Reflections on a Quote by Jon Kabat-Zinn, teacher of “Mindfulness”:
it’s the attending itself. We are so seduced by thinking and emotion and we don’t realize that awareness is at least as powerful of a function. It can hold any emotion, no matter how destructive, any thought, no matter how gigantic.
That’s where the transformative power lies, that you’re adding a measure of deep introspection and perception to ordinary experience. And then realizing: There is no such thing as ‘ordinary experience.’ Everything is extraordinary.
Once again:
We are so seduced by thinking and emotion and we don’t realize that awareness is at least as powerful of a function. It can hold any emotion, no matter how destructive, any thought, no matter how gigantic.
It occurs to me that this applies not merely as a simple private act of introspection, but on a larger, inter-human, societal level.
Our society and our lives are so filled with knee-jerk reactions. With instant hate, instant retribution.
A measure of awareness there, an Awareness that can hold “any emotion, no matter how destructive, any thought, no matter how gigantic” — is the transformative force that allows us to move beyond reactionary-ism and violence.
It is what allows us to see others as human beings too — as lights of consciousness.
When we follow the discourse of (to take a terrifying and unwholesome example), U.S. politics — When we see that hate and reaction there: Stop the terrorists, Kill the Bad Guys, Fight the Other — Ban them, Build the Wall, Fight those bad guys, Stop them all —
And compare it with what some other attitudes — having a space of forgiveness and inclusivity, seeing the others as ourselves, embracing those who are different.
It occurs to me that it is this Awareness that is the possibly catalyst — the missing enzyme without with knee-jerk reactions can be transformed — the only way for hearts and minds to change of their own. (For, as we know, (when we truly reflect and know,) that we cannot change others. It is just not possible. That has to come from themselves….)
That all the shouting and argumentation of politics and societies will be but sea-foam smashing on the granite-hard rocks of pre-conceived notions, deep-rooted, long-lived inner beliefs, fears, and identities.
That the only true transformation would be as a baby chick, somehow cracking open these granite rocks from inside.
Miraculous — that all along there was a Pure Awareness, A glowing baby bird, fully inhabiting that rock, its body extending all the way out to the truly skin-thin walls. Those walls thin as gossamer and ready to be cracked, should one access the glowing truth that we all are.
Silent Cedars 