15. Living Mindfully

'Live in the moment and God will give you all the graces you need'.

This piece of advice was by a French Catholic archbishop, theologian, poet and spiritual director – François Fénelon. Living in the moment is not easy, and one of the struggles I have in my meditation/prayer practice is taming my mind. You, too, may have found taming your mind is not easy – you have to keep hauling it back to the focus at hand like a wayward donkey. The Franciscan Friar, Albert Haase OFM, refers to this struggle at the beginning of his book 'Becoming an Ordinary Mystic'. He encourages us to persist in learning mindfulness because 'Mindfulness breeds mysticism' and will enhance our spiritual life. He then reminds us of a four-step process we can use when our mind wanders:

1. 'Stop' what you are doing, and take a deep breath to recentre yourself.
2.  'Look' briefly, at what has captured your attention to see if it needs immediate attention. If not, then,
3. 'Listen' to your five senses as a way to recentre yourself – as mentioned in my last blog (God in All Things). What are you Hearing? Seeing? Feeling? Tasting? Smelling?
4. 'Go' back to your practice.

Haase says we can also use this simple technique whenever we feel under stress or distracted because our five senses are:

'the keys that open the tabernacle door to the sacrament of the present moment.
It’s important that you take your time and dally and delight here'.

Learning to be aware of the power of the present moment is the beginning of both contemplation and learning to live mindfully – and mindfully aware of the power of God – “who holds and fills everything” is the way the monastic teachers expressed it.

Tessa Bielecki was a founding member and Mother Abbess of the Roman Catholic 'Spiritual Life Institute. She offered several helpful suggestions to support our growth in living mindfully. These included:

• Learning to live more closely to the rhythms of nature
• Cutting down on social media and television
• Quieting your mind with a regular (daily) meditation practice
• Keeping a journal and practising gratitude for the things that bring you joy
• Working tranquilly in a focused way that exercises your whole person.

Our Spiritual life requires no spectacular effort or successes, but it does require passion and a faithfulness to attend to the hundred little things of everyday life. The Vietnamese monk, Thích Nhất Hạnh, once drew a comparison between mindfulness and the Holy Spirit. He saw them both as agents of healing that all people have within them as 'a seed of energy and life', with its capacity for healing, transformation and love. He suggested when we touch this seed, we touch the living reality of the divine presence of the Holy Spirit which dwells within us, waiting to be awakened and seen through the totality of who we are. The implications of this are far-reaching, because:

Our true home is in the present moment.
The miracle is not to walk on water.
The miracle is to walk on the green earth
in the present moment.
Peace is all around us,
in the world and in nature
and within us,
in our bodies and our spirits.
Once we learn to touch this peace
we will be healed and transformed.

To be mindful ultimately means to be fully aware; to be grounded in what is 'real' and less carried away by our imagination, or by our prejudice, or reacting to some internal thought.

Kia mau te rongo me te pai ki a koe i to haerenga
May you find peace and goodwill on your journey.
Phil.

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• Eckhart,von Hochheim OP (Meister) The Essential Sermons, Herder & Herder, Crossroad Pub.Co.NY. Sermon 57.

• Dyer, Phil, Be Still & Know – 14 Day Retreat with the Christian Mystics, Tawera Press, 2020.

• Haase OFM, A, Becoming an Ordinary Mystic, InterVarsity Press, 2019.

• Hanh Living Buddha: Living Christ, Riverhead Books,2007.

• Thich Nhat Hanh, Touching Peace: Practicing the Art of Mindful Living, Parallax Press,1992.