Mindfulness in New York - Practicing The Power of Now

Posted by:  Medium Marie
Friday, March 13th 2009.

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I recently attended a meditation workshop offered by Gordon Scarritt. Gordon is a Satori advisor and a very gifted teacher and speaker. I welcome your thoughts - and highly recommend his workshops for anyone interested in either meditation, Buddhist studies or simply looking to regain balance in their life.

"You are all Buddhas. There is nothing you need to achieve. Just open your eyes." -Siddhartha Gautama

Urban living presents a whole new set of challenge for Awareness and Mindfulness. Mindfulness is at the heart of Buddhist mediation, but its principal is universal. In essence, mindfulness is about wakefulness. How much of your daily life are you awake and experiencing?

An average NYC morning: you grab a cup of coffee at your local Dunkin Doughnuts or Starbucks, hop of the subway, read the morning paper, exit the subway to find yourself at work for the next eight hours.

Sometimes, we forget to check and see how we feel, because we think we already know and understand.

Do you emotionally realize the impact of the morning news to you life, or are you cataloging the facts for your future reference? What does your coffee taste like?

We live in a self-created dream reality, composed of past experiences, other people, books we have read, the Internet and culture in general. We live in this reality, not realizing the distance we place between our self and our experiences. Between this disconnect and our experience is a void. Our mind will fill this void with thoughts of how we "think" we feel and are experiencing. The truth is you cannot think what you feel. Over time, this disconnect leads to feelings of discomfort, apathy and stress. This is the suffering of the conditioned mind.

"All unhappiness is caused by denial of the present. We think problems are caused by our situations in life, but attachment to the past and future is the real problem. Ultimately there is only one problem in life - living outside the NOW" -Sezzai

My personal practice of Awareness and Mindfulness began at a meditation workshop led by Gordon Scarritt at the Three Jewels center in NYC. The Three Jewels functions as a meditation, Heart Yoga, Dharma, and a community Outreach Center, located a few blocks north of Astor Place.

Gordon spoke of the conditioned mind, and how it cannot change itself. "We must use an aspect of our being that is outside the ego mind, and has no argument with reality as it is. This is our true nature, sometimes referred to as higher mind, or universal intelligence. It is important to know that we are all connected to this intelligence, which is actually who and what we are. But for the purposes of this work, the term we want to use and understand is Awareness. Awareness is that part of us that experiences everything."

Gordon continued, "once 'awoken' our lives have the potential to become more vibrant and fluid; in essence stress free!"

I welcome anyone who is interested in learning more about both Awareness and Mindfulness to visit Gordon Scarritt's workshop. For, when we practice Mindfulness we learn to allow each experience to express itself. We then can view the reality of each moment we are more available to experience Satori - enlightenment now.