"Remote" Learning

"The secret to film is that it’s an illusion.”
-George Lucas

“Even if I set out to make a film about a fillet of sole, it would be about me.”
Federico Felini

Thoughts are like movies in the mind, transporting you to a different time and place, evoking emotions, seldom based directly on reality, and often, as Felini so succinctly puts it, about us.

Life can seem like constantly having the TV on with a never-ending stream of auto-biographical movies running.  In fact, if we stop and watch the moving being shown in the mind at any given moment, we may find it better than anything available on Netflix:  more dramatic, more scandalous (we love Joseph Goldstein’s quote, “The mind has no shame”) and more relatable, for sure.

Over time, we come to believe that this constant chatter is an ineluctable part of life, and that these thoughts are integral to our existence, parts of us, reflections of us, embedded in the substrate of our being, hard-coded, not much to be done about them…..

BUT:  Meditation reminds us that we have the remote, and that the remote has buttons to change channels, a volume button, and an On/Off switch.  

Once meditation helps us find that remote, we can notice what movie is playing in the mind, see it as a default offering, but not mandatory viewing, and we can change the channel.  We can choose to tune in to the channel that shows the kindness that we’ve witnessed that day, or the many ways our needs are being met;  we can turn our attention away from the TV and focus instead on the feeling of grass under our feet, or the gentle movement caused by breath in the body;  we can listen to the sounds of the late summer bugs;  we can watch emotions come and go, alone and in groups.  

Best of all, we can see the movie of the mind for what it is:  a representation of a tiny slice of life, seen through a filter, dramatized for effect, just as much an illusion as any movie.

We hope you’ll join us this week as we practice looking at the lens of our experience rather than through it.

May all beings everywhere benefit from "remote" learning,
Your CMP Family
 

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In these challenging times, your support is more important than ever. As a nonprofit, we can’t cancel our needs to fundraise. We need your donations to continue offering meditation sessions.CMP is a licensed charity in the state of CT as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Checks can be mailed to Community Mindfulness Project, P.O. Box 1713, New Canaan, CT 06840. Credit cards are accepted at www.CommunityMindfulnessProject.org. Thank you!