{"id":9781,"date":"2020-10-05T13:58:21","date_gmt":"2020-10-05T20:58:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/?p=9781"},"modified":"2020-10-15T12:13:50","modified_gmt":"2020-10-15T19:13:50","slug":"simple-insights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/?p=9781","title":{"rendered":"Simple Insights"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo: ‘CARING’ by Jacques GAIMARD – Pixabay
https:\/\/tinyurl.com\/y2qvufyv
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I had two insights this past week. They both seem as simple as to be hardly worth mentioning; but I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to forget them.<\/p>\n

One of those insights was: I feel happier when I am trying to realize my intentions.<\/em> The other was: I am more likely to accomplish something new if I include it as part of something I am already doing.<\/em> These insights are so straight forward that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s surprising it took an \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Ah Ha\u00e2\u20ac\u009d moment for me to start paying attention to them.<\/p>\n

I have to credit an on-line class I am taking, based on the book Caring<\/em> by Tarthang Tulku, for the fact that they rose to the surface of my mind. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s another insight: I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m more likely to become interested in new possibilities when I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m trying to develop the ground from which they can sprout.<\/em><\/p>\n

These insights are not mysterious, so I have to wonder why the impulse to act on them felt like a quiet revolution. Perhaps I needed to be paying attention to the presence of negative emotions and thoughts before I could try to implement any antidote to them.<\/p>\n

In the Caring class, we were assigned the practice of moving very slowly for a while, then very quickly for a while, then sitting and bringing to mind memories; while noticing that physical sensations in the body centers signal the arrival of emotional reactions before they have a chance to take over. We were invited to notice that each body center (head, throat, heart, and belly) have characteristics that reflect different kinds of thoughts and feelings: the head is confused or clear<\/em>; the belly is panicked or courageous<\/em>; the throat open and communicating<\/em>, or tight and closed<\/em>: the heart harmonizing or sad and lonely<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I felt motivated to do these practices but had trouble finding the time to fit them into my day. I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want these new practices to displace the ones I have been doing for the past seventeen months (\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Bending in the Four Directions<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, followed by quiet sitting).<\/p>\n

It was then that I realized that the bending exercise is also a process of slow movement (like the new assignment of moving slowly and then rapidly); and my meditation is already full of thoughts and feelings (ripe for the assignment of being aware of emotional reactions and their precursors in the head, throat, heart and belly).<\/p>\n

So for the past few mornings, I have incorporated the new practices into the ones I have been doing for more than a year. Both the old and the new benefit from this: the new practices get accomplished and the old practices are leavened by a quality of exploration that they had been lacking.<\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m discovering that when my days are parceled out in a series of familiar activities they tend to lose the quality that makes life interesting. But by incorporating different ways of looking and different invocations of intention into these activities, I am able to appreciate the gifts of the past without turning them into replicas of the fresh energy and awareness they originally brought into my life.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.michaelgrayauthor.com\/2020\/10\/simple-insights\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had two insights this past week. They both seem as simple as to be hardly worth mentioning; but I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to forget them. One of those insights was: I feel happier when I am trying to realize my … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[136,198,104],"tags":[198,104],"class_list":["post-9781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-01-general-tsk-discussions","category-caring","category-presence","tag-caring","tag-presence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9781"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9781\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cciforum.dreamhosters.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}