My life...enjoy

1. Have no agenda.

This is a big one. You are not here to assert your opinions, preferences, or frame of mind. Changing others or having them really hear and understand you will not actually give you anything you don’t already have. You are still just left with yourself in the end.

2. Be present.

This goes hand in hand with the lack of agenda. Your primary place in interaction is not to be there as a function or a role. The less you have an agenda, the more this becomes obvious. You are simply a conscious presence. If you find yourself getting lost in thoughts, reactions, or whatever, bring your attention to your breathing or your body. Come back to this moment.

3. Listen.

I would say about half the conversations I have with people simply involve their need or wish to be heard. Not only do they seem to have little interest in my own thoughts or responses, but they are just talking to talk. Let them. It’s usually when people are no longer struggling to be heard that you can actually have a good conversation with them.

4. Be compassionate.

Trying to be peaceful or respectful is just contrivance. Every conversation is different. If you can be open and kind without judgment, peace and respect will follow naturally from of that.

5. Be mindful.

No matter what conversations are happening, keep some attention within yourself. You should be able to feel your reactions as they arise, whatever they may be. By being aware of them, they wont unconsciously leak into your thoughts and words.

For all of this, daily meditation is crucial as well as constant mindfulness practice. Peace and serenity come from before the mind. They come from you. You don’t need to show yourself as you really are or worry about appearing as a different self.

Know yourself as you truly are for yourself. Others will only see you to the extent that they know themselves. If they know themselves through body identification and judgments, that’s how they will see you. But that doesn’t need to be the way you see them. You free yourself and everyone by coming to know the reality of existence. Then all are known as the living undivided presence that they are.

If you resist what your current life circumstances are asking of you, then you may wind up depending on anxiety for the motivation to fulfill your responsibilities.

If you make yourself dependent on anxiety then it will always be there in the background. It even becomes something you defend and protect.

That is why the question arises as to how or why do anything if we free ourselves from anxiety. Such a concern reveals the depth with which our confusion permeates our approach to life.

We need anxiety to break through our resistance and procrastination, and so we make anxiety a necessary part of our lives. Without anxiety, how can we continue to function?

Anxiety treats the symptoms of resistance and procrastination, meaning that anxiety forces us to act when procrastination is resisting action. However, that process still keeps us bound by resistance and slave to anxiety.

The disease itself is the procrastination and resistance. The remedy for which is acceptance and non-resistance of what *is*.

In doing so, you make anxiety obsolete. It no longer improves your function but rather impairs your sanity, which was actually the case all along.

Be very wary of your motivation, not just overall but on a day to day and moment to moment basis.

This is one reason why Buddhists train in and practice the dedication of merit: May the fruits of my efforts contribute to the happiness and liberation of all sentient beings without exception.

It may seem simple and conventional but when put into practice it is discovered to be quite multidimensional and wholly radical in comparison to our typical motivation for doing anything. You may be surprised at the immensity of energy and compassion it affords you.

Food for thought.

                     to all the women out there: 

                                                  you can be anything you want