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If anything, mindfulness brought you closer to your neuroses, acting as a sort of Doppler radar, mapping your mental microclimates, making you more insightful, not less. It was the complete opposite of the reckless hope preached by the self-helpers. It was the power of negative thinking.
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Dan Harris |
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acknowledged that the Jewish penchant for anxiety probably played a role in their collective attraction to Buddhism. Over the ensuing decades, the Jew-Bus had been a major force in figuring out how to translate the wisdom of the East for a Western audience--mostly by making it less hierarchical and devotional. Mark mentioned that he and some of his peers taught Buddhist-themed seminars around town, where they gave talks and answered questio..
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Dan Harris |
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his favorite book, by an ancient sage
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Dan Harris |
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We live so much of our lives pushed forward by these "if only" thoughts, and yet the itch remains. The pursuit of happiness becomes the source of our unhappiness. Joseph"
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Dan Harris |
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What mindfulness does is create some space in your head so you can, as the Buddhists say, "respond" rather than simply "react." In"
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Dan Harris |
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Mindfulness is an inborn trait, a birthright. It is, one could argue, what makes us human.
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Dan Harris |
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I was a frequent mental inventory taker, scanning my consciousness for objects of concern, kind of like pressing a bruise to see if it still hurts.
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Dan Harris |
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I had long assumed that ceaseless planning was the recipe for effectiveness, but Marturano's point was that too much mental churning was counterproductive. When you lurch from one thing to the next, constantly scheming, or reacting to incoming fire, the mind gets exhausted. You get sloppy and make bad decisions. I could see how the counterintuitive act of stopping, even for a few seconds, could be a source of strength, not weakness.
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Dan Harris |
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Overall, compassionate people tended to be healthier, happier, more popular, and more successful at work. Most
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Dan Harris |
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pacing around my office in tight circles, like a Chihuahua doing dressage.
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Dan Harris |
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the slipping away is the whole point. Once you've achieved choiceless awareness, you see so clearly how fleeting everything is. Impermanence is no longer theoretical. Tempus fugit isn't just something you inscribe in books and clocks.
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Dan Harris |
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Notwithstanding Ted's foibles, he'd helped me become utterly at ease around people who said "God bless you" when I hadn't sneezed. Increasingly, I even now found myself in the position of defending evangelicals to my friends and family. Once, when I made a passing reference to "evangelical intellectuals," a relative quipped, "Isn't that a contradiction in terms?" Another stereotype I spent a lot of time batting down: that Christians were al..
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Dan Harris |
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many people live habitually as if the present moment were an obstacle that they need to overcome in order to get to the next moment.
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Dan Harris |
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The real superpower of meditation is not just to manage your ego more mindfully but to see that the ego itself has no actual substance. Close your eyes and look for it, and you won't find any "self" you can put your finger on."
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Dan Harris |
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The ego is constantly comparing itself to others. It has us measuring our self-worth against the looks, wealth, and social status of everyone else.
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Dan Harris |
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The Buddhists had a helpful analogy here. Picture the mind like a waterfall, they said: the water is the torrent of thoughts and emotions; mindfulness is the space behind the waterfall. Again, elegant theory--but, easier said than done.
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Dan Harris |
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It makes Buddhism seem supremely dour. Turns out, though, it's all the result of a translation error. The Pali word dukkha doesn't actually mean "suffering." There's no perfect word in English, but it's closer to "unsatisfying" or "stressful."
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Dan Harris |
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When good things happen, we bake them very quickly into our baseline expectations, and yet the primordial void goes unfilled.
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Dan Harris |
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On retreat, with nothing to look forward to, nowhere to be, nothing to do, we are forced to confront the "wound of existence" head-on, to stare into the abyss and realize that so much of what we do in life--every shift in our seat, every bite of food, every pleasant daydream--is designed to avoid pain or seek pleasure. But if we can drop all that, we can, as Sam once said in his speech to the angry, befuddled atheists, learn how to be happy..
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Dan Harris |
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There's no point in being unhappy about things you can't change, and no point being unhappy about things you can." To"
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Dan Harris |
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We are in the midst of a momentous event in the evolution of human consciousness, but they won't be talking about it in the news tonight. --Eckhart Tolle, self-help guru Open
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Dan Harris |
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just radiated curiosity and enthusiasm. Toward the end of our interview, he said, "The most important thing to me is probably, like, being kind and also trying to do something awesome."
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Dan Harris |
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I'd always assumed that the voice in my head was me: my ghostly internal anchorman, hosting the coverage of my life, engaged in an unsolicited stream of insensitive questions and obnoxious color commentary.
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Dan Harris |
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We are constantly murmuring, muttering, scheming, or wondering to ourselves under our breath," wrote Epstein. " 'I like this. I don't like that. She hurt me. How can I get that? More of this, no more of that.' Much of our inner dialogue is this constant reaction to experience by a selfish, childish protagonist. None of us has moved very far from the seven-year-old who vigilantly watches to see who got more." There were also delightful passa..
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Dan Harris |
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I was always hurtling headlong through the day, checking things off my to-do list, constantly picturing completion instead of calmly and carefully enjoying the process.
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Dan Harris |
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Seeing a problem clearly does not prevent you from taking action, he explained. Acceptance is not passivity. Sometimes we are justifiably displeased. What mindfulness does is create some space in your head so you can, as the Buddhists say, "respond" rather than simply "react." In the Buddhist view, you can't control what comes up in your head; it all arises out of a mysterious void. We spend a lot of time judging ourselves harshly for feeli..
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Dan Harris |
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The Sufi Muslims say, "Praise Allah, but also tie your camel to the post." In other words, it's good to take a transcendent view of the world, but don't be a chump."
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Dan Harris |
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You can do your best and then, if things don't go your way, still become unconstructively upset, in a way that hinders your ability to bounce back. Dropping the attachment is the real trick.
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Dan Harris |
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I'd be loath to call what I'm feeling spiritual or mystical. Those terms connote--to me, at least--otherworldliness or unreality. By contrast, what's happening right now feels hyperreal, as if I've been pulled out of a dream rather than thrust into one.
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Dan Harris |
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people would always ask whether we were believers, but when we said no, there were never gasps or glares. They may have thought we were going to hell, but they were perfectly nice about it.
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Dan Harris |
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While I may not have been physically addicted, I was certainly psychologically hooked. I missed getting high so badly that it was the first thing I thought about in the morning and the last thing I fantasized about before I drifted off to sleep. I'd had some of the happiest moments of my life while high, and pulling the plug was wrenching.
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Dan Harris |
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Everyone laughs. "Another slogan says, 'I don't let anything stand in the way of my pleasure.' " "The best one of all," he says, pausing for effect, in a wait-for-it kind of way, chuckling to himself as he lets our curiosity build. " 'To be one with everything . . . you need one of everything."
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Dan Harris |
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I could see the value of recognizing thoughts for what they are--fleeting, gossamer, unsubstantial--but aren't some thoughts connected to concrete realities that need to be addressed?
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Dan Harris |
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main thesis was that in a world where everything is constantly changing, we suffer because we cling to things that won't last.
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Dan Harris |
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One of the most interesting discoveries of this whole journey was that I didn't need my demons to fuel my drive--and that taming them was a more satisfying exercise than indulging them.
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Dan Harris |
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walking contradiction.
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Dan Harris |
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The pursuit of happiness becomes the source of our unhappiness.
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Dan Harris |
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Thoughts calcify into opinions, little seeds of discontent blossom into bad moods, unnoticed back pain makes me inexplicably irritable with anyone who happens to cross my path.
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Dan Harris |
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The Way of the Worrier 1. Don't Be a Jerk 2. (And/But . . .) When Necessary, Hide the Zen 3. Meditate 4. The Price of Security Is Insecurity--Until It's Not Useful 5. Equanimity Is Not the Enemy of Creativity 6. Don't Force It 7. Humility Prevents Humiliation 8. Go Easy with the Internal Cattle Prod 9. Nonattachment to Results 10. What Matters Most?
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Dan Harris |
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We are in the midst of a momentous event in the evolution of human consciousness, but they won't be talking about it in the news tonight. --Eckhart Tolle, self-help guru
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Dan Harris |
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research shows that "firm but kind" is the smarter play. People trained in self-compassion meditation are more likely to quit smoking and stick to a diet. They are better able to bounce back from missteps. All successful people fail. If you can create an inner environment where your mistakes are forgiven and flaws are candidly confronted, your resilience expands exponentially."
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Dan Harris |
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Striving is fine, as long as it's tempered by the realization that, in an entropic universe, the final outcome is out of your control. If you don't waste your energy on variables you cannot influence, you can focus much more effectively on those you can. When you are wisely ambitious, you do everything you can to succeed, but you are not attached to the outcome--so that if you fail, you will be maximally resilient, able to get up, dust your..
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Dan Harris |
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Ignorance is not bliss.
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Dan Harris |
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Unlike many of the faiths I'd come across as a religion reporter, the Buddha wasn't promising salvation in the form of some death-defying dogma, but rather through the embrace of the very stuff that will destroy us. The route to true happiness, he argued, was to achieve a visceral understanding of impermanence, which would take you off the emotional roller coaster and allow you to see your dramas and desires through a wider lens. Waking up ..
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Dan Harris |