Skip to content

Do You Need Support With Attending a Course?

Members Login

Apps

Find a Teacher

Facebook page opens in new windowTwitter page opens in new windowInstagram page opens in new window
Mindfulness Association
Being Present | Responding with Compassion | Seeing Deeply
Mindfulness AssociationMindfulness Association
  • Mindfulness Courses
    • Start Mindfulness
    • Level 2 – Compassion
    • Level 3 – Insight
    • Level 4 – Wisdom
    • Mindfulness Teacher Training Courses
      • Teaching – Level 1
      • Teaching – Level 2 (MBLC)
      • Teaching – Level 2 – (MBLC-YA) Teens
      • Teaching – Level 3 (CBLC)
      • Mindfulness Based Healthy Living Teacher Training
      • Teacher Training Package
      • Supervision for Mindfulness Teachers
      • Mindfulness Teacher Continuing Professional Development
      • Fundamentals of Inquiry Course for Teachers of Mindfulness
    • Mindfulness for Life
      • Good Friday- Mystical Mindfulness Practice Day
      • Mindfulness Based Healthy Living- Online
      • Compassion in Action – Online
      • Mindfulness meets Mystical Poetry – Online
      • Living Well to Die Well Mindfulness Course
      • The Mindful Body with Qigong, Yoga and Mindfulness
        • The Mindful Body Online Mindful Movement Course
        • The Compassionate Body – Online Compassion Through Movement Course
        • The Insightful Body – Online Mindful Movement Course
    • Online Courses
      • Online Taught Courses
      • Online Mindfulness Courses by Email
        • Free Online Introduction to Mindfulness
        • Introduction to Mindfulness
        • Introduction to Compassion Course
        • Introduction to Insight
    • Masters Degrees
      • MSc Studies in Mindfulness
      • MSc Mindfulness & Compassion
  • Mindfulness Retreats
    • Weekend Retreats
      • Mindfulness In Nature Weekend (Online and Samye Ling)
      • Introduction to Compassion Weekend (Online and Samye Ling)
      • Mindfulness in Nature Weekend (Online and London)
      • Poetry for Mindfulness and Compassion Weekend
      • Introduction to Compassion Weekend (Online and London)
      • Introduction to Compassion (Online and London)
      • Mindfulness, Qigong and Yoga Weekend
    • Cultivating Presence Online Retreat for Mindfulness Teachers
    • Making Space Online Retreat for MA Members
    • Mindfulness for Life Retreat
  • Words & Blogs
    • What is Mindfulness?
    • Science of Mindfulness
    • Heather’s Musings
    • Mindfulness Poetry
    • Meditation Challenge
    • Mindfulness and EDI Research
    • Sits and Teachings
    • Mindfulness Research
    • Mindfulness Recommended Reading
  • Membership
    • Free Members Retreat Weekend Online
    • Cultivating Presence Online Retreat for Mindfulness Teachers
    • Making Space Online Retreat for MA Members
  • About Us
    • Mindfulness Association Tutors
    • Mindfulness Association Training Venues
  • News & Events
    • Mindfulness Freebies
  • Mindfulness Courses
    • Start Mindfulness
    • Level 2 – Compassion
    • Level 3 – Insight
    • Level 4 – Wisdom
    • Mindfulness Teacher Training Courses
      • Teaching – Level 1
      • Teaching – Level 2 (MBLC)
      • Teaching – Level 2 – (MBLC-YA) Teens
      • Teaching – Level 3 (CBLC)
      • Mindfulness Based Healthy Living Teacher Training
      • Teacher Training Package
      • Supervision for Mindfulness Teachers
      • Mindfulness Teacher Continuing Professional Development
      • Fundamentals of Inquiry Course for Teachers of Mindfulness
    • Mindfulness for Life
      • Good Friday- Mystical Mindfulness Practice Day
      • Mindfulness Based Healthy Living- Online
      • Compassion in Action – Online
      • Mindfulness meets Mystical Poetry – Online
      • Living Well to Die Well Mindfulness Course
      • The Mindful Body with Qigong, Yoga and Mindfulness
        • The Mindful Body Online Mindful Movement Course
        • The Compassionate Body – Online Compassion Through Movement Course
        • The Insightful Body – Online Mindful Movement Course
    • Online Courses
      • Online Taught Courses
      • Online Mindfulness Courses by Email
        • Free Online Introduction to Mindfulness
        • Introduction to Mindfulness
        • Introduction to Compassion Course
        • Introduction to Insight
    • Masters Degrees
      • MSc Studies in Mindfulness
      • MSc Mindfulness & Compassion
  • Mindfulness Retreats
    • Weekend Retreats
      • Mindfulness In Nature Weekend (Online and Samye Ling)
      • Introduction to Compassion Weekend (Online and Samye Ling)
      • Mindfulness in Nature Weekend (Online and London)
      • Poetry for Mindfulness and Compassion Weekend
      • Introduction to Compassion Weekend (Online and London)
      • Introduction to Compassion (Online and London)
      • Mindfulness, Qigong and Yoga Weekend
    • Cultivating Presence Online Retreat for Mindfulness Teachers
    • Making Space Online Retreat for MA Members
    • Mindfulness for Life Retreat
  • Words & Blogs
    • What is Mindfulness?
    • Science of Mindfulness
    • Heather’s Musings
    • Mindfulness Poetry
    • Meditation Challenge
    • Mindfulness and EDI Research
    • Sits and Teachings
    • Mindfulness Research
    • Mindfulness Recommended Reading
  • Membership
    • Free Members Retreat Weekend Online
    • Cultivating Presence Online Retreat for Mindfulness Teachers
    • Making Space Online Retreat for MA Members
  • About Us
    • Mindfulness Association Tutors
    • Mindfulness Association Training Venues
  • News & Events
    • Mindfulness Freebies

Mindfulness – Stepping into Now

You are here:
  1. Home
  2. Meditation Challenge
  3. Mindfulness – Stepping into Now
Feb232022
Meditation ChallengeMindfulness - Stepping into Now

Once when the lawn was golden green

And the marbled moonlit trees rose like fresh memorials

In the scented air, and the whole countryside pulsed

With the chirr and murmer of insects, I lay in the grass

Feeling the great distances open above me, and wondered

What I would become and where I would find myself

And though I barely existed, I felt for an instant

That the vast star clustered sky was mine, and I heard

my name as if for the first time, heard it the way

One hears the wind or the rain, but faint and far off

As though it belonged not to me but to the silence

from which it had come and to which it would go.

 

“My Name”

Mark Strand

 

 

“He was sitting in a brown room. With nothing to do and nowhere to go. There was a vast feeling of emptiness.”

This was not a monk, this was my partner speaking of his visit to his elderly relative, nearly 100 years old. A reclusive man with no urge for company, after losing his wife just before covid struck he has had 2 years of sitting alone in covid restricted life, in a rural place with limited support networks. But he was glad of the company now, and talked of life and ageing and just how empty everything suddenly seemed. He spoke plainly and undramatically of just ‘how things are’; being old, after having such a busy, energetic life; still lively of mind but the body no longer able to keep up with the mind. And people talk to him like he has already lost his mind, just on account of his age. He hasn’t the energy to explain or protest.

My partner is telling me details of the visit and the interaction between himself and his uncle, in this brown room, it was like he had brought it back with him – which he had, in his mind – this felt sense of a vast emptiness – and now here it was in my mind too. Palpable.

I could see him sitting there and feel this sense of ‘what was all that about?” (his life). All the days he had looked ahead to his future.

 

We both experienced this feeling as insight.

 

So now we are awake again, it’s another new day, here we are and we are still feeling this because what the meeting did for my partner was to make him question his life.

And when your partner is questioning their life, the meaning of it and purpose, well it’s a bit infectious. We have spent our lives, Avoiding The Void. Keep busy! Keep talking! Work to pay those bills! Watch Telly! Why is there only one Wordle a Day? I want to do it all day!

 

We drink our coffee and look into The Void. Where are we headed? Isn’t it all happening now?

I can’t say how The Gardener is experiencing this insight, but for me it is imbued with the bodily felt sense of emptiness I have experienced through insight meditation and the teachings of impermanence and of dukkha –teachings I have learned from Buddhist texts about why we feel unhappy most of the time and about that feeling that there is something missing all the time, or better just around the corner.

I take the void feeling to the cushion with me, with the intention of exploring what is here for me. I step into the void opening and curious. Feeling a little courageous.

I settle myself, stay rooted to the vast earth beneath me, with the lightest attention to the breath breathing me and feel the vastness of the space around me, and I step into it. My body vibrates with life, this was the feeling, skin tingling, I am alive, in this moment my body is buzzing, lightly, like champagne.

When I began mindfulness practice my body was disconnected, mostly there were no feelings to detect beyond pins and needles, numb legs, sore knees. This was something, but can be distracting and off putting, taking the attention away from the more subtle feelings, like what I am now experiencing. (I make sure I’m comfy, I’m not trying to be a monk, but it does take a bit of getting used to getting the posture right so it’s not too tight, not too relaxed) (same as the mind!) it’s so worth experimenting with that.

I’m sitting, body like a mountain and a light tingling buzz fizzes though me. And now, emotion, unexpected! And oh now.. it feels a bit messy.

A big sigh indicates to me going a little deeper and I feel that I am in this gap-space – there’s a sense of self falling to bits literally – a gap between who I am, who I think I am and who other people think I am. There is emotion here. I resist analysis and stay with this feeling and the feeling is that none of them are it – there is space between them all and I am in the space not in the self-identities.

It feels messy, my mind wants to connect it back to the brown room space it starts to think about that and compare, but I use my mindfulness to come back to the space which feels effortless and free, which brings more emotion around the effort of ‘being someone’.

Compassion is here on the cushion, is my cushion, I offer myself permission to be messy and in bits and hold it with self-compassion. More release of held tension. When tension goes, and I sigh, the energy is freed up – I can feel this happen. I don’t need to understand.

Life is actually unfolding in this gap between… bubbling up, fizzy and fresh. The gap lies between me doing this, me being that, the gap between the me trying to be what I think I should be, doing what I think other people think I should be doing, and actually the me that is experiencing here, now.

The empty space, if I can sense into it in each moment, will keep me present to this moment, which is the only moment I have. I might think the next moment will be better than this, or that next week everything will be OK and that next year will be even better and each projection out there whether about me or my life is taking me away from what is, and the amazing aliveness of this moment, fizzing like a glass of champagne.

 

“The Future is always beginning now.”

Mark Strand

 

I think of the elderly gentleman sitting in his house and his wondering about all his days of striving and working hard; and we see ourselves in him; what are we hoping for today that takes us away from this moment? What do we think will be around the next corner better than what’s here? Can we awake from this delusion? Can we step into that very space we are always trying to avoid?

 

Weekly Challenge

Simple / Not simple!

See how we get on with this: See if we can notice the tendency to want this moment to be different… better somehow.

What is it that you don’t like about this moment? Can you feel the gap?

– – – – – –

Warm wishes to you this windy week, I hope you stay safe and warm and have the opportunity to find joy in many moments of the coming days, whatever this week brings for you.

And if you have covid this week, as many people do, I hope it is mild, passes quickly and you feel better very soon.

Take care of yourself,

Lisa

Lisa-Hellier-profile
Lisa Hellier

MAHQ & Communications

Originally from Glasgow, Lisa now lives in Pembrokeshire west Wales where the midges are “less ferocious”.
Lisa works alongside Jacky Seery in the communications department. With a BAHons in Graphic Design, Lisa has worked freelance as a designer working in many media over the years, from leaflet and brochure design, designing illustrative town and village maps, to training to work creatively with children and adults with Community Arts group Arts Alive in Crickhowell, and more recently with older members of the community mainly on collaborative textile projects.
Her first visit to Samye Ling in 1992 was to spark a journey into Buddhist teachings which created a strong connection with Samye Ling. In 1994 she took the first year’s Mindfulness & Compassion course which has led to her now studying on the Msc Mindfulness Studies Course run by the University of Aberdeen, where she researching the place of mindfulness in the delivery and practice of the creative arts.

Mindfulness – Stepping into Now

You are here:
  1. Home
  2. Media
  3. Mindfulness – Stepping into Now

Mindfulness - Stepping into Now

Mindfulness – Stepping into Now

  • FAQ’s
  • Privacy Policy
  • Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Policy
  • Terms and conditions

58 Thirlestane Road
Edinburgh
Midlothian
EH9 1AR

Contact us at info@mindfulnessassociation.net

  • © 2008 - 2023 Mindfulness Association
Go to Top
Accept Cookies
We use cookies on our site. Please click accept or review the cookie settings Cookie settingsAccept
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Non-necessary
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
SAVE & ACCEPT