Fragrant Heart Blog

I met a gifted healer, and spiritual teacher this week. In the course of the session the core beliefs that are still imprinted within me were exposed. These are still running the life, and not just this life! The healer told me, “If God wanted you to do anything it would be to smile.” Well, nearly sixty years of looking so serious could be a big ask for someone like me! Anyway I’ve been much more conscious of smiling ever since. I don’t mean one of those false, wooden smiles that I have seen plastered on faces, but more the smile of a young child that smiles and laughs so spontaneously, often just out of the sheer joy of being alive. You’ll know what I’m talking about.

It’s amazing what lifting the muscles around my mouth is doing to the rest of my body. I feel the smile going into my eyes, and I imagine that they’re starting to sparkle. I feel my breath slowing in a gentle, sweet rhythm. I feel my heart open to give and receive in the warmth of love. I also feel what I have always called “the bubble of joy” expanding in my belly.

In the next blog, I’ll give you some hints on how to bring a smile into your meditation practice, and how smiling which babies and young children do so easily can be reawakened. In the meantime affirm, “I love to smile”, and you’ll find how true that is.

Share this link with:

del.icio.usDiggFurlNetscapeYahoo! My WebStumbleUponGoogle BookmarksTechnoratiBlinkListNewsvinema.gnoliareddit

Email to a friend

In last week’s blog I wrote about attachment as the cause of suffering. At the end of the blog there were some helpful hints to calm and centre yourself. If you have “an attachment issue” dominating your life right now, here’s something else to help you, slow down your breathing.

How does Slowing your Breath Help?

Slow deep breaths will help take you out of suffering because by flooding your cells with more oxygen you stop breathing shallowly and halt the release of stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol. As a result your heart rate slows, and your emotions switch from toxifying your body into soothing your body leaving you feeling calm and tranquil.

How to Slow Your Breathing

It’s simple to slow your rate of breathing. All you have to do is close your mouth, press the top of your tongue to the roof of your mouth, and inhale through your nostrils, and exhale through your nostrils. It will sound a bit like you’re snoring. I find this sound very soothing. It will also help you to focus on the breath so your mental agitation will also begin to dissolve after a few of these deep breaths.

The Benefits

Slowing your breath will relax and calm you and it works! Your muscles soften and you no longer have that over adrenalized feeling of ‘fight or flight’. You begin to feel positive emotions. As you do you will recognize these emotions as joy, love, compassion, kindness and even greater confidence in yourself.

The Buddha worked it out when he said, “The degree to which you are attached is the degree to which you will suffer.” Well, that may not have been his exact words but that’s pretty much how I remember reading it somewhere. All sages, saints, philosophers, and even wise and dear friends who have already trodden the path of attachment say the same thing.

What Causes Us to Become Attached?

It seems to me that we become attached to people and things in the hope that they will make us happy. Yet the wise ones tell us again that our natural state of being is happiness. However, in childhood we are taken away from being ourselves by the conditioning forces around us. Our families, schools, religious affiliations, and our culture all have their own take on what we should and shouldn’t do, think, and believe. How often are young people told to strive, to get ahead in the world, and climb the ladder of success to gain wealth and status, when it may be their true desire to live a simpler life doing what they really love to do. When our attachment doesn’t get us what we want, or fulfil us in some way we become miserable. Being miserable we enter into a state of suffering.

What Happens to Us Because of Our Attachments?

Yes, we become miserable. We suffer. Sometimes we have so much invested in the person or thing we are attached to that we cannot break free, or extricate ourselves. We’re afraid of loss. We stay locked into a situation that is the cause of our misery and then we become stressed physically and emotionally. We become immersed in toxic emotions like shame, guilt, resentment, anger and even hatred. We look to blame the other, or judge the other as causing our pain. We become like a drowning person clinging to the side of a boat.

How to Stop Suffering

The boat can be seen as a symbol of our life. To stop suffering we need to climb into the boat, or into our own life. To do that my dear spiritual mentor suggests that we face Reality. Reality is what is, and so we need to take stock of the situation. Sometimes we may have become so emotionally distraught that we cannot see beyond our own suffering. At this point it may be appropriate to seek counselling from someone trustworthy who can remain objective and help us steer a safer course. If we do manage to break free of the attachment we may have to undergo a time of grieving and readjustment. If we stay focused on what is correct for us we will end our own suffering. It requires great strength and courage to do what is right for ourselves. If we don’t break free of attachment and it’s consequences, suffering and misery, we then live a life that sucks us of our energy, vitality, creativity and love.

Helpful Hints to End Suffering

If you are experiencing attachment that is unhealthy for you, you may find that it becomes a real struggle to meditate. I would suggest that you listen to some of Fragrant Heart’s relaxation audios. Also spend time in nature if you can. If not surround yourself with living plants indoors, or even pictures of nature. Also reduce the preoccupying and worrying thoughts that arise by doing something physical like going for a walk or dancing to music. Hold a vision of how you would like your life to be. Visualize this everyday. Have faith and trust that you will let go of the attachment that is binding you in suffering. Each day take action in some way. Even the littlest step toward your vision is a step toward being who you truly are, which is love and happiness.

In a group meeting I attended a woman said about her friend, half jokingly yet with a tinge of sarcasm, “She seems to spend her whole day meditating.” The other woman remaining very centred replied, “Oh! If only that were true.” I later reflected on that and thought I would share these insights with you. I asked myself, “What would that be like to spend each and every day of my life meditating?” I don’t mean sitting cross-legged in the solitary confinement of a sound proof room. I mean going about your daily life focused and fully engaged in whatever you are doing. When that happens to me at times I notice, before I start thinking again! “Wow! My mind is really quiet.” For example when you eat your food how often are you focused on the food, the colours of it, the textures, the aromas, and the taste of it when you are chewing each mouthful thirty two times (just kidding you here)? So often we hurry through a meal, hardly noticing what we are eating and not even remembering if we enjoyed it. Or what about the distractions that take us even further away from eating like watching the TV at the same time or working at the same time? Another example, how often do people really listen to you when you are talking with them? It’s easy to tell when someone is off somewhere else and nowhere present with you. And when you’re talking to someone on the phone and you can tell that they’re watching television or preparing their dinner at the same time. Giving your full attention to someone as they speak requires a focused and still mind and one that is able to be fully engaged in listening. All of these activities have all the components of meditation, and if you were to break down all your daily activities you would find that anything you are engaged in can become a meditation practice.