{"id":174,"date":"2017-10-21T00:59:47","date_gmt":"2017-10-21T00:59:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/b\/?p=174"},"modified":"2017-10-21T00:59:47","modified_gmt":"2017-10-21T00:59:47","slug":"mindfulness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/b\/mindfulness\/","title":{"rendered":"Mindfulness"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cTo think in terms of either pessimism or optimism oversimplifies the truth. The problem is to see reality as it is.\u201d \u2013 Th\u00edch Nh\u1ea5t H\u1ea1nh<\/p>\n

\u201cWisdom says we are nothing. Love says we are everything. Between these two our life flows.\u201d \u2013
\nJack Kornfield<\/p>\n

\u201cMeditation practice isn\u2019t about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It\u2019s about befriending who we are already.\u201d \u2013
\nPema Ch\u00f6dr\u00f6n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’ve been realizing more and more recently the need for me to begin practicing mindfulness in my day to day life.\u00a0 I feel like at some point in my journey through life I realized who I wasn’t, but forgot to figure out who I actually am.\u00a0 And so I hold on to aspects of a person that I thought I was .\u00a0 Perhaps it’s because I am afraid of who I might be.\u00a0 Or perhaps it’s simply that I haven’t been willing to do the work until now.\u00a0 I know there are things that I have long said I believe that I am afraid perhaps I don’t believe.<\/p>\n

What I do know is that I can’t continue to walk through life with only part of an identity.\u00a0 Perhaps the things that I don’t like about myself are the things that aren’t really me.\u00a0 And I definitely have my fair share of moments of self-loathing.<\/p>\n

The past couple of weeks I have had some pretty big swings in terms or happiness and sadness, depending on how I happen to feel about something in a given moment.\u00a0 That seems to me to be very unhealthy, and I think the root cause of it is perhaps that I am not grounded in my own identity.<\/p>\n

I’ve also begun having trouble sleeping again, something that seemed like it was behind me for awhile.\u00a0 The last time I was struggling with it, it seemed that taking 5-HTP helped, which may indicate the problem is a lack of serotonin, and well, that may contribute to my negative moods as well.<\/p>\n

I’ve decided to take a break from the world… at least as much as is possible, to center in on my self and do some hard work on me.\u00a0 I again deactivated Facebook – along with all my social media accounts – this time with no announcement to anyone beforehand.\u00a0 I’m not only not looking for attention, but this time I am trying to actively avoid it as much as is possible.<\/p>\n

Earlier tonight I listened through a guided meditation on mindfulness, and it’s rather amazing how much peace that 15 minutes brought me.\u00a0 I plan on making that a big part of the forseeable future.<\/p>\n

I don’t know how long I will continue with this withdrawing to look inward, but I can already feel some value coming from it, so I will continue for as long as I believe it to be a benefit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cTo think in terms of either pessimism or optimism oversimplifies the truth. The problem is to see reality as it is.\u201d \u2013 Th\u00edch Nh\u1ea5t H\u1ea1nh \u201cWisdom says we are nothing. Love says we are everything. Between these two our life flows.\u201d \u2013 Jack Kornfield \u201cMeditation practice isn\u2019t about trying to throw ourselves away and become … Continue reading Mindfulness<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":175,"href":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174\/revisions\/175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}