Sunday Journal Prompt

“Resistance can be trained away. Once you realize this, it fundamentally changes your relationship to all forms of discomfort.”

- Shinzen Young, meditation teacher

 

“Suffering = Pain x Resistance” is a formula shared by meditation teacher and The Science of Enlightenment author Shinzen Young in a recent One You Feed podcast. Our relationship to physical, emotional and/or mental discomfort can change when we no longer fight with what arises, he asserts. In other words, by reducing our resistance, we can reduce our suffering. This doesn’t mean to accept injustices, as some things definitely need to be changed. However, our happiness level doesn’t have to rely on what’s happening—or not happening—in our lives.

“When you bring concentration, clarity and equanimity to an uncomfortable experience, it doesn’t stop hurting, but it does stop bothering,” Young says. As a research consultant who has collaborated with Harvard Medical School and Carnegie-Mellon University in the field of contemplative neuroscience, Young advocates for meditation and mindfulness practices to retrain the mind. The same practices that allow you to “experience big pain with little suffering can allow you to experience tiny pleasure with enormous fulfillment.”

What have you been resisting? How can you practice mindfulness or meditation to reduce suffering and boost fulfillment?

 

 

 

Sunday Journal Prompt

“When you follow your bliss ... doors will open.”

- Joseph Campbell

 

Many associate the full moon with amplified energy. The moon’s recent proximity that coincided with the full moon phase created a gorgeous supermoon, producing an increased gravitational pull and enhancing the brightness in the night sky.

What steps can you take to boost energy and shine more light on the doors you want to open?

Sunday Journal Prompt

“I went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.”

 - John Muir

In his 1901 book Our National Parks, John Muir observed that “thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home. Wilderness is a necessity.” Nature, in his words, is a “fountain of life.”

“Do you want to go for a walk?” my son Alex often asks—a question I treasure. Since he was a toddler, we’ve gone on nature walks together, collecting pinecones and leaves as we venture through the forest. It’s during our walks that I learn most about his days, his interests, his plans, his worries, his joys, his thoughts. Without the confines of four walls, he opens himself up to me more fully. Though he’s typically “a talker” during these jaunts, we also engage in quiet moments—times when we both, as Muir advocates, go in.

What role does nature play in your life? How can you make more time to immerse yourself in it?

 

 

Sunday Journal Prompt

“The discomfort associated with groundlessness, with the fundamental ambiguity of being human, comes from our attachment to wanting things to be a certain way.”

 

- Pema Chodron, Buddhist nun

 

In her book Living Beautifully, Buddhist nun Pema Chodron says that the real cause of suffering is not being able to tolerate uncertainty. So much in our lives is uncertain, yet it’s often in our nature to attach ourselves to the outcomes we envision. Perhaps we’ve charted a path for ourselves and resist veering from it. Pema’s teacher Dzigar Kongtrul calls shenpa—the Tibetan word for attachment—the “barometer of the ego clinging, a gauge of our self-involvement and self-importance.”

However, if we can “let go and not struggle against [change], we can embrace the groundlessness of our situation and relax into its dynamic quality.” Pema refers to this unattached state in which we’re willing to adjust course and go with the flow—to unglue ourselves from our preconceived expectations—as enlightenment.

 

 

What are some ways you can reduce attachment to preconceived expectations in your life?