Mindfulness: A Way to Calm the Drive of Addiction
The good news is that mindfulness practice opens a new door of possibility to us. Without a mindful practice that opens up a quality of stillness and spaciousness in our lives, there would be no end to or recourse from this push and pull — this addictive mechanism at the heart of our experience.
By Thomas McConkie, adapted from an episode of the Mindfulness+ podcast.
We tend to talk about addiction in our culture as though there are some people who have addiction problems and the rest of us don't struggle with that kind of thing.
In point of fact, when you start to practice mindfulness — when you look really closely at the dynamics of experience moment to moment — what you discover is that at the heart of experience is a kind of addictive mechanism. Whether you have an illegal drug habit or a texting habit or a potato chip habit (like I am plagued with personally), what you realize through meditation is that the object of addiction is less important than the actual underlying structures of addiction.
The Buddhist tradition is exceptionally articulate about the mechanism behind what we in the West call addiction. The way it basically works is that we are attracted to things that are pleasant, and we have an aversion to things that are unpleasant. And when we investigate our experience directly we notice a very basic and deep-seated push and pull. We push things away from us that are uncomfortable, and we pull pleasure and more comfortable things towards us.
This is described as “seeking” or “the seeking mind” in Buddhism. The Buddha had a term for this in ancient Pali: taṇhā, which meant thirst. And what he meant by thirst, as I understand it, is that we have a fundamental not “okay-ness” with what is. So, either we're thirsty for more pleasure or we're thirsty for less pain, and what the Buddha pointed out is that our lives are often characterized by this fundamental thirst. This thirst is at the heart of suffering.
So you might say that's the bad news, that human life is characterized by suffering, by a fundamental thirst. Even worse is that by this standard we're all addicts, right? If we take a moment to reflect on our lives and our behaviors, it becomes apparent to us pretty quickly which activities we engage in to mask over the thirst we feel at deeper levels.
I know when I stop at a stoplight my right hand almost instinctively and involuntarily reaches towards my cell phone because I might have time to check out the latest headline on the newsfeed on my app. And when I take a moment to just pause with that, I sense into a quality of restlessness, and just beneath that restlessness I sense into a deeper and abiding peace.
This fundamental dynamic of seeking is prevalent in all our lives and this seeking is in response to what is often very subtle, even unconscious, pain and suffering. And we search endlessly for different activities to busy our minds — to numb out, to anesthetize ourselves — to whatever’s happening in the moment that we don't want to be present for.
The good news is that mindfulness practice opens a new door of possibility to us. Without a mindful practice that opens up a quality of stillness and spaciousness in our lives, there would be no end to or recourse from this push and pull — this addictive mechanism at the heart of our experience. We would be stuck in this basic pain-pleasure principle, always chasing after more pleasure, always avoiding more pain. But it turns out that there's a whole different dimension in human experience and human awareness that I've come to call “the still point.”
I'm certainly not the first person to call it that, but when I talk about the still point, I'm talking about a place of profound stillness, a place of profound peace, something even beyond space and time, tinged with a quality of bliss.
As we get more and more proficient at accessing the still point, we come to experience a kind of profound contentment — a transcendent contentment, happiness beyond conditions. By “beyond conditions” I mean when we come to this place of stillness in our experience, we find that we can be in a tremendous amount of pain, but that we don't feel the same drivenness, the same compulsion to avoid it.
And on the other end of the spectrum we can be experiencing a tremendous amount of pleasure, almost unbearable pleasure, and yet we don't cling to it. When the pleasure subsides, we let it subside. When the pain wells up, we let it well up. This practice of living in the still point is a deep attitude of letting come, letting go.
If you think about it, all of us as addicts tend to live a lot from the mindset that “I can't bear this pain; I need something to make me feel better" or “I can't bear for this good experience to end; how do I extend it? How do I prolong it and get even more pleasure out of it?” But when we take a kind of ninety-degree turn straight down into the depths of our awareness, we realize that we don't have to manipulate conditions. We don't have to avoid pain by engaging in some compulsive behavior. And we don't have to manipulate circumstances to prolong or seek more pleasure. We can rest in the still point, this profound contentment, letting life be exactly as it is.
Let's take a moment to drop in to this experience together.
Find a comfortable position where you can settle in. And just allow a few moments for that body to settle in to the posture. Letting the mind unwind, unload any thoughts. You don't have to try and get relaxed or slow down, you can just trust the rhythm of your own body and mind to do the slowing down for you.
And as you do this, you can notice in the physical body in this moment areas of pleasure. Areas where the body feels just right. And you can just open up to that and receive that. Also notice different aspects of the body that might not be so comfortable. Maybe you can detect some subtle pain, or maybe the pain is quite intense. Just notice any discomfort in the physical body in this moment, without trying to make it go away, without wrestling with it. You can just notice. And notice that your awareness is plenty big enough to hold all of the pain and all of the pleasure of the body in this moment.
And you can bring your awareness to the thinking mind, noticing any pleasant thoughts you've had today or recently. Pleasant thoughts that drift through your mind. And just allow those to come. Notice any negative thoughts, any unpleasant thoughts that have been floating through your awareness today or the last few days, and just see what comes to you when you relax, open up awareness into this vast space. Notice that your awareness is plenty big to hold all of the positive thoughts, all of the negative thoughts.
And finally just take a moment to contemplate the conditions of your life at this moment. The state of your health, your relationships, your livelihood, dreams, aspirations. Notice the conditions that feel favorable, things that are going well for you, and notice the challenges. Conditions you might wish away if you could. Notice that whatever the conditions of the body in the moment, whatever the conditions of the mind, whatever the conditions of your very life in this moment, there's a part of you deeper than the body, deeper than the thinking mind, deeper than life conditions themselves, where you can access a quality of profound contentment. At the level of pure awareness, it's simply a joy to be awake, to be present.
Allow yourself to relax, resting deeply in a quality of no-seeking. Life conditions ebb and flow, they surge and they fall. But at the heart of your experience, as awareness, as intelligence, you can be deeply present for all of life's experiences, all of conditions: pain and pleasures alike. And through this presence comes a profound freedom. A freedom to just be right here responding to life, just as it is.
Heartfulness: A Meditation on Giving and Receiving Influence
This practice of shifting our attention slightly to pick up on a different wave-length of experience is something we can get more and more proficient at. And as we get better at it, we start to trust ourselves more and realize just how much information is available to us when we pay attention in a slightly different way.
By Thomas McConkie, adapted from an episode of the Mindfulness+ podcast.
When I work with students in a mindfulness capacity, something I often have them do early on in the process is shift their attention to the emotional tone in their own body as well as the emotional tone around them. I'll have them get into small groups of three or four and notice what they can be aware of in terms of the subtle information that's flowing through the air, so to speak.
What I find when I ask students to do this is that they often have a moment of self-doubt, especially if they've never done the practice. They wonder if what they're sensing is just a part of their imagination — if there's anything they can actually sense at all — when they tune their awareness to this more subtle bandwidth of experience.
We're used to seeing with our eyes and feeling sensation through the body, but when we tune into the more subtle elements of human experience, it takes a little more time to adjust and start to sensitize ourselves to this new kind of information. But as we practice tuning into our own emotional state, our own subtle rhythms through the body and heart, we spontaneously become more sensitive to the environment around us. Ultimately, this practice of shifting our attention slightly to pick up on a different wave-length of experience is something we can get more and more proficient at. And as we get better at it, we start to trust ourselves more and realize just how much information is available to us when we pay attention in a slightly different way.
Not only are we giving influence throughout the day just by walking around with this human body and this human heart, but we're receiving influence deeply as well. I've mentioned in the past how permeable we are, how vulnerable we are, and in a different light, how connected we are — how much influence we have over one another. Heartfulness is just a slightly different way of talking about that.
You can experience this right now if you put your hand over your heart. Take a breath. And just notice that your awareness has already become more subtle. Tuning in to this different wavelength, you can sense into the environment around you. Just notice how it feels.
*Start Practice
I want you to start by focusing on the breath. And for a moment here, we're going to have an intention to breathe rhythmically. You can just choose your own adventure here. If you feel like it, you can do four counts on the in-breath, four on the out-breath. Or maybe you want to do six counts on the in-breath, eight counts on the out-breath. I personally like to do a little bit longer of an out-breath, so I'm going to do the six counts in and eight counts out.
So go ahead and start with this breath, breathing rhythmically. And if you need to adjust your counts, maybe extend the out-breath a little more or the in-breath, just make the adjustment you need to. And as you do this I also want you to focus on the quality of evenness in the breath, so that you're breathing in a steady stream of oxygen and expelling a steady volume of oxygen. Evenly breathing in and evenly breathing out, according to your own rhythm. Just trust yourself with this. Find what's comfortable to you. The important thing with this exercise is to hold the same ratio, meaning maybe six counts in and six counts out. Eight counts in and ten counts out, just see what feels best for you. Try this for a while.
Good. Stay with that just another couple of breaths. Feel the body softening, coming into coherence. Less of a ragged feel, like you're burning energy, and more of just a smooth flow. All of the organs — all of the systems in the body — coordinating with the energy field of the heart. Like the London Philharmonic Orchestra playing together in unison.
The last step I'll ask you to take, here, is to focus on the heart. Just bring your awareness to the physical heart and notice how it feels in this moment. You can continue to breathe. Don't worry about the count, the ratio, so much at this point. Just trust the intelligence and wisdom of your body to find its own rhythm. Just notice how the heart feels in this moment. Notice the emotional tone of the body. And feel the influence, the energy of your own heart extending out several feet away from your physical body in every direction. If there are people nearby you in the moment or other forms of life — a house pet, a plant — whatever it is, you can just extend your influence to all of life around you. And notice the environment around you. It's quality, it's subtle energetic. Notice what you can sense when you shift your awareness one degree and tune in to this more subtle wavelength.
You can stay with this practice as long as you want. You can come back to it as often as you want. Breathing rhythmically, evenly, bringing awareness to the heart, inviting the body into coherence. Sending out a loving influence all around you. Blessing other’s lives — human beings, other forms of life. I encourage you to stay with this practice. Stay embodied through the heart, and as you walk around the world you can know yourself to be a human love machine, sending out your influence, receiving influence from others, all in a seamless exchange.
Reclaiming the Body: A Meditation to Integrate Body and Mind
The trouble we get into with the thinking mind is that there's a tendency to over-identify with thought and leave the body behind. And when we have less awareness in our physical bodies, the body becomes less sensitive. It becomes less vibrant. How do we heal this problem and integrate body and mind?
By Thomas McConkie, adapted from an episode of the Mindfulness+ podcast.
***
In a famous (and hilarious) TED talk, Sir Ken Robinson talks about how our education system hampers creativity. He says that for many university professors the body is reduced to a vehicle that shuttles their heads around from meeting to meeting. It's his funny way of saying that university professors are so in their head, so involved in the intellectual side of life, that they forget that they have bodies.
What Sir Ken Robinson points to isn’t just a phenomenon with university professors. He may as well have been describing adulthood itself. There's a shift in the locus of our identity when we become adults. Just think about childhood and the roly-poly, rough-and-tumble, playing-out-in-the-sun kind of kids we were — coming home with grass stains on our clothes and a big ring of grape jelly and peanut butter around our mouths after lunch.
The world is so physical when we're young. We're physically embodied for a long time in life, and it's around adolescence where we start to get what is sometimes referred to as a mind-body split. And this is not all bad news.
When the mind and body split, our cognitive function is starting to develop. It's starting to come more into the foreground of our experience as adults. And we do amazing things with cognition. For instance, you can imagine what your life could be like if you really dedicated yourself to your values and your principles. To imagine who it is we want to be, what we want to do with this precious life, and to actually apply ourselves to realizing that vision — that all requires cognition.
The trouble we get into with the thinking mind is that there's a tendency to leave the body behind. And when we have less awareness in our physical bodies, the body becomes less sensitive. It becomes less vibrant. It can even get sick and start to break down when we're not, for example, eating healthy and exercising or just paying attention to our physical state.
So, the opportunity of adulthood is to develop our minds and bodies. And this is where a mindfulness practice comes in.
Mindfulness is a practice that can help us grow and develop in a more healthy way into adulthood. And reclaiming the body is a perfect example of this. What we see in our research in adult development is that this mind-body split is a real thing and it becomes a challenge for many adults in their lifetime. You could say it's a developmental threshold of sorts. We reach adulthood, and we start to lose touch with the body, and a lot of problems can come up from there. So how do we cross this threshold? How do we reach back down into the physical body — into embodiment — and integrate the body with the mind? To me, that's the question. How do we really take this challenge as an opportunity? This challenge of disembodiment — of the body being a vehicle that just shuttles the head around from meeting to meeting. How do we actually invite the physical body to become more sensitive again, to play more of a central role in the sensuous delights of human life? How do we bring the body back online and start to integrate it more fully with the adult mind?
Rather than talk about the answer to that, which would just be more cognition, we're going to practice this. We're going to practice bringing more awareness into the physical body and feel the way it can start to integrate, cooperate with, and flow with the activity of the mind.
I'll invite you to settle in wherever you are and we'll begin.
[bell to commence practice]
You can start by just taking a couple of deep breaths and if you're comfortable doing so, just allow yourself an audible sigh. Just letting it all go.
You can just start to settle in. whatever you're doing, whether you're in stillness or motion, you can just start to gather awareness in the physical body - all of the physical body. And as you breathe you can imagine that you're breathing in through every pour of your skin. Lighting up and nourishing the entire body. And moment to moment you can notice the flux of sensation through the body. Even if you're sitting perfectly still with eyes closed, just the expansion and contraction of the breath is a cascade of physical sensation.
As you notice thoughts pulling for your attention, or sounds in the world, sights, just notice that and practice letting go and just allowing your awareness to flow as the sensations of the physical body. Notice that this flow is like a mighty river. Sometimes white-watered. Sometimes silently flowing. But it's unbroken. Moment to moment there is just a stream of sensation through the body.
And as you let awareness really deeply flow and merge with the stream of physical sensations, you can see if that changes the quality of sensation. Noticing if it becomes more clear, more vivid. Often times just bringing attention to the body lights up the experience. Makes it more deeply felt.
From here, you can open up the scope of your focus a little bit wider to include not just physical sensation, but also the thinking mind. So not trying to get rid of thoughts, but not indulging in thoughts or elaborating on them, either. Just allowing thought to flow through awareness the same way that physical sensation flows through awareness. And you can just let it be one in the same flow. It's not that physical sensations are good and thoughts bad, it's all just one unbroken flow. And you can relax your awareness, relax right into this flow.
Let your awareness remain soft and open. Physical sensations flowing, thoughts flowing through the mind, all flowing through awareness. Just take another moment to give yourself back to this flow of nature. And as you practice this more and more, you come to directly experience that you're not a thinking mind separated from a physical body so much as a body-mind. One unbroken flow always flowing through the open expanse of awareness itself.
[bell to conclude practice]
No need to stop, here. You can just stay with this, continuing as one unbroken flow of body, mind, and spirit. Return to this practice again and again as you see fit.
***
Want to deepen your practice? Download the Mindfulness Essentials course.
"The Longer We Practice, the Deeper We Practice": An Extended Meditation on Presence
This is the practice of presence, of really learning to open up to the fullness that is here right now.
By Thomas McConkie, adapted from an episode of the Mindfulness+ podcast.
***
“The longer we practice, the deeper we practice."
It’s something that one of my meditation teachers always used to say. In this spirit, I'm going to offer a longer guided meditation about being in the present moment. This is the practice of presence, of really learning to open up to the fullness that is here right now.
Begin
Take a moment to let the body settle into the posture, gathering awareness in the physical body, letting the dust from your day or your night of sleeping and dreaming just start to settle. And remember that you don't have to try and get settled, try and rest. You can just give yourself over to the natural rhythms of your own body, of nature — as rhythmically as the tide ebbs and flows, the body expands and contracts through the breath. You can just return to this rhythm.
[extended silence]
Good. Bring your awareness to the nostrils, the sensation of breathing in and breathing out through the nose. And just practice for a moment, tightly focusing your awareness on these sensations — breathing in through the nose, breathing out through the nose, and just noticing the changing sensations as you do this, letting everything else in the entire world fade into the background.
If you get pulled away from your focus on the sensations around the nostrils or inside of the nostrils, just notice that and come back. Refocus. Redouble your efforts, really bearing down on this small area of sensation.
And for a moment, as you do this, staying with the tight focus on the sensations of breathing through the nose, I want you to notice that within your narrowed focus there's a quality of total openness, that awareness is open to whatever sensation is flowing. No matter how tightly you focus, there's a quality of awareness that remains totally open. Within your scope of focus around the nostrils, you can just be open to whatever sensation is flowing in this moment. Tingling sensation, air cooling the nostrils as you breathe in, warming the nostrils as you breathe out.
Then go ahead and let that go. Relax your focus, opening up awareness to cover the entire physical body, all of sensation in this moment. Focusing on the physical body, being open within the scope of this focus. Allowing whatever sensation wants to arise, to arise. Whatever wants to pass, to pass.
And go ahead and relax that. Let go of that narrowing of focus on the body. And at this point you can totally ease up. Letting go of any particular focus in awareness and just allowing awareness to be completely open — not focusing on any one thing whatsoever.
As you stay open in awareness, you'll notice that however open you are, awareness will naturally and spontaneously focus. It will grip on an object such as a physical sensation, a thought in the mind, without your doing it. and you can just notice as this happens. Going from total expanse, total openness, to a spontaneous focus. And as you notice this spontaneous focusing, this spontaneous gripping, you can practice letting go. Letting go of whatever awareness notices in the moment, coming back to open awareness.
And start to notice that in a given moment, whether awareness is focused or open, in any event, you are simply aware. You are present. Whether you're present in a focused and narrowed way, or present in a relaxed and open way, awareness is simply aware. Just take a moment to enjoy this. From this perspective there are no distractions. There's only awareness. There's contractive awareness: tightly focused. There's expansive awareness: totally open. You're always aware. You're always present. You are aware presence itself.
Enjoy the freedom, the natural rhythm of awareness expanding and contracting, as naturally as the tides ebb and flow. As naturally as stars, suns, rise and set over countless planets. Awareness expands, contracts, and you are present. Aware, awake for it all.
End
Take a moment to give your fingers and toes a wiggle. Let the visual world back into awareness if you've closed your eyes. Stay soft, stay open. Enjoy all of the fullness that is this and every moment.
***
Want to deepen your practice? Download the Mindfulness Essentials course.
The Individual and the Collective: A Meditation on Our Porous Nature
Notice these boundaries that we call the self — maybe the physical borders of our body, or the more subtle borders of our minds. We imagine that we're totally unique and autonomous and even isolated in these boundaries. And yet there are moments in life where it's clear that there's something else going on.
I was teaching a retreat a few years ago when a mother shared a really moving story with me. She said that right before the retreat, she was tucking her daughter in for sleep when she had a sense that her daughter was thinking something. So she asked her what she was thinking and her daughter described a really vivid image — the exact same image, it turns out, that had just gone through her mind before she asked her daughter what she was thinking.
It was one of those moments where the common sense of separation totally dissolved.
We usually think that our thoughts are our thoughts. And in this moment it was really clear to the mother that it wasn't entirely her thought. It was just a thought that was thinking both of them at the same time, so to speak.
This experience really stuck with me because this particular retreat started off really moody. We had a big group of people at the retreat center, and the weather was dark and the energy of the group felt a little bit sluggish, a little bit weighed down. I felt it just as much as anybody.
We're all working through this content. We're all feeling so much. And there are moments in life where we recognize that we're actually porous, that we're deeply affected by others, by the environment, and by the entire world.
Just feel that for a moment. Notice these boundaries that we call the self — maybe the physical borders of our body, or the more subtle borders of our minds. We imagine that we're totally unique and autonomous and even isolated in these boundaries. And yet there are moments in life where it's clear that there's something else going on.
This has some interesting implications. On the one hand, it's amazing that we don't have to be alone — that because we're porous we're not just living our own individual life, but we're living out a life in a collective. We're participating in the life of the world's soul, you might say. But what can be a little scary about that is there's a lot of vulnerability involved. To be porous is to be touchable, reachable, and influenced.
Notice that for a moment as you breathe. As you feel, you can just notice in this moment what side of the spectrum you seem to be favoring. Do you feel more individual in your experience? Independent? Or do you feel more communal, more merged?
It's not that feeling independent is undesirable and that feeling communal is desirable. If anything, what's powerful is to just notice this spectrum that's playing out moment to moment. There are times when we feel incredibly self-conscious and closed in on ourselves. And in those moments we can feel very isolated. And there are other moments where we feel totally relaxed and at ease, and our sense of self just expands out, seemingly forever.
The invitation, then, is to bring more attention to your porous nature, so you can notice both of these features. You very much are a unique self with unique gifts to offer those people in your lives, to offer to the entire world. And you're also very porous. You're always a self in relationship to other, in relationship to the whole. And on that level, you're very porous. You're very permeable, you're vulnerable, and yet the vulnerability is what makes possible intimacy and the deepest love. When we return we're going to do a little bit of an awareness practice around these qualities of our experience.
Here’s a meditation you can follow to experience this for yourself.
Start
Take a moment to allow yourself to just settle in, to arrive more fully in this moment. Notice the shape, the posture of the physical body in this moment, whether in stillness or in motion. Just notice the impact the posture has on this moment, the way the posture of the body colors your experience.
And you can bring awareness to the emotions. Just notice how you're feeling emotionally in this moment. The quality of emotion in the body. How intense emotion is — maybe very intense, maybe very felt. Maybe very dim. Imperceptible. And you can notice where in the body you're sensing emotion. What volume of space the emotional energy takes up. How it's moving, how it's shifting moment to moment. How do you feel? Just allow yourself to investigate this directly through your awareness.
You can also notice thoughts in the mind. You don't have to get lost in the content of the thoughts, but you can just notice the flow of thought. Whether there are many thoughts, few thoughts, no thoughts. and notice how this colors your experience in this moment as well. Feel the body. Feel the mind. Sense in to the personality the unique person that you are. Just notice what it feels like to be you in this moment.
And then allow awareness to expand, to become more permeable, more porous. Starting with your surroundings. Notice where you are in this moment. And notice the energy, the quality, the essence of the room where you are, or if you're outside somewhere, just allow yourself to soften and be aware of the influence that your immediate environment has on you. Notice the influence you're receiving from your environment.
Now bring awareness to your closest relationships: family, friends. And notice if any of those people are struggling right now. Notice if those struggles weigh on you. You're concerned for them. You're hoping they'll prevail in these challenges. And notice if any of them are on a roll, so to speak. Things are amazing in their lives and you feel a contact high from their success — a vicarious joy.
Open up your awareness to the mood of your nation. Whatever country you come from, whatever country you currently reside in, just see if you can sense into the mood of the nation as a whole. Feel the way you participate in that mood. You affect it and you are affected by it. You give and you receive influence.
At the most basic level you can sense into your own aliveness in this moment. Just feel that you're alive: breathing, sensing, awake. And you're not the one doing this. In a sense, life is being done to us. It's this gift we continue to receive with each in-breath, with each out-breath. You can open up your awareness to all of life. the vitality in us and through us all that quickens us, that animates us.
Feel the way, in this moment, that you deeply participate in the life of the whole — all life on the planet and all life beyond. Feel how deeply connected you are, and how profoundly unique you are, all at once.