Mindfulness & The Art of Living

By Michael Wizer

Maybe you have asked yourself, "What is the purpose of my life?" Michael Wizer—mindfulness instructor, clinical psychologist, and practical philosopher—offers this answer: the purpose of your life is to have a good life. That simple idea is the center around which this deeply philosophical, yet surprisingly practical book revolves.
Mindfulness has an essential role in the creation of one's good life: in the management of stress, anxiety, and worry; in working through painful feelings and difficult thoughts; in living gracefully; in cultivating wisdom; and in one's spiritual life. The whole of that endeavor, to create a good life, is considered the art of living.
This book is clear, informative, and practical. It begins with the basics of mindfulness and mindfulness practice. But ultimately, this book shows the reader how the simple practice of mindfulness is both multi-tool and fulcrum when it comes to the art of living.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Aug 19, 2021
• ISBN: 9781736599198

Book preview

Introduction

There are too many ideas about mindfulness in the public arena. Some are commonplace and hackneyed and others commercialized; most distort and confuse the understanding of naïve consumers and offend the sensibilities of the well-informed. At the same time, there are the illuminating words of many great mindfulness teachers — some from centuries ago, some from decades ago, and many from teachers alive today. Why add this book?

Because I believe I have a unique take on mindfulness as well as something new to say. What I have to say is informed by what I have learned in the context of my work as a clinical psychologist, even while my clinical work is informed by what I have learned in my mindfulness practice. But more significantly, both are illuminated by an explicit and mature philosophy of life that has taken me decades to develop.

This book is meant to serve as an introduction for those new to the concept and the practice of mindfulness. It is often instructional. It is also intended for experienced meditators. For them, it offers new ways of thinking about how mindfulness fits into the creation of a good life and new ideas about the application of mindfulness to emotional health.

• • •

I got into meditation as a sophomore at Syracuse University. I started meditating, truthfully, because I was having panic attacks that began after I saw a horror movie. (The Exorcist — I don’t recommend it.) The panic attacks happened only at night. (I had a fear of the dark as a child too.) It was bizarre to march around my university campus feeling fine, and then, as the sun began to go down, feel a brewing apprehension that the fear was coming back. It was as if I too was a character in a horror movie.

I was too scared to be alone at night and could hardly enter a dark stairwell or empty bathroom without having a panic attack. I survived the night by walking all over campus looking for other night owls, and would find them at an all-night card game in a dorm room or at a pool table in the dorm basement, or I would hang with the security guard sitting at the front desk.

Sure enough, as morning came and the sky lightened, the fear would magically lift, and I could not make it come back even if I tried. I was anxiety-free for the day, until the sky would darken and it would all start again. I started to sleep through my morning classes, and you can imagine what happened to my grades. I was in crisis.

I knew absolutely nothing about psychology at the time. I saw a clinical psychologist at the university counseling center. What he said was worthless to me, so I stopped seeing him after three visits. I had no choice, it seemed, but to take my welfare into my own hands, so what did I do? I headed to the university library.

Because of the almost mythological character of my fear, I was sure that the problem I was facing was a spiritual one (I was raised in a secular household), and paced the stacks of religion and philosophy books, pulling one after another off the shelves if they caught my attention. It was the book Zen and Japanese Culture by D. T. Suzuki that hit the right note, particularly the ideas about satori (enlightenment experiences). To put it roughly, I thought I would be free of anxiety if I was enlightened. (Not quite, but I thought there was a path forward here.) Soon after, I hitchhiked to nearby Rochester, New York, and received my first instructions in meditation by Philip Kapleau Roshi (teacher), one of the first Zen masters in the United States.

I traveled back and forth to Rochester for day-long meditation trainings and began a daily practice on my own. I wish I could say, After my satori I was no longer troubled by anxiety. But that would be untrue in two ways: no satori and I still have anxiety (it is very manageable now — thanks for asking). In fact, it was a series of dreams that enabled me to understand my night fears, but that story, even though maybe more compelling, doesn’t quite fit here. Suffice to say that the odd character of my nighttime anxiety led me to meditation, and I am deeply grateful that it did.

Five years later, having graduated from college and living in a small town in Pennsylvania, I started to teach others how to meditate in my local church basement. By then, I thought meditation was wonderful and wanted to share the experience of doing it and what I was learning in the practice of it. That was a long time ago.

• • •

This book has two headwaters: one was when I started to formally teach regular mindfulness classes, about twenty-five years ago. The classes would meet once a week for maybe six, eight, or ten weeks. Because I wanted my students to have something to read at home between classes, I made handouts and one-pagers. As time went on, I assembled these handouts into booklets. Eventually I had three: one for beginning students, one for returning students, and one for more advanced students. Combined, they became the first draft of this book.

The second source comes from my individual work as a clinical psychologist. All clinicians learn on the job, and one of the things I have learned is how to flexibly share ideas about mindfulness with my clients. Sometimes I would deliver the concepts explicitly and actually teach mindfulness meditation to a client. More often the message was implicit. I might not use the words mindfulness or meditation per se, but teach the ideas underneath.

Simultaneously, I was also developing a system of philosophically informed, interlocking ideas about the purpose of life and the nature of a good life, ideas I felt I needed in order to be more confident in my clinical work. As those ideas matured and coalesced, I began to see more clearly where mindfulness sits in regard to the creation of a good life. As a result, I could more consciously guide people in directing the application of their mindfulness practice in service of their aspirations.

I combined the booklets, reorganized and reshaped the essays, and rewrote many of them to work better as one single book. I added some new pieces at the end because I wanted them to tell a fuller story of what I know about mindfulness and how it connects with the art of living.

My wish in publishing Mindfulness and the Art of Living is that it contributes to your understanding of mindfulness, that it enriches your practice of mindfulness, and that it helps you, the reader, to see new ways for mindfulness to connect to and support your good life.

GETTING STARTED

CHAPTER 1

What is Mindfulness?

Mindfulness is very close in meaning to awareness; it is also close in meaning to attention. The fact that you have the ability to turn your attention where you wish is fundamental to how human minds work. More than that, it also constitutes a foundational aspect of your personal power.

Mindfulness is part and parcel of the human gift of comprehension. It is a marvel that you can turn your attention to another, watching and listening to them, and, as you do, you can both hear what they say and absorb the meaning of it without really trying. As you notice what they do and how they act, you can even have a sense of what their state of mind is. To pay attention in this way is to be mindful.

And yet, there is more to mindfulness, more than naked attention. In order to be mindful, when you pay attention, you must know you are paying attention. This is a type of recognition and it is, in and of itself, an aspect of memory. Think of it this way: When driving a car, you know you are driving a car. When washing the dishes, you know you are washing the dishes. When brushing your teeth, you know you are brushing your teeth. That would be mindfulness.

The second important characteristic you should be aware of, in order to understand mindfulness, is that to be mindful you must be accepting. When being accepting, you notice something, yet leave it be. You leave it alone and don’t try to do anything to it or with it. You allow it to exist, yes, but more importantly, there is no resistance in the noticing. There is no judgment. And therefore, no reacting. This is different from what we usually do — usually we notice and then immediately evaluate the goodness or badness of the thing in relation to ourselves.

For example, a cup of ice cream is sitting on the table. Think of all the evaluations that go along with the suggestion: Let’s have some now. Better not have any, I’m on a diet. Or, Too cold to eat ice cream. All of these are implicitly evaluative and self-oriented and they add something to the simple act of noticing. The point is that when being mindful, we notice, we know we are noticing, and we don’t try to change anything. The bottom line: mindfulness is a constant stream of noticing with acceptance.

Acceptance is of particular importance when it comes to internal experiences such as feelings or thoughts or emotions. When practicing mindfulness, we accept these internal experiences too and don’t try to make them stay or go away. Clinging (trying to make something stay) and aversion (trying to push something away) are both forms of resistance to the thing we are observing.

Relaxation is something very different from mindfulness, yet is often combined with mindfulness. We will be talking about relaxation as we go along, but suffice to say that relaxation is particularly important when it comes to stress management. Our nervous system has two basic settings: one is heightened and a bit revved up and the other is lower and slower. To relax is to emphasize the lower and slower setting.

So how do you relax? To relax is to release or let go of holding. It is not uncommon for a person to hold tension in their shoulders, even when the tension is not needed. The person who wants to relax begins by noticing the tension. Then they need to know how to let it go. Letting go is a physical process, like relaxing a clenched fist. You just let go.

When we practice mindfulness, we let things be, we release our grip on things, and we let go of control. The spirit of opening to life, this is where mindfulness and relaxation connect.

We approach relaxation with efficiency. By efficiency I mean we work only as hard as is needed. No strain. For example, when you are sitting still, you do not need to work hard. Maybe you need to use the muscles along your spine to sit up straight, but not the muscles of your neck and shoulders, hands and arms. You trim off the extra work.

Mindfulness happens this very moment. You notice what is happening this very moment, and then you notice what is happening in this very moment, and in this one, and this one…

Many things happen every moment, far more than anyone could possibly notice. We need to make a choice