Mindfulness through adversity

I've been practicing mindfulness for a while now. I'm not great at it, but I've done OK with it. When I had a kidney stone flare up rather than try to fight it I relaxed into the moment of excruciating pain and sat with it. Most times we try to avoid being uncomfortable by running to distractions, pain killers, or some other way of allowing ourselves to not have to deal with it. What I've learned with my practice is that I can be with that discomfort. Eventually it goes away (at least most times). This has helped me with my cancer diagnosis. I'm still practicing with the discomfort of knowing that my life has changed in profound ways and that I will be likely dealing with cancer for the rest of my life, but I've come to accept that through mindfulness. But it can require a lot of effort. When I received the results of my PET scan and noticed that my liver cancer has grown I pretty much shut down. I was on the bed (with my emotional support cat) trying to unpack what was going through my mind. My fears are that I'm going to have my liver carved up like a Thanksgiving Turkey, but the more I sat with that feeling the more I realized that at the moment it wasn't true. I don't know what is going to happen. So I allowed myself to feel the full intensity of that fear but gradually it disappeared as I was with it. Adversity has proven a portent ground for practice. Sometimes I rise to the occasion and allow myself to feel these emotions fully. Other times I've darted off into distraction of all various sorts. These too can prove to be practice grounds. Why am I checking social media? What does this forum have for me that I need to check it now? Did Ed McMahon show up in my email to give me $1 million dollars? Generally speaking nothing important is happening with any of these platforms, but it takes a mindful approach to recognize what is driving me there. I'm bored, so I'll check social media to alleviate that boredom. I' stuck on a hard problem so I need to distract myself with something frivolous. Something important might be in my email so I'd better check to be sure. None of this means that we should stop going to these distractions, but rather recognize that they are distractions and what brought us to this point. If we're being mindless we might miss something important along the way.

Craig Maloney More than you cared to know

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