{"id":1394,"date":"2015-02-14T13:51:03","date_gmt":"2015-02-14T18:51:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mymindfulwayoflife.com\/blog4\/?p=1394"},"modified":"2015-09-28T15:40:13","modified_gmt":"2015-09-28T19:40:13","slug":"what-we-lose-when-we-turn-away-from-pain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/mymindfulwayoflife.com\/blog4\/what-we-lose-when-we-turn-away-from-pain\/","title":{"rendered":"What We Lose When We Turn Away From Pain"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"my<\/a>These thoughts arose from my stuffy nose sitting meditation.\u00a0 I\u2019d been down this road before. A sinus infection, a cold, a relentless headache.\u00a0 None of these are an excuse to skip meditation, in my mind. \u00a0At the same time, these challenges dont make it any more pleasant. Over the years, I have begun to think of each sick, painful or \u201coff\u201d feeling as an opportunity to deepen my practice.\u00a0 I suppose one could say this about any adversity.<\/p>\n

Tonight, as if I needed to forewarn myself, I acknowledged that this would be my stuffy nose meditation. \u00a0It was almost as if to banish any expectations of relief or potential serenity.\u00a0 So, I set my timer for a conservative 15 minute cutoff which I rationalized was adequate to sit with my stuffy nose, in my tired body.\u00a0 My routine is to start with observing the breath from its moment of entry.\u00a0 So there it was.\u00a0 The breath was not going to make its way into my nose today. My mouth was getting dry and lips were chapped from the dry air. Still, I was in acceptance and I knew that was fine. \u00a0I would simply sit in expansive awareness and notice the totality of the experience.<\/p>\n

Then, it arose.\u00a0 The utter boredom.\u00a0 It happened in a flash.\u00a0 My mind had tired of being with this unpleasantness and sought greener pastures. It\u2019s not even that I thought of good things, just anything other than what is. I had started to get absorbed in planning a task. I caught myself and laughed. I thought to myself, “if I am going to be with something else unpleasant that is not even happening, I might as well be with what is.” Here I have the advantage of truly feeling in real time. There was certainly much more richness within the present experience, outside of the breath itself. \u00a0Of course. There was the cozy comforter I had positioned around my meditation cushion.\u00a0 It was warm, quiet and there was nothing to have to do but just be.\u00a0 It was then that the fullness of the experience was present before me.<\/p>\n

When we turn away from pain, we turn away from the only moment we have.\u00a0 In that way, we don\u2019t just avoid what is negative but miss what is full and good.\u00a0 I emerged from my meditation with a stuffy nose and a smile. It was not that long ago that it occurred to me that wherever we are we need to practice being there, even if it is unpleasant or boring.\u00a0 Otherwise, we will soon find ourselves somewhere else during those times it really matters, being only partially present with people we truly care about.<\/p>\n

Read more in\u00a0\u201cWherever You are You are Somewhere Else\u201d<\/a> If you haven\u2019t done so already I, along with meditation teacher, Sharon Salzberg, challenge you to join us on this 28 day Real Happiness journey. In addition to resources at SharonSalzberg.com<\/a>\u00a0 check out\u00a0MyMindfulWayofLife.com<\/a>\u00a0and access a free sample meditation to follow along:\u00a0Click for meditation<\/a> Come along there is still time to Begin!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

These thoughts arose from my stuffy nose sitting meditation.\u00a0 I\u2019d been down this road before. A sinus infection, a cold, a relentless headache.\u00a0 None of these are an excuse to skip meditation, in my mind. \u00a0At the same time, these challenges dont make it any more pleasant. Over the years, I have begun to think […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1396,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/mymindfulwayoflife.com\/blog4\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/20150105_213226646_iOS.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2YyuX-mu","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mymindfulwayoflife.com\/blog4\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mymindfulwayoflife.com\/blog4\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mymindfulwayoflife.com\/blog4\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mymindfulwayoflife.com\/blog4\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mymindfulwayoflife.com\/blog4\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1394"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/mymindfulwayoflife.com\/blog4\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1394\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1402,"href":"http:\/\/mymindfulwayoflife.com\/blog4\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1394\/revisions\/1402"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mymindfulwayoflife.com\/blog4\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mymindfulwayoflife.com\/blog4\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mymindfulwayoflife.com\/blog4\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mymindfulwayoflife.com\/blog4\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}