mindfulminute

Post by: Mark Fontaine

Black Friday is giving us a black eye. We have allowed the holiday season to degenerate into a riotous crush to purchase cheap electronics and appliances. The mobs outside the big box superstores are more desperate and violent than a UN emergency feeding station in Darfur Africa. People are being shot and pepper sprayed.

What does this say about us as a society and culture? Rather than spending Thanksgiving at home enjoying the company of our loved ones, we are camped out in an electronics store parking lot. It appears that half off the price of a flat screen T.V. is more important than fostering our relationships.

No wonder we have unprecedented political rancour. We hold the dollar and the pursuit of self-indulgent toys over the well-being of ourselves and our loved ones. We have become so self-absorbed, we won’t acknowledge and foster the needs and desires of others. Others are seen as an impediment to our rights, liberty and freedom.

How does this end? Are we left standing alone cocooned by many luxurious possessions and surrounded by a scorched earth?   If you don’t like what you see this holiday season, be mindful to be the change you seek.

Post by: Mark Fontaine

Where have all the blueberries gone? Take a look at the nutrition label of your favorite blueberry muffins, blueberry bagels and blueberry cereal. Are blueberries on the label? Are blueberries one of the first 10 ingredients? Is the blueberry referred to as a blueberry bit or a blueberry product?

The health benefits of blueberries are well documented. Food corporations want to capitalize on your desire to eat healthy. But, they have a problem. Real blueberries are expensive.

The food corporations have come up with a solution to this dilemma. They have created something that looks and tastes like a blueberry. It consists of a mixture of sugars, artificial flavoring and food coloring. This blueberry bit or blueberry product costs a fraction of the real deal. Unfortunately, it has little or no nutritional value.

Is it any wonder that we are becoming fatter and fatter? Is it any wonder that rates of diabetes and cancers are rising?

We must be mindful of what we are eating. Most food corporations do not have our best interests at heart. In fact, they may purposefully label their products in a manner to disguise the contents or misrepresent the nutritional value.

Mark Fontaine

More is better. Excess and decadence revered. We live in a consumerist society. It takes a great toll on our spiritual well-being. The push to overconsume is everywhere. Why have one when you can have three for the price of two?!  We gorge, then encourage all our friends to join in through social media.

The media makes overconsumption entertainment. Network T.V. programs feature obesity, hoarding, and reality quasi-celebrities engaging in self-indulgent excesses.

Do we consider excess a right?  If having more stuff fills our needs, why are we currently experiencing a cultural, spiritual and financial stagnation?

When more energy is devoted to material “stuff” than to tapping into the soul’s needs, it leads to an imbalance. When we fall out of balance, we don’t feel well emotionally, physically or both. Our lives stagnate. We care less about taking care of ourselves, others and our environs.

The drive to overconsume may be a symptom of “soul loss”. We may have suffered a trauma from which we feel we can’t move on. We use things to create walls that render our souls inaccessible. Symptoms of a walled soul are: depression, relationship problems and ignoring obligations. If we don’t have a soul, we attempt to fill ourselves with things that will temporarily make us feel alive. We get trapped into thinking that we can buy happiness. We fill our lives with distractions that distance us from what we don’t want to deal with. We don’t feel. We can’t heal.

What we don’t heal in ourselves we pass on to others–our children, our relationships, the planet.

When we become mindful of our lifestyle, we can stop the cycle of excess. We pursue what we need versus what we want. We become more aware of the needs of others.

Your boss is a witch. Your partner is lazy. Your best friend won’t return your calls.

It is easy to feel victimized by our lives.  How much of your destiny do you control? How much are you a victim of circumstance and how much are you a victim of yourself?

Early life experiences have a significant impact on our development and our adult relationships. Negative events in our past shaped our minds, our emotions and our behaviors in ways in which we are unaware. Do your reactions that puzzle you? Are you baffled when you “lose it”?

Certain events trigger the memories of  stresses we felt as children and reactivate the behaviors we developed to cope with those feelings. If these triggers are set off, we are instantly transported back to when we were small and vulnerable.

The vulnerable child’s voice can affect you in all your present day relationships. It can leave you at odds with authority figures and created distance between you and your partner.

What can we do when these early influences sabotage us in our adult lives? There is an inner critic in every person that comments on and informs us of our actions. This inner critic nudges us to see the world through a negative filter.  This internal dialogue shuts us down during moments of tension.

What can you do?

1. Identify what your inner critic is telling us about yourself.

2. Work to become conscious of the unconscious influences from your past.

3. Separate yourself from your critical voice and act according to who you truly are.

When we aren’t mindful of the voices that are influencing us to relive old patterns, we tend to select people who fit in with our old identity, and we relate to them in ways that recreate a comfortable negativity from our past.

This voice keeps us from our goals and diverts us from our destiny. No matter how painful or unpleasant our past experiences may have been, we adapted to them, they became comfortable despite their negativity.

Recognizing this internal enemy helps us understand our behavior and make sense out of bad choices. We can instead take actions that are in our own self-interest.

Taking these actions will increase your sense of self and weaken this internal enemy. Soon you will feel more comfortable with these new behaviors.