Mental Focus..

Mental focus is an important gift to those who meditate, and to those who don't. Being able to focus on something intently is often hard enough for a lot of people. Not because they are less intelligent, or too intelligent, or mentally unstable. No, what the problem is, is that modern life has left us with so much interference in our lives, so much spamming via commercials, print media, electronic media, news, up to date this' and thats' and a whole manner of other things, that we forget that we are here in the world also.

So how, how then do we expect us to be able to focus on nothing? To clear that mind and to sit in the moment of stillness and soak it up? I have often wondered what would a life be like without being able to do that? Then I got scared of all the clutter in my head, the messed up dreams I would have (which are messed up enough already), and a multitude of other worse case scenarios. I will let you know my methods momentarily, but I want to focus on the reasons as to why the ability to do this is so important.

As I spoke about previously, Disciplined Compassion is a life-long lifestyle choice I have made. It allows me to be firm, and yet compassionate. Understanding that it also applies to myself as much, if not so more importantly than it does to others, allowed me to realize that there is a balance in all things. And just as much as there is a need to be compassionate and disciplined in action and thought, there is also the need to be relaxed in both. You find that if you are too compassionate you become prey for those who take advantage, and if you are too discipline, people won't want to be around you. And that goes with the space between your ears. If you are too inundated with incoming data, you are going to be no use to someone if you can't filter and sort it out, but if you are too focused on your spiritualism, you are either going to be off in the clouds or stumbling over your feet. Focus, is like any instrument we possess, it's use must be balanced, proportionate to the task required, and not used for too long a period of time.

Another reason that focus is so important, is that it allows you to delve into regions of your mind, and work on things that you wouldn't otherwise consider. Finding the source of your failures, the successes, the creativity, the self-destruction, these are all achieved by focusing within. These are real, tangible things that can be worked on to improve yourself. Focus here, and you can change your life. Focusing also allows you to accept change more readily, because when you understand that most of your failures, your successes, your creations and destructive habits are caused by yourself, and not your target of choice, you understand the desire to change. And change within yourself, and others will notice the change without. You will feel more confident, you will be able to better assess life, choices and feel a sense of self contentment.

Ok, now to the hows. I will share with you my basic meditation. I used this generally if I need a quick brain dump. It can be done pretty much anywhere. I like either just sitting in the park on a bench, or standing in my room over a stick of incense with my eyes closed.
Step 1: I relax my breathing, due to my kyphosis, this is a very easy thing for me to do. I just take shallower short breaths and wait for the feeling in my chest to where I need to breathe in again.
Step 2: What I do next is pretty much try to focus on something. It is either a pattern, or of late, that spot of time at the height of my breath before my chest falls to breathe out. This is the point where I choose to take the next breath, and is a beautiful moment to me.
Step 3: After doing this for about 2 minutes, that spot of time seems to come to a standstill, and you realize that there is a whole universe of time, in that one instant. Your mind fills in with a sense of peace knowing that you control how you live, how you react or not react to things, how you CHOOSE when to let that air out of our lungs. In this point, when you focus on the serenity of it, everything in the world shuts out. As the Buddha taught in the Anapanasati Sutta, being mindful of the breath and how it effects breathing, the body, the sensations of the body, it brings about quietness and a greater understanding of the body.

Breathing is the most instrumental thing in our life. Without it we don't exist, and for anyone beginning meditation, or even learning to focus, I find it is one of the easiest things to focus on. This also helps in exercise too. When you are working hard, using this technique can bring down your heart rate by around 10beats a minute (I have had it measured with a heart rate monitor). This allows the heart to come to rest sooner and gives you a bit more energy for the next phase of your workout. Also, it is a great form of remembering we are all connected to one another. If we remember that every living mammal breathes the air we breathe, and does so by the same process of inhaling air, we come to understand that our world is vibrant.

I hope you all have a fantastic breathing focus session, and drop a comment to tell me how you did!!!

Disciplined Compassion...

I know these are two words that generally don't seem to come to be close together, but hear me out.

When you are truly dedicating yourself to your life, you become focused, disciplined in what you want to do. You put in effort that you didn't think you could have, you think differently, you discipline and structure your life around it. I think to me, discipline is what has kept me alive after all the surgeries and stuff that I have been through in my life. Self-Discipline, is like a bandage, a brace or a shield that keeps me focused on what I see as my existence in this world. To me, discipline invokes several things, Buddhist monks meditating for days on end, Samurai practicing, skilled military units, high end athletes. Discipline is the force behind so many success stories.

Compassion. That is a hard word to use without summoning the responses of either "weak willed" or "bleeding heart liberal". Compassion is so far the opposite that it is inconceivable for me to understand how people use these words about compassion. Honest, deep commitment to a compassionate life is not easy. To understand compassion, you have to understand yourself. You have to understand yourself at your weakest and your strongest, and be willing to understand both are components of your life that will constantly happen in many areas of it. Compassion then means you have to understand these will happen in others too. To not judge someone based on compassion, is understanding that they represent the same core values that you do. That they live in life, that they see what the world does to itself, to those who live within it, and knows that it places great strain on one's humanity.

To practice compassion, you have to be open to a very easy to explain, but hard to practice sentence. Humanity is interconnected and what happens to one happens to all. This lesson was taught to me by a Buddhist monk when I was younger, and a boy in the bed next to me died, and I didn't see him the next morning. He explained that the reason I was sad, is because we had become friends, and as friends, he had made an impact on me, and even though I didn't know him that well, that string had been made, and then had been broken. As adults, we become jaded by all these external things, a lot of them are thoroughly important, like living, money, housing, food, family and friends. But a lot of them are used as distractions, that make us feel a part of something greater than ourselves, and thus devalues what we are as a species. Football teams, cricket clubs, cities, counties/provinces/states, nations and religions are all artificial constructs that deflect our attention from the constant thing in this world. That we are all one species, we all have the same core dreams and needs, and what they are is:

1: Peace, so that we may go about our lives in safety and without fear.
2: Love, to give and to receive. We love our families, our partners, friends, pets, children, and we cherish and desire that in return.
3: Health, that we may interact with the world, the beautiful things in it, and do it without pain and suffering. And finally
4: Happiness, to do all of the above, that we may enjoy it, and feel satisfied with what we create, what we do and how we live our lives.

All humans harbour these basic needs, and compassion, is understanding that we all have the same core principles, compassion is acting with knowledge of this forefront in our mind when we deal with others. Disciplined Compassion, is a concerted effort to practice this not only outwardly to others, but also be compassionate to yourself. To understand that you have these values, these core tenets and understand that it is permissible to apply them to yourself, to have compassion for yourself, is one of the hardest things for people to understand. To say that I am worthy of the success that I create, the Love that I crave, the Health that I work towards and the Happiness to enjoy it, has been so ingrained into us to mean greed, to mean narcissism to mean not following the majority, that those who do, often feel abandoned. When you start placing your values on something outside of yourself to make your happiness, your peace, love and health, then you give up the power to enjoy it when you create it, and sadly when that outside force/person/idea doesn't return it, it feeds into hate, and all the things that compassion diametrically opposes.

So when you hear me say today, I am focusing on my Disciplined Compassion, you will know that not only am I focusing on my understanding and interactions with others, I am giving myself re-affirmation that it is ok that I give the same to myself. (Picture credits to me!)