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Mindfulness as a practice provides endless opportunities to cultivate greater intimacy with your own mind and to tap into and develop your deep interior resources for learning, growing, healing, and potentially for transforming your understanding of who you are and how you might live more wisely and with greater well-being, meaning, and happiness in this world.
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Jon Kabat-Zinn |
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When we can be centered in ourselves, even for brief periods of time in the face of the pull of the outer world, not having to look elsewhere for something to fill us up or make us happy, we can be at home wherever we find ourselves, at peace with things as they are, moment by moment.
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Jon Kabat-Zinn |
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From the perspective of the consciousness disciplines, our ordinary state of waking consciousness is severely suboptimal. Rather than contradicting the Western paradigm, this perspective simply extends it beyond psychology's dominant concern, at least until very recently, with pathology and with therapies aimed at restoring people to "normal" functioning in the usual waking state of consciousness. At the heart of this "orthogonal," paradigm..
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Jon Kabat-Zinn |
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When I was talking to a reporter, she said, "Oh, you mean to live for the moment." I said, "No, it isn't that. That has a hedonistic ring to it. I mean to live in the moment."
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Jon Kabat-Zinn |
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By grounding yourself in mindfulness early in the morning, you are reminding yourself that things are always changing, that good and bad things come and go, and that it is possible to embody a perspective of of constancy, wisdom, and inner peace as you face any conditions that present themselves.
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Jon Kabat-Zinn |
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There can be no resolution leading to growth until the present situation has been faced completely and you have opened to it with mindfulness, allowing the roughness of the situation itself to sand down your own rough edges. In other words, you must be willing to let life itself become your teacher.
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Jon Kabat-Zinn |
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The next time you feel a sense of dissatisfaction, of something being missing or not quite right, turn inward as an experiment. See if you can capture the energy of that very moment. Instead of picking up a magazine or going to the movies, calling a friend or looking for something to eat or acting up in one way or another, make a place for yourself. Sit down and enter into your breathing, if only for a few minutes. Don't look for anything -..
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Jon Kabat-Zinn |
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Can we be in touch with our own life unfolding? Can we rise to the occasion of our own humanity? Can we take on the challenges we meet, even seeking them out to test ourselves, to grow, to act in a principled way, to be true to ourselves, to find our own way, and ultimately not only have it but, more importantly, live it?
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Jon Kabat-Zinn |
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Meditation does not involve trying to change your thinking by thinking some more. It involves watching thought itself. The watching is the holding. By watching your thoughts without being drawn into them, you can learn something profoundly liberating about thinking itself, which may help you to be less of a prisoner of those thought patterns (....)
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holding-thought
liberation-about-thinking
not-drawn-into-thought
watching-thought
mindfulness
meditation
thought-patterns
thinking
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Jon Kabat-Zinn |
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As you begin befriending your breath, you see immediately that unawareness is everywhere.
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unawareness
breath
breathing
stillness
meditation
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Jon Kabat-Zinn |
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e7a61c8
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Mindful sitting meditation is not an attempt to escape from problems or difficulties into some cut-off "meditative" state of absorption or denial. On the contrary, it is a willingness to go nose to nose with pain, confusion, and loss, if that is what is dominating the present moment, and to stay with the observing over a sustained period of time, beyond thinking."
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Jon Kabat-Zinn |
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The present is the only time that we have to know anything.
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Jon Kabat-Zinn |
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it is the awareness that is of primary importance, no matter what the objects are that we are paying attention to.
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Jon Kabat-Zinn |
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If we are to grasp the reality of our life while we have it, we will need to wake up to our moments. Otherwise, whole days, even a whole life, could slip past unnoticed.
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Jon Kabat-Zinn |
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Rarely are we in touch with who is doing the doing--or, put otherwise, with the world of being. To
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Jon Kabat-Zinn |
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You Can't Stop the Waves but You Can Learn to Surf
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Jon Kabat-Zinn |
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As much as I can, I avoid using the word "spiritual" altogether. I find it neither useful nor necessary nor appropriate in my work at the hospital bringing mindfulness into the mainstream of medicine and healthcare, nor in other settings in which we work[.] [T]o my mind, the vocabulary of spirituality creates more practical problems than it solves. [...] The concept of spirituality can narrow our thinking rather extend it. [...] Perhaps ult..
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Jon Kabat-Zinn |
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Meditation is a way of being, not a technique. Meditation is not about trying to get anywhere else. It is about allowing yourself to be exactly where you are and as you are, and the world to be exactly as it is in this moment, as well.
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Jon Kabat-Zinn |
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ae0f1f6
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I]t is useful at times to admit to yourself that you don't know your way and to be open to help from unexpected places. Doing that makes available to you inner and outer energies and allies that arise out of your own soulfulness and selflessness. [...] [G]etting caught up in the normal human tendencies of self-cherishing and arrogance, and ignoring the larger order of things, will ultimately lead to ans impasse in your life in which you are..
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Jon Kabat-Zinn |
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Mindfulness practice means that we commit fully in each moment to being present. There is no "performance." There is just this moment. We are not trying to improve or to get anywhere else. We are not even running after special insights or visions. Nor are we forcing ourselves to be non-judgmental, calm, or relaxed. And we are certainly not promoting self-consciousness or indulging in self-preoccupation. Rather, we are simply inviting oursel..
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Jon Kabat-Zinn |
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Allow yourself to feel whatever you are feeling. [...] Let go of the labels. Just feel what you are feeling, all the while cultivating moment-to-moment awareness, riding the waves of "up" and "down," "good" and "bad," weak" and "strong," until you see that they are all inadequate to fully describe your experience. Be with the experience itself. Trust in your deepest strength of all: to be present, to be wakeful."
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Jon Kabat-Zinn |
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So when we make contact with the domain of being in the meditation practice, we are already, in a profound sense, beyond the scarring, beyond the isolation and fragmentation and suffering we may be experiencing.
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Jon Kabat-Zinn |
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The mind states of liking and disliking can take up permanent residency in us, unconsciously feeding addictive behaviors in all domains of life. When we are able to recognize and name the seeds of greediness or craving, however subtle, in the mind's constant wanting and pursuing of the things or results that we like, and the seeds of aversion or hatred in our rejecting or maneuvering to avoid the things we don't like, that stops us for a mo..
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Jon Kabat-Zinn |
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Thich Nhat Hanh, the venerable and highly respected Vietnamese meditation teacher, poet, and peace activist, uses the image of cloudy apple juice settling in a glass to describe meditation. You just sit with whatever is present, even discomfort, anxiety, or confusion, with whatever is present, and the mind settles all by itself.
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Jon Kabat-Zinn |
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When we commit ourselves to paying attention in an open way, without falling prey to our own likes and dislikes, opinions and prejudices, projections and expectations, new possibilities open up and we have a chance to free ourselves from the straitjacket of unconsciousness.
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Jon Kabat-Zinn |
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The word discipline comes from disciple, someone who is in a position to learn.
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Jon Kabat-Zinn |
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research is showing that we can change our attitude, and thereby our relationship to our circumstances, in ways that can make a difference in our health and well-being, and possibly to our longevity.
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Jon Kabat-Zinn |
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Experiment with giving away this energy--in little ways at first--directing it toward yourself and toward others with no thought of gain or return. Give more than you think you can, trusting that you are richer than you think. Celebrate this richness. Give as if you had inexhaustible wealth. This is called "kingly giving."
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mindfulness
giving
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Jon Kabat-Zinn |
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The challenge for mindfulness is to be present for your experience as it is rather than immediately jumping in to change it or try to force it to be different.
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presence
present-moment
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Jon Kabat-Zinn |
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920e784
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So it can be particularly helpful to keep in mind from moment to moment that it is not so much the stressors in our lives but how we see them and what we do with them, how we are in relationship to them, that determines how much we are at their mercy.
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Jon Kabat-Zinn |
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The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. R. D. LAING
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Jon Kabat-Zinn |
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as long as you are breathing there is more right with you than wrong with you, no matter what is wrong.
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Jon Kabat-Zinn |
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Meditation is simply about being yourself and knowing something about who that is. It is about coming to realize that you are on a path whether you like it or not, namely, the path that is your life. Meditation may help us see that this path we call our life has direction; that it is always unfolding, moment by moment; and that what happens now, in this moment, influences what happens next.
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Jon Kabat-Zinn |
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in meditation practice, the best way to get somewhere is to let go of trying to get anywhere at all.
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Jon Kabat-Zinn |
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If you believe in love, do you manifest it or just talk a lot? If you believe in compassion, in non-harming, in kindness, in wisdom, in generosity, in calmness, in solitude, in non-doing, in being even-handed and clear, do you manifest these qualities in your daily life? This is the level of intentionality which is required to keep your meditation practice vital,
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Jon Kabat-Zinn |
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TRY: Asking yourself in this moment, "Am I awake?," "Where is my mind right now?"
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Jon Kabat-Zinn |
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Live with nature In the present Above time
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Jon Kabat-Zinn |
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Arriving someplace more desirable at some future time is an illusion. This is it.
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time
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Jon Kabat-Zinn |
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It is a hard message to swallow at first blush because it brings into question everything that we think we are, which for the most part seems to come from what we identify with, our bodies, our thoughts, our feelings, our relationships, our values, our work, our expectations of what is "supposed" to happen and how things are "supposed" to work out for me in order for me to be happy, our stories of where we came from and where we are going a..
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Jon Kabat-Zinn |
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If we are unaware of what we are doing a good deal of the time, and we don't particularly like the way things turn out in our lives, perhaps it's time to pay closer attention, to be more in touch, to observe the choices we make and their consequences down the road.
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Jon Kabat-Zinn |
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The only way we have of influencing the future is to own the present, however we find it.
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Jon Kabat-Zinn |
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If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants. SIR ISAAC NEWTON
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Jon Kabat-Zinn |
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Killingsworth MA, Gilbert DT. A wandering mind is an unhappy mind. Science. 2010;330:932. SS Harvard Business Review. Jan-Feb 2012:88.
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Jon Kabat-Zinn |
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not get caught in their habitual patterning, to see thoughts for what they are, impersonal events, and instead be the knowing that awareness already is. Then, in that moment at least, we are already free, ready to act with greater clarity and kindness within the constantly changing field of events that is nothing other than life unfolding -- not always as we think it should, but definitely as it is.
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Jon Kabat-Zinn |