The Introduction to Mindfulness courses I run continue to attract the attention of diverse groups looking to explore the benefits they might derive from mindfulness meditation. I am currently teaching the fourth 4 week course I have taught this year and have thoroughly enjoyed the journey thus far.
The first half of any course often feels like an uphill struggle for those coming to mindfulness for the first time. Those I teach are commonly struck by the effort involved in placing attention on a particular object, and sustaining that attention. Whilst intention is rarely lacking, mindfulness is not often something people experience as easy.
But it is reasonably straight forward. The discussions that follow the practices reveal several key themes that run throughout the programme and by the time we approach the middle of the course, many of these feel familiar. The basic vocabulary has been mastered, and the understanding begins to deepen.
Which isn't to say that the difficulties disappear. Far from it. The closer we look, the more we see. And the more sharply those patterns of mind that are apt to drag us down come into focus.
I never tire of reading The Guest House, and considering with the group, the enduring relevance of Rumi's words...
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honourably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
Jelaluddin Rumi (translated by Coleman Barks).
My most recent reading of the poem revealed a new dimension that I had not previously given thought to. The idea of the persona adopted by a host when entertaining.
To open one's home to guests may well involve a degree of planning and preparation. Taking their needs into account may well prompt an expectant host to get ready and, in so doing, make alterations or adjustments, which will depend on the nature or duration of the anticipated sojourn.
Supplies may be obtained, to ensure adequate refreshment is available to offer to guests. Cleaning or tidying may take place.
What happens will, of course, depend on who is coming.
And herein lies the point I happened across in class: we adapt in anticipation to a mindset, or an emotional experience. And this adaptation may or may not be skillful, or helpful to us in the long run.
For those of us who have a relationship with depression, we may be able to recall what it was we did, when we last felt an episode looming.
For those of us for whom anxiety is a familiar visitor, we may remember what it was that happened as we saw it approaching and making its way up the garden path.
It occurs to me that depending on our relationship with a particular thought or emotional weather pattern, we may react differently to their arrival - and that this response may itself influence the experience of its onset.
Rumi's invitation, to treat each 'guest' honourably is indeed a radical aspiration and one that might cause us to baulk at the idea. This even-handedness towards all of our experience, no matter how unwanted, is an ideal. And even the most tentative movement in the direction of equanimity will likely lead to a wholly different house party.
You can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you
as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you
as by the way your mind look at what happens.
Khalil Gibran
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