Unhappiness and suffering is caused when we are not happy with the way
our life circumstances are going: that some part of our life circumstances
are not measuring up with the way we would like them to be.
This causes a “traffic jam” in our mind, and we become fixated on the
downside of life, by blocking out the fact that everything simply “IS JUST WHAT IT IS”.
This concept is too simple, so most folks poo hoo this. They begin to look in other places to fix the problem….. Their loss……
BUT…
If we stop, relax, and focus on our breath going in and out of our nose,
we will see that everything IS JUST WHAT IT IS, and stop attaching our expectations there. When we do this, the suffering drops off like it was never there. Water off a ducks back. 🙂
There is a part of our mind that handles each of these modes.
- One part of our mind is free flowing, and lives in “IT IS JUST AS IT IS”
- One part of our mind is sticky and clinging to “LIFE SHOULD BE DIFFERENT”.
Living in the part of our mind that is dissatisfied with our life circumstances puts us into a mental tug-of-war.
Most folks don’t know how to exit that mental tug-of-war mode.
So it just spins them downwards into depression. They are stuck.
There is no forcing ourselves to make the shift from “everything is wrong” to “everything is as it should be” It is done by simply relaxing and focusing on the breath, because trying to force ourselves to “Shift” simply fixates us even more on the thing we are trying to stop. This makes that fixation stronger and stronger.
SO…..
The fact is that paying close attention to our breath (like breath counting) is tied to the part of our mind that tells us “IT IS JUST AS IT IS”.
While we are in that part of our mind, we are looking at life from a quiet balanced viewpoint. This is accompanied by relaxing and letting go of the stress and “tight spots” in our body.
Reality is Dharma 