In the Satipatthana Sutta, the root text in which the Buddha gives detailed instructions for practicing Mindfulness, he promises that following those instructions precisely and diligently for even as little as seven days will lead to freedom. Wow!! This gets my attention.
Mindfulness is a profound and life-affirming choice, a radical act of love. Through Mindfulness we learn to be in this moment, however it is, whatever its particulars, without criticism, condemnation, judgment, grasping or surprise. It is accepting, impartial, present time, pre-conceptual awareness without self reference. Lovingly, we stop and settle into experience—embrace it in awareness, as it is, without having to achieve anything, or to be or to have something else “unique,” “special,” “important,” or “pleasant” happen in order to be content or whole.

Much of the time we ignore our wholeness and delusionally pursue the next hit, the next high, perhaps hoping it will complete us. In the process, we lose touch with what is deepest and best in ourselves.

In the Sutta, we are invited to pay precise, intimate and kind attention to 360 degrees of our experience, step by step, “internally” and “externally”: through four doors of experience: Body, Feelings (of pleasant, unpleasant and neutral), Mind and “Dhammas” (changing experiences in their lawful states) to garner a profound, new understanding of physical, perceptual and emotional experience, and their reflection of, and in, the external world. We relearn what it means to be human. Are you willing to diligently undertake this liberating practice?

Wishing you deep presence now.