Once you’ve let go of everything in your way, the next step on the road back to Self is to immerse yourself in real life, to go deeper into the here now.
The fool seeks happiness in the distance, the wise man grows it under his feet – Unknown
Mindful awareness
Keeping it real is a full-time job – Kenneth G. Ortiz
Your mental world touches the real only at the point of awareness, which can only be now. A moment back the remembered was actual. In a moment the actual will be the remembered.
Mindfulness is a state you cannot force. Simply drop the hindrance and it bubbles up by itself. In the silent pool of your own energy, in the warmth of it, you’re enveloped, you dissolve. This moment is all; there is no other moment. Time stops. Ordinary things can be enjoyed because they become extra-ordinary – Nisargadatta Maharaj
Mindfulness comes naturally when the moment is more interesting than anything your mind can produce. For example, your love for something makes you completely present to it. You take it in fully with all your senses. The moment is too precious to be elsewhere in your thoughts.
Awareness is love in action:
More important than doing great things, is doing what we are doing greatly. The miracle lies in doing small things with great love – Mother Teresa
Mindfulness means paying attention. Pay attention to how you’re doing what you’re doing. Notice the subtle flavours and textures of each moment. How aware you are in what you do? Slow down and being completely present.
To bring our attention to a stone, a tree, or an animal, does not mean to think about it. It is simply to perceive it, to hold it in our awareness. Something of its essence then transmits itself to us. We sense how still it is, how deeply it rests in being, completely at one with what and where it is. Then the same stillness arises within us. We too come to rest deep within ourselves – Eckart Tolle
Awareness can be developed in whatever you do. It’s less about collecting new experiences than it is about deepening those you already have.
I used to rush through life, hungry for more, but overwhelmed at the same time, chasing after 2D experience. I find that if I focus on the Here and Now, my experience of even the most mundane deepens from 2D into 3D. I haven’t found a new experience; I have simply slowed down enough to let the usual experiences fulfil me more. Awareness of being is bliss.
By deepening our awareness, going deeper into the here now, we grow into our power:
From early in the morning, these people devote themselves to the perfection of whatever they are pursuing – no mind – from the movie ‘The Last Samurai’
Detached appreciation
It is not desire that is wrong, but its narrowness and smallness. We need to increase and widen our desires until nothing but reality can fulfil them – Nisargadatta Maharaj
Being here now enables appreciation. There is no need to cultivate positive thoughts. Appreciation is a state of no mind. Conversely, the more appreciative you are, the more present you become. You can only appreciate something when you are free from mind’s attachments. Needing nothing, you appreciate all.
Appreciation widens your awareness. Only unattached can you take everything in. Detach from the one in order to engage with the all. Not blinded to the all by the one thing on your mind, you become aware of everything around you. For instance, you’re no longer fixated on one expression of beauty, you see beauty in all things.
The secret awaits (the insight of) eyes unclouded by longing – Tao Te Ching
Then you find meaning and experience the miraculous. You learn from everything and everyone – the entire universe becomes your guru.
The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper – William Butler Yeats