Mindfulness in Four Words

A little meditation cheat sheet

Photo by Kate Oliver

I always forget what mindfulness is, exactly, which is weird (and a bit awkward) because I am kind of obsessed with it. And a meditation teacher. Over the past 20 years (and particularly the last 10), it’s changed my life. But I forget what it is, all the time. I forget how to find it. And when it reappears I instinctively resist it. Like a too-bright light, I can’t look at it for long enough to surrender to it, or to figure out what it is I’m seeing.

What I do know is that when I meditate regularly or go on retreat or sit in simple silence l might stop trying so hard and then somewhere I’ll hear an inner gasp of YES! I’ll put down my stories for a second and experience a small taste of equanimity. As mindfulness blooms it feels like I’ve stumbled into a garden I’d forgotten about that is spacious and familiar. But then a few weeks pass and before I know it, it’s fled and I’m left trying to figure out where it went and what the hell it is again. The more I try to clutch at its vapour trail, the faster it dissolves.

I know I know, “Stop striving”, I hear you say. I get it, I do. Stop looking out there, yada yada. It’s the ruby in your back pocket etc etc.

Anyhow, here I am.

I’m making a cheat sheet.

Nothing fancy, just four words I love and have written about elsewhere and met again and again in Buddhist teachings and meditation classes; words that are punchy enough - hopefully - to stay at my fingertips. I’m putting them here so that when the practice inevitably starts to telescope and move further out of reach and I forget where it is, I can flick this a glance and find my way back.

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The first two: JUST THIS.

There’s a little bit of magic in these two words.

They are a dropped pin on the Google Maps of the mind. When everything feels big, overwhelming, monolithic and relentless, just this can help dissolve it all down to its teeniest constituent parts and act as a quiet anchor back to the present moment, whatever that is. An instant mindfulness reset.

Just this is a heart-mind highlighter pen, and a mindfulness torch in a darkened or noisy room. It helps us point our attention in the direction we want it to go, and at the same time it tells us that it’s ok to let go of the thinking that’s bossing us around.

It’s ok, just this page.

Just this email.

Just this step.

Just this ache in my heart.

Just this day.

Just this one b r e a t h .

Just this is a way of offering ourselves kindness, of dissolving judgement and resistance. Just this agitation. Just this impatience. Just this waiting. Just this fear. Disarmed by the direct address, the fear itself (or the impatience or the agitation) might step out of the shadows and begin to loosen or shapeshift. Instead of contracting, it might offer itself as the way in, the entry point, the secret panel in the library wall. It might become, simply, ‘fear’ - a series of universal, strong sensations to notice and be interested in and offer compassion to - and not MY FEAR, with its Mary Poppins-sized carpet-bag of personalised and terrifying stories.

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Next two words: AND THIS.

And this is a resilience builder and a stretcher of tolerance, and comes into its own when overwhelm is plural.

When we are stressed and tightly wound, when our minds are on red alert and when one more setback can seem unbearable, and this (when remembered) steps in like equanimity on steroids.

We are wired to continually rate our experience. We have brains that like and don’t like and want and prefer and have opinions and make judgements about every single thing our senses encounter. Our knee jerk reaction to what we don’t like or cannot tolerate is to resist and contract against it. Our mind narrows, we get tight. It’s why we get so shitty and impatient and irritable. We have assigned a huge negative charge to whatever is happening, then promptly identified with it. At some primitive level, we actually canNOT bear it.

And this does the opposite: it helps us hold our experience more lightly.

And this doesn’t prefer one thing over another, wish things were different, or hold up a scorecard. It just leans in and says Yep, we’ve got room for you! It lets us widen the lens, breathe, come back online, and practise saying YES! to our experience instead of our instinctive, rejecting, default mode NO. It’s a wry, shrugged meh instead of a face-clutching Munch Scream.

And this creates spaciousness where fear wants to snap shut. It releases oxygen where resistance wants to hold its breath.

And this is friendly, accepting, inclusive. It allows us to generate compassion for ourselves and our predicament.

And this widens the bandwidth.

And this d o e s n ‘ t m i n d .

Dog poo on rug? And this.

Burnt dinner? And this.

A knee buckling wave of sorrow? And this.

Rage? Pain? Anxiety? And this, and this, and this.

And this invites them all to the table, evenly, raises its hands with a “Whaddaya gonna do?” and pours the tea.

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So.

Just this. And this.

May I say them a gazillion times a day.

May they embed themselves into my hard drive, and my heart.

May they ease the grief of forgetting.