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Mindfulness: the Here and Now

Deb Brock Discovery, Mental, Spiritual, Uncategorized , , , , ,

July 19, 2013

Here and Now, i.e.  mindfulness:

I had a client (mother of a young child) ask me today if I had done “mindfulness stuff” with my kids.  I laughed and told her how we started a nude beach once and then suggested that it probably counted as mindfulness training.  Mindfulness, or self-acceptance and understanding, as I call it, has been around for a long time.  Mindfulness, of course, is about being present in the here and now.   I like to think that the Creator initiated mindfulness when s/he declared of herself “I AM”.  Whoa! Talk about self-awareness!  You can’t get more Here and Now than I AM.

Pretty much every day with one client or the other, I stand up and write the words
“here and now” on the middle of my white board.  Then I add an arrow going to the left  in front of the word “here” and another arrow going to the right following the word “now” (scribble it on a piece of paper so you can see it).   At the end of the arrow that goes left I write Hx (historical) and at the end of the arrow that goes to the right I write Ft (future).  I tell my clients that we are always safe in the Here and Now, which is the only place breath exists.

When we live in the past we dwell in depression, when we attempt to live in the future we swell with anxiety. There is no depression, nor is there any anxiety in the Here and Now.  It isn’t possible.  Depression is always based on the fantasy of “if only” while anxiety is based on the projection of “what if”.  Here and Now is the only place we can breathe and be the I Am that we are.

~ DocBrock

My Mouth Said That

Ron Johnson Uncategorized , , , ,

30 years ago, when Deb and I were traveling in our funny lilttle 1982 Mercury LN7, Deb asked us if we wanted a cookie from the stash she had brought with us. I said, “Yes,” and Krissie, then age 9, certainly said, “Yes” and further suggested she might want more than one. Jenny, then 5 and the more introverted of the two girls, responded with a simple, “No, thank you.” A couple minutes later as the three of us were eating cookies, Jenny said that she wanted a cookie. “Oh, sure, Jenny,” Deb said, “I thought you said you didnt want a cookie.” Without missing a beat Jenny responded, “My mouth said that.” My mouth said that! What an interesting expression. Deb and I both immediately noticed that there was something quite unusual and seemingly brilliant about Jenny’s statement. Somehow, in her 5-year old mind, she had been able to separate somewhat disparate elements of her mind without the slightest concern about the apparent disparity.

“My mouth said that” has become a frequently used statement between Deb and me, particularly when we are talking about the things we have said during our work as psychologists. We use the phrase, “My mouth said that” when we report something new and succinct that we have said to a patient that seemed to come out of our mouths spontaneously. Deb or I will frequently admit to having “my mouth saying” something, always new, sometimes profound. It is both invigorating and humbling to have my mouth say something that I didnt seem to know before I said it. Sometimes, dare I say it, it seems like God is speaking through me. Other times it seems that I just found the right rurn of phrase to express something I have known for years. Still other times it seems that I am finally understanding something everyone else has known for centuries.

This is my very first blog. Deb and I are finally joining the 21st century in such things, and hope to be of some benefit to the world. I suspect readers will discover that “my mouth” will say things in the future. So I look forward to both teaching and learning.

A Good Day to Die

Deb Brock Discovery, Spiritual, Uncategorized , , , , , ,

July 11, 2013 –  There is only one thing to say of today: I am surprised I am yet alive.

There are numerous evenings, when Ron and I, sitting with our glass of wine, toast that it has been a good day to die, which of course, makes it a good day to live, and vise versa.  This end of the day philosophizing is a registering between us that we did good work, experienced a specific joy, one of us had a break-through with a client, or simply that we learned something new that was interesting and is useable.  We share many of these toasts and we are grateful for the declaration that life is good.

Today, however, for me, was something different.  Today wasn’t about the richness of doing; it was about the richness of being.  Most Thursdays I spend the day entirely alone (until Ron comes home, of course).  So today I was alone with “The Mother”, which I treasure.  And, for whatever reason, She chose to grace me with a communion that has continued all day as the sweetest sup.  From awaking onward, through whatever work or play I did the day was simply too perfect, too beautiful, brimming with a heightened sensory awe.

It felt as if I had become enveloped, saturated internally as well as externally with an incredible visual and auditory clarity.  Granted, I am by nature a very visual person, and I do tend to hear things, but this day was more than “being visual” or “auditorily inclined”.  Every tree leaf, every billow of every cloud, every bird song; the cardinals, the redwing blackbirds, even the little twitterers on the clothes line, they along with all the greens, pinks, lavenders and yellows of my garden, everything I saw and heard, filtered through my eyes and ears but registered through an easy breathe that whispered “how simple and grand is life today”.  Crossing senses, it is as if everything I heard and saw was magnified in slow perception so that nothing was missed yet all was ingestible.   In the immensity of this sensual awareness I kept thinking, “This is the kind of day people die with abandoned joy, satisfied and content”.

I felt no fear, nor did I wonder if I might get hit by a car on Riddle Road or have a severe reaction to a bee sting or anything dramatic.  And it wasn’t that I wanted or hoped to die, although certainly I thought if I did, it would be quite alright, and was confident that it would be an easy passage. I experienced no grand intentions or resolve.  Rather, this state of sensorial clarity was, I suppose, simply a cellular communion with a summer day.  I am glad for it and end it knowing it is a good day to die which makes it a good one to have lived.

~DocBrock