Wisdom for Mindful Living: Dwelling in Awareness

By Ronald Gordon

Stress, anxiety, and depression are running rampant in the twenty-first century. We're imploding, our internal systems are crashing. We need rescuing, self-caring, self-nurturing, self-healing, and self-transcendence. We need to discover mindsets and methods that will allow us to continue on with poise and purpose.

Wisdom from the past and human sciences from the present combine in these pages to pass along teachings for wiser living. Affirmations, visualizations, words of wisdom, growth-mindset prompts, natural breath awareness reminders, and breathwork techniques are all aimed at taking us beyond the limited confines of our busy worrying minds and into the realm of purer Awareness.

This volume contains more than a thousand brief stand-alone entries, well-suited to the needs of today's reader. Just open the book somewhere and dive in for one, two, or three minutes. You will come away enriched. Sometimes we're meant to spend awhile with a particular book. That's how it will be for this volume and its readers. There's wisdom here of which we all need to be reminded.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Release date: Jan 20, 2023
• ISBN: 9781666758634

Ronald Gordon

Ronald Gordon has a PhD from the University of Kansas and is professor of communication at the University of Hawai’i at Hilo. Twice nominated for the University of Hawai’i Board of Regents’ Award for Excellence in Teaching, he has also served as chair of his department and as president of the Pacific and Asian Communication Association. His scholarship has been published in twenty different academic journals, and he authored The Way of Dialogue and Tuning-In: The Art of Mindful Communicating.

Book preview

Wisdom for Mindful Living

Dwelling in Awareness

Ronald Gordon

Wisdom for Mindful Living

Dwelling in Awareness

Copyright © 2023 Ronald Gordon. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

Resource Publications

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

Eugene, OR 97401

www.wipfandstock.com

paperback isbn: 978-1-6667-5861-0

hardcover isbn: 978-1-6667-5862-7

ebook isbn: 978-1-6667-5863-4

12/09/22

Table of Contents

Title Page

Introduction

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Bibliography

"Through

Awareness of Breathing

we can be awake in,

and to,

the present moment.

Full Awareness of our Breathing

helps our mind

stop wandering

in confused,

never-ending thoughts."

Thich Nhat Hanh. Zen Monk and Teacher, 1926–2022

Also by Ronald D. Gordon

The Way of Dialogue:

1 + 1 = 3

Tuning-In:

The Art of Mindful Communicating

Actualizing:

Mindsets and Methods for Becoming and Being

Communicating with the West

(with Professor Satoshi Ishii)

Introduction

There are two key terms in the main title of this book: Wisdom and Mindful Living. Let’s briefly consider them.

Wisdom is about conducting ourselves well in this world: it’s about thinking, feeling, and behaving in skillful ways at the right moments and for good reasons. Wisdom calls upon our knowledge, experience, intuition, intelligence, creativity, and ethical sensibility, all to be used for the common good of the whole. Wisdom involves zooming-out to a more panoramic view, and letting our actions reflect this.

Professor Robert Sternberg of Cornell University, a noted leader in scientific research on wisdom, more simply conceptualizes wisdom as the polar opposite of foolishness.¹ I like the bottom-line austerity of Dr. Sternberg’s conception, and certainly moving toward wisdom entails behaving less foolishly more of the time.

As to the other of our key terms, Mindful Living is about learning to become openly present to what’s going on inside and outside of us. It’s about sensing more, and being more. It involves getting less bogged down by inner labels, categories, judgments, and emotional reactivity, not overthinking things and habitually freaking out. Mindfulness is about relaxing in the presence of what is with an enlivened and accepting present-centered open awareness, and encountering life more skillfully. Mindfulness practice in and of itself becomes a gateway into greater wisdom.

Overall in these pages you’ll find entries on universal themes that are entwined with becoming a wiser and more mindful human being: awareness, communication, contentment, curiosity, empathy and compassion, gratitude, humility, inner calm, kindness, listening, learning, love, right attitude, self-management, self-reflection, and transcendence.

These strengths and virtues have been recognized across cultures and eras as embodying the highest values of humanity. The most honored human beings throughout history on our planet Earth have been exemplars of these and related capacities. We’ll likely never reach the level of acclaim of a Socrates or Gandhi or Mother Teresa or the Dalai Lama on our own personal journeys toward greater wisdom and mindfulness, but we can each go further than we’ve ever imagined possible.

We’ll practice more mindfully moving from the foolishness end of the continuum ever closer to the other end, into the zone of deep wisdom. We do this for ourselves, and for one another. Wise words in these pages are reminders of what we usually already know yet too often forget; at times our inner teachers need to be reawakened.

The subtitle of our book, Dwelling in Awareness, is inspired by a fabulous line of Emily Dickinson’s: I dwell in possibility.² There’s another brief line that I value as much, and it’s from the honored late Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh: In the ultimate I dwell.³ By learning to dwell in awareness more often, this volume will empower us to dwell in both "possibility and the ultimate."

Awareness is an elusive term, and its referent can’t be conveniently and precisely pinned down and defined, but we can say generally that when we step back from the detailed contents of our momentary experiencing we encounter our observing Awareness. Thoughts, feelings, moods, ideas, fears, sensations, all of these and more are made known to us through our open Awareness.

What if we dwelled less in the details of the passing contents of our Awareness, and began dwelling more in Awareness itself?

How to Use This Book

While you might start reading this book from its beginning for the first fifteen to twenty pages, after that I recommend you open this book randomly each time you enter it and drink-in a handful (or less) of its stand-alone entries. Hop from here to there, letting intuition or chance be your guide, and with small doses across time. Treat this book as a grab bag: flip to any page, reach in, and pluck out something to ponder and practice.

Powerful energies are amassed within the combination of interwoven topics, wise quotes, and mini-practices contained here, and these energies gather momentum over time. My assumption is that many of the motivated readers of these pages, including you, are meant to be here. There’s something here of which you need to be reminded.

Relax and trust the process. You won’t connect with everything; instead, focus upon those golden nuggets that do speak to you. Take them into your internal operating systems, and allow them to cumulatively work upon you. Forgive the redundancy in these pages, it’s intentional, and consistent with a spiral model of the deep learning process. As Dr. Mary Catherine Bateson points out, Even what appears to be a repetition is often a return at the next level of a spiral . . . ⁴

You’ll find multiple mini-practices here. A practice is an action we perform repeatedly to help bring about a specific experience and skill. Practices are called practices because we’re practicing something to get deeper into it and better at it over time.

You’re likely leading a busy lifestyle so mini-practices are kept to only a few seconds or a minute or so. The primary practice here is simple natural breath awareness, an ancient method used for thousands of years in Asia for becoming centered and focused. Other breathwork methods are also used to help you drop beneath your head alone and into your body-mind.

There’s an underlying logic as to how our entries are sequenced: you’ll be reading conceptual material and then all of a sudden be asked to shift into a breath awareness or other awareness practice. This entails a switch of mental modes. We’re practicing going beyond our habitual heavy reliance upon our conceptual mind and sliding into another way of also knowing: embodied cognition and holistic-intuitive mind.⁵

By alternating back-and-forth between a focus on left-brain concepts and then switching to bodily-focused mini-practices, we’re effortlessly disrupting our normal baseline state of consciousness and re-shaping our mind’s patterning to enable expanded flexibility in multiple life areas. This volume is not only about information, it’s about activating dormant life energies.

Our overarching umbrella themes of mindfulness and wisdom development are highly worthwhile life projects. If you’re attracted to this noble enterprise, this is already a clear sign of the stirrings of your own inner wisdom. Beautiful.

May we further practice unfolding our wisdom and mindfulness into our twenty-first century world, which so desperately needs it. As French philosopher Henri Bergson saw it, People do not sufficiently realize that their future is in their own hands.⁶ Let’s realize exactly this, and then take it to the next level for the good of ourselves and all.

Welcome the densely-packed energies on these pages (or on your screen) to gently stream into you and catalyze your growth toward mindful wisdom. On the Big Island of Hawai’i from where all the words in this book flow, the Volcano Goddess Madame Pele is at this instant running free with her powerful forces of creation, gushing forth from the largest volcano in the world, Mauna Loa. This is an auspicious sign, dear reader: new beginnings are at hand.

One last note: all quotations in this volume originally using only masculine nouns and pronouns (Man, Mankind, he) have been changed to reflect greater inclusiveness.

Aloha each and all from the Big Island of Hawai’i, dr. g.

1

. Sternberg, Cambridge Handbook of Wisdom, Ch.

1

.

2

As in Intrator and Scribner, Leading from Within, p.

167

.

3

. Hanh, Breathe: You Are Alive!, p.

115

.

4

. Bateson, Peripheral Visions, Ch.

3

.

5

. Teasdale, What Happens in Mindfulness, Part II.

6

. Russell, History of Western Philosophy, Ch.

30

.

Some folks have a Fixed Mindset on wisdom, believing you either have it or you don’t. Those with a Growth Mindset on wisdom, however, know that our wisdom can be further developed by learning from all of our life experiences. We can add to, shape, and refine our practical wisdom as we venture ahead. It’s an ongoing project.

Research shows that the Growth Mindset is the more valid, healthy, and useful operating model.¹ Wise persons learn from their reflections upon their explorations, experiments, and mistakes as they go, and grow. Mindset totally matters. Across these pages our Growth Mindset will be fostered and fortified.

h

Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, and the lesson afterwards.

—Vernon Law

h

"Ufunde uze ufe is Zulu for Learn until you die."² That’s the spirit.

h

As we journey forth together here we’re welcoming our body wisdom, our heart wisdom, our intuitive wisdom, our intellectual wisdom, our interpersonal wisdom, and our spiritual wisdom. We’re waking-up to more of who we are. This is our s/heroic journey. And as Joseph Campbell noted, There is a benign power everywhere supporting the s/hero in their superhuman passage.³

h

The world is not suffering from a lack of intelligence . . . it is suffering greatly from a lack of wisdom.

—Dr. Robert Sternberg

h

We’re involved with communication more than 70 percent of our waking days: this is what we do, and we’ll be trying to do it until our last breath on earth. We speak, we listen, we read, we press keys, we send signals nonverbally: we’re the communicators. And even when we’re not communicating with others, our inner self-talk rarely ceases. Both inwardly and outwardly: we’re the communicators.

We’re also breathing continuously around the clock. We need to breathe to stay alive: we’re the breathers.

Breathing and communicating, we might as well become less mindless and more mindful of both, so let’s make this part of our intention going forward because this is wise course of action. The ABCs of practical wisdom for mindful living especially include Awareness, Breathing, Centering, and Communicating.

h

Relaxation from stress and anxiety eases wisdom development and helps us with mindfulness practice. Relaxation slows us down, de-stresses us a bit, and begins to connect us with more of what we know, value, and intend.

So mindful breath awareness is the simple tool we’ll call upon across these pages to help us practice calming and re-centering ourselves. This will put us in the best all-around position for wiser Responding to daily life. Mindful breath awareness comes to us from the world’s ancient wisdom traditions across the millennia, and with robust empirical support from modern science.

h

Then the Lord God formed the human of the dust of the ground, and breathed life into the nostrils, the breath of life; and the human became a living soul.

—The Bible, Genesis, 11:7

h

Right now, pause . . . and let’s remember we’re breathing . . . and let’s feel our body breathing . . . nostrils . . . chest . . . abdomen . . . we simply feel our body breathing. We do this now, for around a half-minute. We become aware of our breathing from the inside as we breathe in through our nose slowly and deeply, and if we’re alone we breathe out through our mouth.

Even after thirty seconds, we notice a difference. Our mind has settled a little, and our body has calmed. To stabilize ourselves in this chaotic world we’ll turn to breath awareness as our main go-to strategy. As I’ll remind you many times, it’s free, and totally portable.

h

If we already practice mindful breathing, then great, more opportunity for practice is at hand. And if we’ve never used the tool of breath awareness before, now is a fine time to start. As the ancient Chinese sage Lao-tzu taught, It’s always just the right time to begin.⁴

h

The best way to support your presence in the here and now is through mindfulness of the breath . . . Now I’m breathing in—now I’m breathing out.

—Thich Nhat Hanh

h

More than 45,000 people responded to a Consumer Reports survey on well-being and it was found that respondents considered deep breathing to be more effective than over-the-counter medications for managing their anxiety, fatigue, depression, and common illnesses like colds and flu.

h

How can the mind be made quiet? By breathing.

—Secret of the Golden Flower

h

I personally first learned about the importance of breathing when I was a child. I had asthma from when I was eight years old until about twelve, and at times I’d awaken in the middle of night unable to easily breathe. I’d ask myself, "Will I ever breathe again?" Finally, eventually, a weak feeble breath would barely come, and on and on this would go, a gasping struggle to find a next breath. A desperate spot to be in, and several times an inhaler and pills were not enough and my parents had to rush me to the emergency hospital.

The learning for me from this then-chronic condition was that good breathing is absolutely crucial, it’s imperative to life as we know it. Everything depends upon us continuing to breathe between 8,500 (a calm and healthy low rate) up to around 26,000 (more common) breaths a day. I learned this firsthand, and came to value and appreciate our life-giving breathing process.

Without breath, Game Over.

And then many years later I discovered that breath is not only crucial to our very existence, but that breath awareness can also be used as a powerful practice to enhance our self-awareness, our self-control, and our self-transcendence.

Breath awareness, Game Changer.

h

‘In the here’ is for your in-breath. ‘In the now’ is for your out-breath.

—Thich Nhat Hahn

h

These pages are filled with sincere invitations for you to remember, yet again, that you’re breathing, and to pause and practice feeling your breathing process from the inside. Like right now . . . pause and feel your next three deep and slow nasal in-breaths and mouth out-breaths, all the way. Pure awareness of your breathing, and gratitude for this life-sustaining ability.

Simple awareness of our breathing will be our mainstay. This secret is right under our nose, and wherever we go it always goes with us. We befriend our breathing as never before, and make up for lost time. This releases us from being so bound-up by our thoughts, and brings us into greater acceptance and enjoyment of this present moment wherever we are and whatever we’re doing.

h

A journey of a thousand miles starts with one breath.

—Coach Phil Jackson

h

The most famous conception in the West of what it means to be mindful comes from mindfulness pioneer Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn of the University of Massachusetts Medical School: Mindfulness means paying attention, in a particular way; on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally.⁵

Put another way, to be mindful is to have Open Awareness in this here and now instant and without tightly latching on to judgments, thoughts, or feelings, or any other mental baggage. It’s to be very present with what we’re attending to, and with mentally-open spaciousness.

We’re lessening our addiction to the often unceasing parade of chattering head stuff, and increasing our receptivity to, and acceptance of, what’s actually before us in this living now moment, including our body’s breathing.

h

We postpone in myriad ways living in the true miracle, the miracle of here and now.

—Catherine Ingram

h

Mindfulness practice as a whole has many scientifically demonstrated payoffs to offer us: increased ability to sustain our focus of attention; enhanced memory function; improved test performance; slower and healthier breathing rate and heart rate; improved immunity; greater compassion; enhanced self-awareness; increased self-management skills; less self-preoccupation; less anxiety; less depression; less emotional reactivity.⁶

This is not an exhaustive listing, but it’s enough of an overview to justify investing at least a small daily amount of time in mindfulness practice. Perhaps most importantly mindfulness gets us out of our otherwise endless mental chatter, and into our living body in the now and here.

h

Beginner’s error is thinking that being mindful means your mind has to be totally devoid of all thoughts, completely empty. Being mindful does not really mean this. It’s rather that with mindfulness the thoughts and images and feelings are backgrounded rather than foregrounded. They’re still there, but we choose to place our primary focus elsewhere, like on our current breath.

h

We’ll be breathing around 675 million or so times in our life, so we might as well become mindful of at least some of these breathings each day, and use them as a tool for rest, recovery, and restoration of mind, body, heart, and spirit.

h

We don’t get mad at our thoughts for still being around because they’ve given us yet another opportunity to strengthen our mindfulness muscles. We silently thank them, and then we innocently return to placing our emphasis upon our awareness of our breathing. We highlight our breathing, and move into greater acceptance of what is now facing us in this moment, and the options we have for being with it.

h

Imagine we’re standing on the sidewalk of a busy city street and we’re watching the cars go by; this is different than hailing one of the passing taxicabs, getting inside, and being driven off in it. Mindfulness is noticing the cars without going for a ride, at least not a long one.

And when we do notice we’ve been unwittingly driven away, we gently return to our mindful breathing. This is how we come back to being on the sidewalk again and watching the traffic go by without getting entangled in it: we prioritize full awareness of our breathing.

h

For a while I seriously thought about titling this book The Lazy Person’s Guide to Wisdom and Mindfulness. Not all of us are disciplined enough to spend a half-hour or an hour or so every day formally meditating. But of course this doesn’t necessarily mean we’re lazy.

So for busy (and lazy) folks like me, this book is about micro-dosing on breath awareness and immersing ourselves in affirmative mindsets. There’s power in the ongoing practice of efficient simplicity.

h

Eminent psychologists Dr. Carl Rogers and Dr. Abe Maslow were among the first psychologists in the twentieth-century to call public attention to our innate human urge to activate and develop our potentialities of mind, body, heart, spirit, and relationship, our actualizing tendency.⁷ In the winter as a young boy Dr. Rogers used to watch the potato sprouts in the basement reaching out toward the scant rays of light coming in through the windows, and that’s when he first witnessed life’s actualizing tendency in action. Rogers later came to see that we humans too need to move toward the light in order to live-out our growth potential in this world.⁸

h

One of the last lines ever from Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, the world-famous researcher on death and dying, as she herself lay dying: Our only purpose in life is growth.⁹

h

Stay foolish and shrink.

Or live and learn and grow.

We take our pick.

h

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make, the better.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

h

Reflection: how experimental have I been in my life in trying out different things and ways of being, especially to grow as a person?

h

These days we’re hearing more than ever before about resilience and post-traumatic growth, people turning wounded-ness into wisdom; wounds transforming into sweet scars that build and reveal character. Post-wound growth trajectories live within us, and wisdom entails trusting this truth. Greater mindfulness allows us to hold our past differently, and team-up with our actualizing tendency.

h

Jungian analyst Rita Knipe speaks to inner trusting: It takes courage to stand there and stare into what appears as emptiness or chaos, while waiting. It takes strength to hold the fear and not be overwhelmed by it, not to turn back to the familiar light of yesterday. Facing tomorrow creatively requires a steadfast devotion to those sparks that appear out of the night.¹⁰

These we have within us: courage, strength, devotion, and they propel us toward growth. As one of my very favorite sages, depth psychiatrist Dr. Carl Jung, points out to us, If one opens up to chaos, magic also arises.¹¹

h

One of my own favorite wise lines is from Emily Dickinson: "I dwell in possibility."¹² Can you imagine using this four-word mantra to be guided by in your own daily life? What a location from which to stake our claim in this lifetime.

h

Reflection: on a ten-point overall scale, to what extent am I a possibility thinker? If my answer is above a four, how come? If below a four, same question.

h

In a classic French drawing from five hundred years ago, Lady Luck holds the "Wheel of Fortune" in her lap, symbolizing chance and luck. Across from her Lady Wisdom holds the "Mirror of Wisdom" in which she reflects upon herself yet also regularly gazes out upon the larger world all around. Self-reflection is pre-eminent in the development of wisdom: we need to be willing to create a slight distance from which to look back at ourselves without becoming critical, and cleanly notice, learn, and grow. Our mindful open awareness allows discovery and unfoldment. Awareness has laser-like power that can penetrate to the core of the matter.

h

A fine and ancient metaphor for awareness is the mirror. The mirror shows whatever is placed in front of it; the mirror stays steady, reflecting back what’s present. The mirror doesn’t judge, it sees. In and of itself it’s content-less, nothing sticks to the mirror, it’s open and free. The mirror has a timeless quality, it’s always just there, reflecting back.

The mirror of our mindful awareness is like this. With mirror mind we simply see, and relax into the inherent healing properties of this clear seeing.

h

Mindfulness: awareness of what’s happening in our mind, our feelings, our body, our surrounding environment, without getting swept up into it, without getting carried away.

Awareness is qualitatively different from thinking about things. It’s a cleaner seeing and hearing without launching bigtime into discursive thought. It doesn’t ruminate or criticize or castigate. Awareness travels light, and has a light touch. Let’s come to know purer awareness as we continue on, effortlessly noticing more.

h

The urge and compulsion to self-realization is a law of nature and thus has invincible power . . .

—Dr. Carl Jung

h

As you read this sentence, you’re breathing. Softly direct your full focus to your breathing process now, and feel your breathing. There’s nothing to make happen here, we’re just placing our awareness on our breathing. We feel the rising and falling of our midsection and chest as we slowly and deeply breathe. We feel the air coming into our nostrils and going out our nose or mouth, and feel our closeness to our awareness itself that is allowing us to so intimately sense all of this. We become aware of our breathing body, and the body’s inner life. After a half-minute to a