What is mindfulness?
Last updated on 3rd November 2011
If you don't change, you don't change.
- Coen de Koning, psychedelic guide
Yesterday we had the twelfth & final session of this "Life skills" evening class. There was scheduled to have been a bit less than a three month gap since the last - eleventh - session. However the heavy winter snow we'd experienced had resulted in this last session being postponed.
A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor
- Franklin Roosevelt
Our lives are not our own. From womb to tomb, we are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.
- David Mitchell
I wrote yesterday about the first part of this tenth "Life skills" evening. I particularly discussed development of Goodwill practice - very much in the "Nourishing positive states" section of the "Four aspects" diagram (below). In the second half of the evening we moved on to the "Exploring & processing" section of the diagram with the introduction particularly of various forms of therapeutic writing.
From the place where we are right/Flowers will never grow/In the spring.
The place where we are right/Is hard and trampled/Like a yard.
But doubts and loves/Dig up the world/Like a mole, a plow/And a whisper will be heard in the place/Where the ruined/House once stood.
- Yehuda Amichai
If you want others to be happy, practise compassion. If you want to be happy, practise compassion. Dalai Lama
A man is as happy as his mind allows him to be - Abraham Lincoln
Yesterday was the ninth evening of this "Life skills" training. I wrote about the eighth session last week. The sequence of regular weekly classes now moves on to increasing gaps between sessions - so it's three weeks until the tenth, a further five weeks until the eleventh, and then an additional eleven weeks until the final twelfth session. My hope is that we will be able to arrange occasional follow-up meetings even after that.
Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.
- Theodore Roosevelt
The data is friendly.
- Anon
How you do anything is how you do everything. - Zen Proverb
Yesterday we had the sixth session of this twelve evening "Life skills" course. I wrote last week about the fifth session. A dozen slides covering material we explored are viewable/downloadable at slides 1-6, Powerpoint or slides 1-6, PDF and slides 7-12, Powerpoint or slides 7-12, PDF.