The master responded to him, “So you are not ready yet. How was the moment, when you placed down your umbrella, less important than any other? You will be ready when you pay attention to each and every moment of your life, no matter what.”
What About You?
Are you consciously aware that each moment is precious, or do you rush at times without savoring life? Are you ready to become mindfully present for every instant of your life?
It’s Time to Act!
Mindfulness Meditation
Have you ever tried mindfulness meditation? It’s based on a fairly “easy” principle. It consists of focusing your mind on the present moment and observing your thoughts and sensations. There is no right or wrong way to achieve this. It could be a long path, day after day, for you to discover your own rhythm. However, the many benefits of stress reduction, a better outlook on life, and letting go may be realized surprisingly fast. If you practice regularly, you will gradually feel encouraged by your initial results, because very quickly the neuronal “circuits of awareness” are strengthened. You will progressively become more conscious of the present, be better focused, and feel more alive.
If this subject interests you, there are many options to explore. Personally, I followed mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) training. The two-month program developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn, who has revived the interest in mindfulness, is a good place to begin. You can also consult numerous books, the Internet, conferences, workshops, etc.
Here is a brief introduction for you to discover mindfulness meditation:
Set an alarm for a duration of your choice. You can begin with one minute, increasing it by one minute every day. Once you get comfortable, increase the intervals to five or ten minutes. (In order to emerge gently, use a friendly alarm sound, such as a gong or wind chime, not a buzzer.) Initially it does not seem like very long, but before you know it, you’ll work your way up to thirty minutes.
Sit down comfortably, with your back straight, on a meditation pillow or a chair. Do not lie down to avoid falling asleep.
Start by paying attention to your breath.
Observe your body sensation without making any judgments.
Each time an idea comes into your head, contemplate it, and then let it flow away.
That’s all. It is as “simple” as that.
Go Further . . .
Mindfulness can be practiced formally through meditation but also by observing small gestures of daily life, such as washing dishes, cleaning your house, watching your children, kneading bread dough, or savoring a meal. In fact, it’s as “simple” as being 100 percent mindful of all of your actions.
Start Here and Now!
Set your alarm for one minute. Sit up straight and try!
ReconstituTe
Until you are broken you don’t know what you’re made of.
—Ziad K. Abdelnour
Examine and assemble the pieces of the “puzzle” to get ready for repair.
The kintsugi master also takes time to assemble the “puzzle” of the objects he intends to take care of. He juxtaposes each piece, takes note of the cracks and missing pieces, evaluates and anticipates the difficulties of reconstruction, numbers the pieces, and finally decides the order in which he will proceed.
In life as in the art of kintsugi, it is sometimes necessary to take the time for evaluating a situation, to ask oneself pertinent questions, and to reconstitute the “puzzle” of your journey. This phase requires taking a step back in order to get to know yourself better. In first identifying the repetitive actions of your life, the recurring problems, the beliefs that inspire you to act, your patterns, you can eliminate obstructions and move forward. Nonetheless, it is always easier to see others’ weaknesses before clearly seeing our own. Ironically, as much as we may easily identify others’ patterns, it may be difficult for us to observe our own! Without realizing it, we commonly repeat the same patterns and subconsciously make the same mistakes. So how then do we proceed without being a prisoner of our repeated actions?
For a long time I was oblivious to my own repetitive behaviors. A friend pointed out to me that she found it “interesting” that, despite my fear, I had repeated my parents’ behavior by divorcing, twice! By trying to avoid this pattern at all costs,
I had actually reproduced it. It took me a long time to understand that I was dealing with a symptom rather than the initial wound. This touched on something deeply rooted within myself, the emotional damage that, as far back as I can remember, led me to make bad emotional choices out of a need for security. It was only by finally recognizing the initial emotional damage that I was able to finally move on, hoping to break the pattern this time!
Examining your early life can shed light on your present situation. What kind of behavior are you likely to repeat, without knowing why? As if this force was stronger than your own self? Could it be that it reminds you of some pain caused by part of your family’s past?
It is your turn to assemble, count, and number the “jigsaw” pieces of your life. Finally, when you have it all together, you will start to see the patterns of your life.
Jigsaw Therapy
When was the last time you did a jigsaw puzzle? Maybe when you were a child? Yet, putting a jigsaw puzzle together has all kinds of unexpected benefits:
Improving concentration
Feeling fully conscious and alert
Developing endurance
Learning to be patient
Developing a sense of order
Clearing the mind
Developing a sense for strategy and reflexes
Feeling a sense of accomplishment
Getting in touch with your inner child
In working a puzzle, you automatically lose all sense of time and are immersed in a bubble of concentration. By handling the pieces, you subconsciously organize your thoughts, and you also get to experience the joy of laying down the last piece...
What About You?
Have you identified the recurring patterns in your life, the familiar beliefs that manipulate you and prevent you from moving forward? Are you ready to change the theme of your puzzle?
It’s Time to Act!
The Jigsaw Puzzle of Your Life
In order to take a good look at your life, I invite you to create a puzzle of your journey:
Prepare a blank jigsaw puzzle with a piece of cardboard, or use the back of an existing puzzle, or even buy one (you can find online some blank puzzles in any shape, even in the shape of a heart, if that inspires you).
On a white piece of paper, without thinking too much, write down all the words you can think of that represent all the recurring themes of your life (whether good or bad). Include anything that spontaneously seems important to you, even if you don’t know why. Here are a few examples: children, entrepreneurship, perfume, travels, divorce, pedagogy, writing, beauty, light, vocation, transmission, books, love, kintsugi, multitasking, creativity, accident, and resilience.
For example, think about your accomplishments, your successes and your failures, your key moments, your passions, words that inspire you, symbols that speak to you . . . everything that regularly comes back into your life, like a chorus of a song.
This list will be surprising and eclectic, but it looks like you.
Fine-tune it and clean it up, until it perfectly represents your life.
Now copy the words onto the pieces of the blank puzzle you prepared.
Sit back and study the puzzle of your life!
What strikes you? What are the recurring themes? Which words do you like best? And which the least? Which pieces would you like to change or eliminate?
Go Further . . .
Contemplate your jigsaw puzzle a little more and then redo it. This time, select the pieces you want to keep, the ones that ma
ke you happy, and discard the others. Start over with a newly prepared puzzle, just like the first one. Put it back together only with the happy words that please you and fill the empty spaces with new key words that correspond with your aspirations. Eliminate the patterns you would like to get rid of.
Start Here and Now!
Now choose the jigsaw puzzle to get started!
Transform
Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed.
—Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier
Turn the poison into an antidote! Utilize the natural lacquer (urushi) to glue the pieces together. It comes directly from the resin of the lacquer tree, and it’s highly toxic, so you must protect yourself while applying it. However, while it dries, it hardens and loses its toxic nature.
Get inspired by the kintsugi process to face your inner demons and transform them. Often the solution is right before your eyes. Changing a small detail can sometimes be sufficient. For example, for a long time I was a prisoner of an addiction. The definition of an addiction is when you start to ritualize an impulse and that same stimulus (every Friday, each time I party, every day when I come home, etc.) triggers an irrepressible desire. You crave it. The idea of doing without it starts to make you uncomfortable. You’re perfectly aware that it’s a bad idea . . . but it’s more powerful than you. And afterward you feel so bad, even nauseated, for having done the same mistake again.
For me this was an addiction to eating chips with dried sausage (before I became a vegetarian!). Every Tuesday evening, this ritual forced me to get my fix. Why this particular day? Simply because on Tuesday evenings, I didn’t have custody of my daughter. Significantly, these kinds of addictions often manifest themselves on those days when you let off steam, so usually on the weekend.
At first, it might seem kind of funny, and this addiction might not appear to be so bad, but after several months . . . I was starting to feel like an alcoholic needing his fix. One day while I was in line at the supermarket, I suddenly remembered my hidden, inner little girl who had observed my mother stashing her weekly three bottles of whisky at the bottom of her shopping basket.
That was the day I decided to do something. But how could I break my well-entrenched, ritualized habit that was ready to reappear as an uncontrollable desire? What would prevent me from falling back on this same habit a week later? By simply adapting the ritual (at least to start with), and changing one important key factor, I fooled my subconscious. The trigger for me was “Tuesday night.” I decided not to fight it, as the reflex was too well embedded, but instead decided to replace my usual fix. I chose to eat something really healthy instead. For me, that was sushi. By replacing a guilty pleasure with a healthy one, you don’t feel distraught. The subconscious is pleasantly surprised and concentrates on other things, which slowly permits you to abandon the entire ritual, because after a few months, it doesn’t have any reason to exist anymore. It’s a bit like distracting a child with a new toy.
What is your poison? The habit that you would like to change? Rather than trying to be completely immune to the ritual, first try transforming the bad habit gradually, little by little. Change your guilty pleasures into healthy ones: Transform your poison into an antidote!
Kintsugi and Alchemy
Kintsugi and alchemy have much in common . . .
As the alchemist tries to transform lead into gold, the kintsugi master adds gold to transmute the imperfections into something precious, attempting to prolong the life of an object entrusted to his care, as if using an elixir of long life. He will use a slow and ritualized process, applying successive layers of lacquer in black and red, reminiscent of the blackening and reddening stages of the alchemy process. As an alchemist, he will work the four elements (air that circulates in the muro, earth with powder of tonoko, water added to sabi, and the fire of gold) to combine them using heat and humidity. (In alchemy “heat activated in a humid environment results in blackening,” which is a reminder of a kintsugi drying within the shelter of his muro.)
The ground and pulverized First Matter (materia prima) is separated, just as the broken parts of the kintsugi are. Both methods are used to purify and associate opposite matters into a combination of a new and more splendid existence, transmuting the First Matter toward a new consciousness.
In that, kintsugi is a true alchemistic process.
What About You?
What are your own “poisons”? Do you have well-embedded, toxic habits? Are they always triggered by the same circumstances? Which detail could you alter to get more positive results?
It’s Time to Act!
The Alchemistic Transformation of Your Poison
Start by identifying your own poisons. Do you engage in a pleasant little ritual on a daily or even weekly basis? Maybe it’s not really a problem: After all, “the dose makes the poison.” (Paracelsus)
But if it’s something:
Bad for you
And you have trouble getting rid of it
The time has probably come to do something about it . . .
List the bad habits (“guilty pleasures”) you would like to change, and try to identify what triggers them.
For each guilty pleasure, write down a detail that can be changed. You are trying to replace this bad habit with a new object or activity that you find more pleasing and motivating, the “healthy pleasure.”
For example, if the habit you want to change is “smoking too much” (the guilty pleasure), and your trigger is “I always start smoking Friday evening when I party with my friends” (triggering mechanism), then pick one detail to change and write it under the “healthy pleasure” column: “Go to a hammam on Friday nights instead.”
Go Further . . .
At least during the first few weeks, have a close friend meet you, so he/she can support you when that trigger moment hits you.
Start Here and Now!
In your weekly agenda, note right now the solution for the first change of habit.
Gather
The soul is a lyre on which all the strings should be played.
—George Sand
Prepare and apply the glue (mugi-urushi, a blend of flour and urushi lacquer) to both sides of the fissure with a palette knife, and glue the two pieces together to reconstitute the object.
This phase is crucial. After a long and careful preparation, the kintsugi master finally has all the pieces on hand to reconstitute the object. He is now ready to begin an effective cure to give the object its original oneness.
For you too, the time has come to begin a patient reassembling of the pieces of your soul. It’s time to reconnect to your true self. But do you even know who you really are? Do you feel complete and one? True to yourself? True to your soul? True to your initial promise?
At times, while well on your way, it’s easy to lose sight of yourself. In the midst of your turbulent life, you forget childhood promises and key resolutions. Instead you engage in dull, empty, soulless experiments. Deep inside, something is lacking . . . But what?
For a long time I had these same sensations. I felt like an empty shell that had left pieces of myself elsewhere. All my personal-development goals were, therefore, focused on recognizing my soul, my creativity, and my mission in life.
For me, it took three different creative arts to reconnect: dance, music, and writing. These were everything that had given me joy as a child, but they had practically disappeared from my life. If you had asked me just five years ago, I would have told you that I didn’t like music at all and only had a minor interest in dance and writing. That belief was blocking my energy so strongly that it couldn’t circulate at all. A year after reconnecting with these three arts, I felt truly enlightened! It was as if a door suddenly opened and fresh air entered my life. I was finally back in my element after rediscovering myself. At last, I could breathe deeply and finally reconnect wit
h myself.
All the signs had been there since my childhood. I loved dancing, walked around everywhere with my portable record player, and devoured books, reading anything I could get my hands on. I would regularly hide under the covers at night to finish a book! When asked what I wanted to be later in life, I answered, “A writer!” I had buried these desires deep within my soul for many years. They sometimes showed up fleetingly: an evening out with friends to go dancing, the journals I kept writing, my inner child who invited me to dance when I met with her through meditation, etc. But then I buried them again, even deeper. When all of this finally became unblocked, the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle could be reassembled. I had finally found a part of myself and reconnected with my soul.
Often, the indications exist for a long time, perhaps forever, right under your nose. You just forgot to follow them! But it is never too late to collect the small, scattered pieces of your soul and to put them together.
To reassemble oneself is to rediscover what always really moved and excited you. It might have been in the shadows of your life for years. Now it is time to get realigned and newly unified. Reconnect with your inner promise . . .
Shamanism and Soul Retrieval
Shamanism considers that all is well when your soul and body are solidly united. But sometimes, as the result of a sudden shock, part of your soul is lost. You feel broken into pieces. It’s as if you feel that something is lacking, an existential vacuum, and you try to fill it by all possible means.
To help in finding your initial oneness again, the shaman performs a soul retrieval ceremony during which he will travel in a shamanic voyage to contact the spirits who will assist in finding your lost soul. The goal is to reassemble the separate pieces that were lost on the other side of reality, outside of space and time, or that were left in your past.
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