Mistakes

I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life. I’ve done many things that have harmed myself and also may things that have harmed others. That’s a really difficult thing for anyone to wrestle with. But when we start a mindfulness practice, when we start seeing ourselves clearly, then we see the good and the bad.

Ram Dass said, “You can no longer deceive yourselves as sincerely as you did before.”

I’ve made a lot of mistakes. I’m sorry to anyone that I’ve ever harmed. I spent a lot of my life being a very negative and a very selfish person. That’s a hard thing to admit, but it’s the truth. And I believe in being honest with you.

I carry a fair bit of emotional baggage around the deaths of my parents. It impacted me deeply (as it would anyone) I’ve always thought I was lucky that I didn’t fall into drug addiction or some self destructive impulse. But what I did fall into was….not realizing my potential. I’m really only now realizing what a mess I made of my 20s and 30s. That’s not an excuse for any of the mistakes I’ve made, but it definitely had a big role in shaping who I am. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that if you had known me a few years ago you’d be thinking “Why would anyone take advice from him on anything?”

I was the most negative person around it took many many years of meditation practice to change that.

We need to practice kindness but we also need to remember to give ourselves kindness too. We have to reflect on our baggage and see what we really need to put down.

That’s why our meditation practice is so important. We need to learn to put down our baggage so we can live more fully. We need to learn to see things clearly so we can make the best decisions for ourselves. And we sure as hell need to cultivate compassion. It’s in short supply in the world today.

We don’t meditate to be good at meditating. We meditate because it helps us in our day-to-day lives. It’s also only one tool in our arsenal. We need to eat vegetables, spend some time outdoors, relax, and tell our friends that we love them. All of these things help us unleash our full potential.

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Want to practice meditation with me?

I’m teaching a class the first three Sundays in October. It’s not too late to sign up.

Introduction to Zen Mind:

https://www.floweringlotusmeditation.org/event-details/introduction-to-zen-mind-a-mini-course-in-three-sessions-with-beth-herzig-and-daniel-scharpenburg

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Taking Away From Our Lives

This life right now, in each moment, is all we really have. The past is gone and the future is only potential. We spend so much time not focused on the here and now, but we do have the power to change that.

We have a few ways that we tend to take away from the fullness of our lives. We take away from our lives by sleepwalking, just going through the motions of life without being present or acting with intention. This is where we just let things happen and we don’t really reflect on why we do the things we do. We also take away from the fullness of our lives by wishing. We pretty consistently don’t value where we are. To wish we were somewhere else is to take away from here. To wish to be entertained instead of doing nothing is to take away from doing nothing. There is value in doing nothing.

To give to our lives is to understand “good enough”. We are good enough. What we are doing is good enough. We’re trying to learn how to enter this moment completely without judgment, without hating our experience or wishing for something else.

We lose so much of our lives by dwelling on the past, obsessing about the future, or just wishing really hard that right now was different. But this is where we are. We might imagine our meditation practice taking us to some special place or giving us some magical experience. That’s not what happens. We’re training to be here. That’s it. It is completely ordinary.

When we’re fully present we can learn how to be content.

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If you’d like to support my work, please consider making a donation.

And go check out my Podcast Sharpening the Mind

Problems

Sometimes we really want to fix things that simply aren’t in our power to fix.

We try to change people that don’t fit our view of how they should be. We try to change things that are none of our business, even when we don’t have any ability to change them. When we make things into our problems, that makes us unhappy. Many things aren’t our problems until we make them so.

I want to suggest that we can look at things another way. We can try to learn how to see problems as opportunities, as chances to make things better. Of course we do have real problems and there are serious problems in the world. I”m not talking about those as much as the problems that we make ourselves.

But, in regard to those real problems. We can make a thing out of it and let them sap our well being. Or we can try to come at the situation from a place of inner peace. We have this within us and if we can direct our energy from this place we can face whatever we have to without making problems worse.

Part of our practice is coming to realize we have this peace, this stillness and silence within us. We just have to learn to see through all the noise that’s in the way.

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Want to come meditate with me? I’m at HDKC Monday nights at 7pm. Meditation Practice, Support, and Encouragement. 4327 Troost, Kansas City, MO.

Visit my YouTube Channel to hear Dharma Talks!

If you’d like to support my work, please consider making a donation.

And go check out my Podcast Scharpening the Mind

Bringing the Mind Here

One of the things we’re trying to do in our meditation practice is to bring our minds here, into the present moment. To do this we have to get a handle on our wandering thoughts.

So often in life we aren’t present. We’re daydreaming or ruminating or fantasizing. These things aren’t bad, but we’re missing things in the here and now.

The Buddha said, “Stopping is awakening,” and he was talking about stopping the way our wandering thoughts drag us around. Bodhidharma said, “Put down the myriad entangling conditions; let not one thought arise.” This means put down your crap. Stop seeing the world through the lens of your selfishness. Stop getting carried away all the time by wandering thoughts. Assert control of your mind. If we can do that, then we can awaken to our true nature.