A Day In a Life of Mindfullness

By: Stephen Levine

Posted: December 17, 2010

What would it be like to wake up on a day in a life of love devoted to mindfulness, to simply remaining present to our life all day long?

A day when you could just be yourself and explore what that “self” might be.

To awake to the experience of the Presence in presence. To awake to nothing to block love. To your greatest strength, your deepest intuition, your deepest sense of being present.

Imagine waking up in the morning and wondering, “Did I wake up on the in-breath or the out-breath?” You say, “What does that have to do with love?” Because the more aware we are, the closer we are to love.

When the cold indifference with which we attempt to freeze our pain in place begins to melt into the unimagined possibility of what the mind trembles to acknowledge as love.

Waking up so awake that you peer into the field of sensation and ask, “Did I wake up on the in breath or out breath?” Not that one is better than the other, but just that you start to wake-up when you wake up.

Strengthening our connection with the life-force, awareness, paying attention to the field of sensations in which we live.

Wake up into our true life.

What might it be to actually wake up in the morning? To awake beyond the walled city of our ordinary smaller-than-life mind?

Waking up into our life instead of habitually dosing through it.

To wake up anew each morning. Not thinking our life but watching the thoughts and sensations which comprise and making our decisions from that sort of spaciousness. Seeing how close we can get to being fully alive.

To come back to the sensation of the breath that leads into awareness of the field of sensation we call the body. To be alive in the body instead of shrinking to the constrictions of thought. As though jumping from one thought-bubble as it pops into the next, constantly shifting our weight from fear of falling.

And noting in moments of remembering to wake up to the breath through out the day the ever changing states of mind beneath. To participate in our life as it unfolds from moment to moment noting “ doubt”, “care”, “fear”, “judgment”, “desire”, and the dream-like quality of “thinking, thinking, thinking” as the mind spins off its original intentions”.

And watching the quixotic nature of thought spiraling into thinking. perhaps even coming to a point when the mind is watched in fascination more as process than only content.

No so easily mistaking ourselves in the theater-of-the-mind for the story on the screen we begin to become aware of the flickering images that like thought lull us into the story line. And remember, the light which passes through the film to create the illusion on the screen like awareness meeting an object- of-awareness to produce consciousness. Like the light of awareness glinting behind the eye which creates seeing-consciousness.

As mindfulness develops there seems to be a speeding up of the capacity to see clearly the passing of one thought after another, slowing of “the film” so it might be seen frame by frame. As an unexpected satisfaction increases with an appreciation for the marvel of the process of the passing show.

And when the awareness from which consciousness is created turns toward itself, when consciousness becomes conscious of itself, no longer so self-conscious as conscious of self, it is as though we get a glimpse of the origin of Creation.

Being loving arises from forgiveness and compassion and a bit of grace and strengthens over time. Being in love often peaks prematurely, before love has truly ripened. Though an often delightful, exciting though expectant state in which we momentarily see through the Eye of Beauty it sometimes leads to just its opposite. Indeed in some divorces never is there expressed such vitriolic recriminations, even hatred, as for those once in love. No greater unfinished business in need of forgiveness.

A day to note how even simple awareness heals.

*****