I think that if my parents were alive today they’d be shaking their heads a little over the current craze that seems to be “mindfullness”. From their perspective I’m sure it’s not anything they hadn’t seen before.
In fact, it’s very likely that it’s something they’d been asking me to do since I was a small child.
They just used other words.
Let’s face it… every time your parents or mine, or our teachers, or our coaches yelled “pay attention!” what they were really saying was “be mindful!”.
Or perhaps it’s the other way around. What we’re all really attempting to do by “being mindful” is to simply pay attention. Pay attention to our lives and our experiences. Pay attention to the people we’re with. Pay attention to our thoughts. Pay attention to the world around us.
The Stoics and Buddhists knew this ages ago. Buddhism is about more than just meditation – among so many other things it’s about being aware of the world around you as you live your life. Stoicism, too, cultivated an awareness of our role in life, with particular attention to being mindful of what is and is not in our control.
Pay attention. You’ll find your parents words echoing at the root of these philosophies.
It’s too bad it took me this long to get it. 😉
To not get it, is living life by “default”…you, your personal operating system can get along in default, or by not paying attention…you can’t be hurt what you do not see, hear, or are not aware of…Huckleberry Fin…?? he had adventure on his mind….but no matter the key is this. ..Thoughts become things, events, issues, positive or negative…at my “sage” stage of life, looking back I realize that what I focused on…call it worry, call it hope, call it an obsession, call it wanting or needing it so bad you actually prayed for it..realized that YOU couldn’t manifest it fast enough to matter…you had to face it..their is a non-physical part of each of us … we actually in the HUGE picture do control….create….destroy …. but the huge picture is just too huge, so just looking after the Life you have been given is major…and necessary…
I focused on what I got..some say achieved..some say “a miracle”…some say the reward of hard labour..all of this is true to a point..but none of it can ever happen without first THE THOUGHT…Father of the Deed, the Plan, the Action, and even the In-Action…also a choice not to act…so these are my two cents worth..if you wanted them I don’t know..I don’t even worry…perhaps they may end up in a newsletter and matter to someone else..that would be fine…for me there is no right or wrong..what is right for me, could be wrong for others, and the opposite..or it could be referred to as “the timing wasn’t right” … time a man made convenience or inconvenience…again depends on what you focus..how did all of the tribes roaming the earth without a watch ever manage..yet they did..by watching and being aware of nature..The Universal Time Clock..the Sun, the Moon, the Seasons, the animals…everything “in its’ time”…..in the non-physical world to which we are each attached and receive some of our greatest ideas from…there is no time..there is foreverness…there is eternity…there is accomplishments…there are experiments – not just on Earth the playground, and school of the Cosmos ..where chaos has reigned since the destruction of The Garden…so where your article refers to perhaps the current, immediate past, and even another decade behind that…my mind cares more about the wisdom of the really distant past…where the distractions can create massive changes, decisions made in error or in haste can reduce an entire slice of history to rubble..like Mars..as we are so quickly progressing technologically along these lines ourselves…we must heed the historic past of civilizations gone by..put the Ego in it’s place..to do our bidding…not the opposite…have I over spoke…sorry, am just a wordy gal..in fact I am a rambler…a student of the Galaxies..yet exquisitely mindful of what great minds created each and every flower, creature, and forever in awe of whoever or whatever “they” were that came before us..created for us…before they created us..their miracle creation…imagine no two sets of fingerprints the same…mind boggling…..have I given you fodder for several topics..I hope so…