The habitual patterns that arise in us seem to have a life of their own, shaping our behavior into contours of isolation, anxiety, self-criticism, addiction, or other self-destructive habits. These patterns make us unhappy. They are obstacles to what we long for in our lives and might even cause us to give up our goals and dreams in despair.
The good news is that we can become aware of how we get caught in these patterns and learn to move through experience with more love and wisdom. The process of getting stuck in patterned thoughts and feelings happens quite mechanically. The gateway to freedom is to understand this compassionately. In this, meditation is our best friend, allowing us space to relax and receive other dimensions of our being.
The most fundamental pattern that we all have is ignoring impermanence—denying the fact that everything is always changing and can’t bring us lasting happiness. We humans imagine that the self is continuous and permanent, even though it isn’t and we aren’t!
Intellectually we know this, but it just doesn’t feel true. To quote the Anguttara Nikaya, “It seems that although we thought ourselves permanent, we are not. Although we thought ourselves settled, we are not. Although we thought we would last forever, we will not.”
This is where our mindfulness practice helps. Practicing meditation with loving awareness, we begin to see change as a constant. We see that we can’t breathe in forever—we have to breathe out. This inevitable rhythm is independent of what I want or who I am or what pattern has me in its grip. With mindful awareness, the ebb and flow of breath, the birth and death of experience, become clear. This is wisdom—seeing the way life unfolds so lovingly in us, as us.
Meditation: Loving Connection
Mindfulness meditation is the backward step into simply being here together, appreciating this life, and sharing it with each other. Miraculously, this is the way to free our hearts from habitual patterns. We simply create moments of loving connection with ourselves, each other, and our world. How wonderful!
Sense the space all around you and the thoughts and feelings flowing through the mind and heart. Relax into the fullness of being.
Be 100 percent present with what is seen, heard, and felt. Then step back into the simple fact of this existence, this reality. Just be with this particular moment in all of eternity. And be with this next one, too.
When you notice attention has wandered into the past or future, shift your body back just an inch, relaxing into a posture of receptivity, poise, and balance.
