, where worthlessness, confusion, and working on understanding egotistical material problems like money and home, that universally is made from the same energy that I am made of, can only be worked through by listening to those that have chosen a life of singularity.
Some find wives, but very rarely do they have this essence of love playing Russian roulette with your emotions. Children have to be one of the most challenging of life’s great awakenings. Now I can appreciate that we all have different paths to follow, lengthy retreats are just something that can never get attached to your mind, because for those that have felt the love of a child can not just become empty to that as well.
In that moment comes the greatest quandary. I once heard a teaching from a zen master that to move towards your own zen life that each moment is lived. How does one react to a 5 year old that is getting bullied? Or the instant emotion you feel when you see your baby roll off a chair and land face first into the wooden floor. Emotions only a parent can understand rise up within in you, to nurture, care and love, that become much harder to control than any emotion you can bring on yourself.
When you realise you have no money left, and if it was just you, then fine, but you have 3 beautiful children that have you as their teacher. That moment you realise you have become more awake, more enlightened, more empty, but these present minds can not understand why they would be left hungry.
I can only imagine what families at the moment are going through when war and famine hits them. How does mindfulness help a child’s scream, a child’s tears. Mindfulness is fantastic as it puts you at its centre but thousands of years of geteric programming that has coded your mind and body to think of yourself as second, because true love is not just found in becoming one, it is found in the soul level connection you have with your children.
MBSR, MBCT are a great tool to teach you mindfulness, but neither tool can train your mind to find realisiation in this life, when providing for something as divine as your own child.