Category Archives: Invitations

Invitations around the Power of Intention

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  1. Read Jack Kornfield’s essay “The Heart’s Intention.” Afterwards, if it feels right, journal about your own intentions: for this day, for this week, for your life.
  2. What is your intention for your mindfulness practice going forward? This, too, is something you might want to journal about. It can be helpful to reflect on your particular experiences, bringing to mind specific classes or sitting sessions. Did your emotional state or felt sense of being change from the beginning to the end? Have their been times you have been aware of the practice affecting an interaction or response? Do you feel ready to set an intention toward cultivating or recommitting to a regular practice of meditation, with a time and place to meditate on a regular basis?
  3. Henry David Thoreau wrote “Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed had been, I have great faith in a seed. Convince me you have a seed there, and I’m prepared to expect wonders.” You might ask yourself, in meditation or in journaling: What seeds are you planting? What seeds are you watering?
  4. Read “Kiss the Moment” by Frank Ostaseki, the cofounder of the Zen Hospice Project and author of The Five Invitations. This little piece is a lovely capstone for our class together, as he reminds us:

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Invitations for Self Inquiry and the Art of Communication

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The art of communication—deep listening and loving speech—are particularly important when a relationship is in trouble or when someone we know needs help. Before we can communicate with others skillfully, it helps to be in good communication with ourselves, and the same skills of deep listening and loving speech come into play.

  1. Continue regular sitting or walking meditation practice. It can be helpful to set an intention: that you will, for instance, practice five times during the week for at least ten minutes each time. Be realistic, and then do your best to stick to it.
  2. Read Chapter 1 of Tara Brach’s book Radical Compassion, “Learning to Love Yourself and Your World with the Practice of RAIN,” available to read for free online here.
  3. Practice RAIN at least once during the week. Guidance with the process is helpful, and Tara Brach offers a number of guided meditations and other resources on her website:

RAIN can be particularly powerful when practiced with a partner. Tara explains the process, and offers a guided practice, here.

4. If RAIN does not seem particularly helpful to you, there are other models for self inquiry. The Work of Byron Katie is a way to question our beliefs and narratives through a series of four questions followed by turnarounds. I have worked with this process (and in fact attended a 10-day training with Byron Katie) and find it very powerful. A student alerted me to the AWARE process—mentioned in this article “15 Things Therapists Do When They’re Worried About The Future“—and it sounds promising but I don’t have personal experience with it. Whatever model you use, be patient and try more than once. It takes time to learn any new skill, and self inquiry is not only a skill but an art.

 

Invitations to listen deeply …

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  1. Practice sitting or walking meditation as many times this week as you can, for at least 10 or 15 minutes at a time. You might remind yourself that learning how to be present to yourself is a beautiful foundation for being truly present for others. For support in your sitting practice, you might check out these 8 Essential Tips for Practice from Tara Brach.
  2. When you find yourself in conversation this week, invite yourself to deepen your listening. You might remind yourself before you sit down for dinner or call a friend: listening is an act of love.
  3. Enjoy this excerpt from Tara Brach’s book, True Refuge, in which she tells the story of a woman who transformed her very difficult relationship with her mother through deep listening.

Invitations: Lovingkindness

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Art of Communication Week 1:  Lovingkindness

  1. Review the practice of lovingkindness by watching this short, 7-minute video that takes you through the expanding circles of compassion with humor and poetry. Remember that you don’t need to practice for each circle every time. Especially in the beginning, you might want to offer lovingkindness to yourself and/or a beloved friend or mentor. In time you can expand those offerings to a neutral person, a difficult person, and all beings.
  2. Do a lovingkindness meditation at least once or twice this week. If you don’t have a lot of experience, guided meditations are invaluable. You can access a written script by Jack Kornfield here. You can access a selection of recorded guided meditations here, or by clicking on the Meditations tab in the top menu.
  3. If you find yourself addicted to the news, consider stopping for a few moments before you click on Facebook or a news site and offering yourself and others phrases of lovingkindness. Invite yourself to feel the experience of loving and of being loved in every cell of your body. Rest in this awareness. Perhaps you will decide to put off the “horror scrolling” for another time.
  4. You might want to find three or four short phrases that feel particularly tailored to you right now, such as “May I be loving; may I be loved; may I be able to receive love in the ways it is offered.”   Or, try the phrases below from Jon Kabat Zinn. Call on them whenever you are feeling stressed.

    May I be happy
    May I be healthy
    May I ride the waves of my life
    May I live in peace
    No matter what I am given

    May you be happy
    May you be healthy
    May your ride the waves of your life
    May you live in peace
    No matter what you are given

    May we be happy
    May we be healthy
    May we ride the waves of our lives
    May we live in peace
    No matter what we are given.

Invitations: Deep Listening and the Power of Intention

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  1. Journal about the Love exercise we did today and consider setting an intention: for the day, for the week, even for your life. If it feels right, write it down, and carry it with you through the week, in both meditation and your daily activities. Allow yourself to revise or start over in whatever way feels most authentic for you.  You might find it helpful to read this brief essay on The Heart’s Intention by Jack Kornfield.
  2. Read Tara’s 8 Essential Tips for Practice and write out a brief plan for your practice going forward.
  3. When you find yourself in conversation this week, invite yourself to deepen your listening. If you would like to further explore deep listening, there are some resources here.

Invitations: Lovingkindness

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  1. Do a lovingkindness meditation at least once or twice this week. If you don’t have a lot of experience, guided meditations are invaluable. You can access a written script by Jack Kornfield here. You can access a selection of recorded guided meditations here, or by clicking on the Meditations tab in the top menu.
  2. Practice what Sharon Salzburg calls “Street Lovingkindness,” offering phrases of love and compassion to strangers. This two-minute video from Salzburg offers a lovely example in Grand Central Station — oh, for the days we moved in such herds! — and with a little creativity you can adapt the practice to the changed circumstances of lockdown and social distancing.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgjHM8ngWrM]

 

Invitations: Mindfulness of Emotions

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Class 4 Invitations: Awareness of Emotions and working with RAIN

  1. Continue to practice mindful stillness at least a few minutes each day such as mindful breathing, 10-breaths practice, or work with Mindfulness Daily.
  2. Read Chapter 1 of Tara Brach’s book Radical Compassion, “Learning to Love Yourself and Your World with the Practice of RAIN,” available to read for free online here.

Radical Compassion: Learning to Love Yourself and Your World with the Practice of R.A.I.N. – Chapter One

3. Practice RAIN at least once during the week. Guidance with the process is helpful, and Tara Brach offers a number of guided meditations and other resources on her website:

RAIN can be particularly powerful when practiced with a partner. Tara explains the process, and offers a guided practice, here.

Invitations: Mindfulness of the Body

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Mindfulness of the Body

  • Begin your meditation with a body scan. If you are meditating for only a short period, the scan may be your complete meditation. Spend a few breaths at the end of your meditation to savor the aliveness you have become aware of in your body.
  • Bless your body: The Atlanta-based hospice chaplain Janet Lutz took time at least once each year to bless the hands of everyone who worked in the hospital and most especially those who often went unacknowledged – those who prepared the food, cleaned the bathrooms, and provided the innumerable services that made the hospital a healing place. As you do a body scan, consider blessing each part of your own body in turn. You can hear a StoryCorps segment with Janet Lutz in which she notes how other hospital workers worked mindfully to heal here.
  • If it feels right, try out 10-breaths practice at least once or twice this week. You can find an overview of the practice here.

Invitations for Working with Mindfulness of Thoughts

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Mindfulness of thoughts:  become a field observer of your own wild interior

Watch your thoughts through the week and start a list of your Top 10. What turns up over and over again?

Some things to pay attention to (and possibly journal about):

  • What do you find challenging when working with mindfulness of thoughts?
  • What are the thoughts that most put you in trance?
  • What are the thoughts that keep you awake at night?

Meditation: practice mindful breathing a minimum of five minutes a day. In mindful breathing, the breath is the anchor, the focus of attention that you can return to if you find your thoughts have strayed. If paying attention to the breath is difficult for any reason, or if you just want a change, choose another anchor. This can be the body, most especially a point of contact such as one hand resting in another, or the feel of both hands resting on your thighs; the sense of your seat on your cushion or chair; the soles of your feet on the ground. Yet another anchor is sound: Become fully aware of the soundscape, of everything that reaches your ears. including silence itself.

As you become comfortable with sitting in stillness — such an odd thing for us busy Westerners to do! — consider lengthening your practice time by five or ten minutes a day. Establishing a habit of daily practice is more important than how long you meditate. Experiment to find what is comfortable and doable for you. Setting a goal of too long a meditation can easily become the task you don’t have time to fulfill.

It helps with any habit to have a repeatable pattern. Experiment to find that time of day that you can be available for practice on a regular basis. For many people, this is first thing in the morning, before anything else is scheduled or interferes. This is my own pattern. Because I like the restfulness of meditation, it is easy to get out of bed, and I like the lovely solitude and silence of being up before others. I put the coffee on (something to enjoy after meditation!) and sit, usually for 30 minutes. It sets the rest of my day on a good course.

Other people find they can make regular time during the lunch hour, or just as they finish work, or before they go to bed at night. There is no right time, just your right time.

 

Invitations: Mindfulness of Breath

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THIS WEEK: LET US GROW AWARE OF OUR BREATH, AND OF OUR DEEPEST INTENTION

Three Invitations:

• How do you want this pandemic to change you? Write down whatever arose for you during tonight’s talk, and revisit the question through the week.

• Commit to a period of practice every day. It can be as short as five minutes, but even a few minutes of stillness, of following the breath, can calm and clear the mind. A wonderful resource, if you would like some guidance in this, is Mindfulness Daily, a 40-day mindfulness course that Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach are offering for free during the pandemic. Each day is a bite-sized lesson and short meditation — 10 to 12 minutes each day — and the series is deep and rich and delightfully accessible. You can access the course here: Mindfulness Daily

• Check in with your breath a few times a day, taking one or two or three breaths with complete attention. It helps to have a trigger. Some people take one deep breath each time before they check their phone or a text. Another possibility: right now all of us are washing our hands a lot. Two deep breaths takes about 20 seconds, and is a lot more satisfying than singing “Happy Birthday” in your head for the umpteenth time. Fully engage with your breath, and enjoy the sensual pleasure of soapy water on your hands.

Please share your experiences or questions in the comment section.