The Highest Service

      "Reminding others of the enormity of their own Great Nature is the highest service one can offer another." a Zen Master in Kyoto 

     “Hold attention as a resonant field, pay attention to the patterns. The price of admission is your narrative self, which is grounded in time.” Cynthia Bourgeault

     “To go beyond the ordinary mind is to go deeper than thought. In Buddhism ignorance is often defined as the belief that you are the conditioned mind.
     We have a mind, just as we have a body, but each is a manifestation of consciousness. What moves thoughts through the mind is precisely what moves the clouds across the sky. All are a part of the same continuum of creation unfolding. Mind and body float on the surface of the enormity of Being.
     To go beyond the mind is to ever so irrationally and ever so reasonably go beyond our conditioning to the place, the logos, where unconditional love arises spontaneously.  
     You have to be more than rational to accept and dwell in the mystery. You have to love the truth in all its wild and subtle and indescribable forms.
     We need to listen with the heart as we turn gently toward the mystery."
       Stephen Levine. “Turning Toward the Mystery. A Seeker’s Journey.” HarperSanFrancisco, 2002. 

We're Experts AND Dumbasses, Smart BUT NOT Wise

     When being honest with ourselves, we'll admit that despite - & to a large extent, because of - all we know about our particular health-care role, we sadly lack wisdom. We've spent so much time & energy cramming info into our heads, trying to appear smart, that we don't even understand the concept of wisdom, never mind living wisely.

     Wisdom is “a developmental process involving self-transcendence. Self-transcendence refers to the ability to move beyond self-centered consciousness, and to see things as they are with clear awareness of human nature and human problems, and with a considerable measure of freedom from biological and social conditioning. This ability to move beyond a self-centered perspective is certainly an important component of wisdom.
     Transcending the self is needed to move beyond ingrained, automatic ways of thinking, feeling, and acting, and to connect empathetically with the experiences of others.”
        Le TN, Levenson MR. Wisdom as self-transcendence: What's love (& individualism) got to do with it? Journal of Research in Personality 2005; 39(4): 443-457.

     "wise individuals evince less despair and greater equanimity because they (are) more likely to grapple with existential dilemmas and paradoxes that give life more meaning."
       Le TN. Life satisfaction, openness value, self-transcendence, and wisdom. Journal of Happiness Studies 2011; 12(2): 171-182. 

     "When we truly live each moment, what happens to the burden of life? ... If we are totally what we are, in every second, we begin to experience life as joy. Standing between us and a life of joy are our thoughts, our ideas, our expectations, and our hopes and fears.
      ... people who have been practicing for some time begin to have a sense of humor about their burden. After all, the thought that life is a burden is only a concept. We're simply doing what we're doing, second by second by second. The measure of fruitful practice is that we feel life less as a burden and more as a joy."
        Beck CJ. Nothing special: Living Zen. HarperCollins, 1995.

     Mindfulness practice is a well-established, intentional path from suffering towards wisdom, equanimity and joy.

A Weed Grows in Venice

 

Readiness to Evolve

     The stories we continuously tell ourselves, about ourselves, form a seemingly stable self-image, giving rise to a false security AND inertia. "That's who I am" - is a mirage, a deluded attitude, the "autopilot" that flies our "momentum of our life." At some level we know that a solid self-concept is untenable because everything is obviously constantly changing, including our opinions and even our memory of past actual events.

     We retain a heroic death-grip on our fossilized self-concept (ego) because few of us are adequately informed about the normal evolution of human consciousness, self-transcendence, hypo-egoic states etc. See: http://mindfulnessforeveryone.blogspot.ca/search?q=self-transcendence  
     Even fewer among us know & trust that we have agency over this process, and an even smaller proportion regularly practice to promote this process. See: http://mindfulnessforeveryone.blogspot.ca/2014/02/500-changes-ambivalence-progress.html

     "Change readiness (is) defined as an individual’s 'beliefs, attitudes, & intentions regarding the extent to which changes are needed and the (the individual's and) organization’s capacity to successfully undertake those changes.'

     ... social psychologists have defined attitudes as 'evaluative summary judgments that can be derived from qualitatively different types of information (e.g., affective & cognitive).'

       Rafferty AE, Jimmieson NL, Armenakis AA. Change readiness: A multilevel review. Journal of Management. 2013;39(1):110-35.

Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia