Mindfulness by teZa Lord

Whether you’re an ordinary person or a genius, a filthy-rich executive in a major corporation or a humble organic farmer, everyone wants to be happy. The only difference between such disparate “types” of people … is the values they’ve chosen to live by. One might have the goal of achieving success as abundant material wealth. Another holds the goal most of us ordinary people cherish: having a safe, secure life filled with as much happiness as we can possibly muster. Let’s explore how, whatever type we are, every person definitely can increase their happiness factor by embracing mindfulness.

Such a buzz word! Mindfulness. It sounds so … BIG, doesn’t it? How can we possibly be more “mindful” than we already are? We use our minds, our big brains, to function. All of us alive on Earth, especially during this Covid-19 pandemic, are accustomed to using our minds every day in a million different ways. So how can we possibly use our minds any more than we already are? We’ve avoided dying of the coronavirus! We’re smart. We’re lucky. We’re cautious. Whether we’re an investor of needed goods, an inventor of new products that fulfills needs, or an introvert who can barely leave home to shop—we can all do better by becoming more mindful.

Certainly, we all have minds. Yes, we have brains, too. But here, we’re not speaking of the white, ripple-tissued, bulging tunnels of tightly packed micro-receptors and receivers that can be sliced (upon death’s autopsy) and examined. We are discussing the “mind” that is something quite different from one’s brain. The mind is a state of Being, like “happiness” is a state of being, or “fearful” also, both of which are choices a person’s functioning brain allows us to make. The mind (or lack of, “being mindless,” or “still unawake”) is how one chooses to use the innumerable functions of one’s physical organ, the brain. Without a brain, we are officially non-functioning, or in a deep coma. Without mindfulness, we are simply not able to understand many things.

The mind, therefore, is an abstract, un-seeable, undetectable entity, incapable of being sliced, never able to be put under a scientist’s microscopic probe.

Our Three Sides

All humans have three aspects. The physical (including one’s health and bodily fitness), the mental (how well educated and informed one is), and the spiritual (the invisible yet tangible, instinctual connection to All That Is).

Most organic farmers are more concerned with providing wholesome food, and thereby have a livelihood that benefits not only them, but benefits many others. Whereas the average highly-achieving corporate executive thinks entirely in terms of economics. What altruistic importance they give their business regarding society depends upon the individual business person’s having the capacity to embrace another side of their humanity besides their financial acumen.

Corporate executives, especially heads of State and Nations, would certainly benefit from embracing the expanded powers of their spiritual nature, as well as accepting their mental acuity and bodily functions to more smoothly and efficiently run their enterprises.

For any person, subsistence farmer or phenomenally wealthy entrepreneur, mindfulness is a superior way of choosing to live. The aspect of fulfillment (happiness) versus disappointment (unhappiness) is factual when one sees opportunities even in chaotic confusion, which a mindful perspective entails. Let’s explore how one goes about choosing to embrace a heretofore rare quality known among corporate members of our society: Mindfulness.

I wonder how many people realize that the more aware one is, the more in tune they become with an invisible power within every person who’s alive. This mysterious ability is called by some mindfulness, but being awakened to the power of “expanded consciousness” is the same thing. Choosing to be more awakened is the real and only source of true wealth, health, and everlasting happiness, even in the face of devastating circumstances.

The degree of acceptance with What Is a person has, is directly contingent upon the amount of awareness that person has achieved. Awareness is unlimited. It is only a person’s choice of how much, or how little, they want to grasp that determines one’s level of awareness. The more awareness one allows in every day routines, including one’s working life, the more success, and its willing-to-accept companions—happiness and contentment—is achieved.

When an individual has achieved happiness, its effects ripple outwardly, like the waves induced by a pebble hitting the still surface of a quiet pond are seen to expand infinitely. The more individuals who vibrate with acceptance, the byproduct of mindfulness, the more ripples of contentment occur that awareness rewards humans who hold this choice, the more an entire family, a community, a huge corporation, or an entire nation even, benefits from its members adhering to the enlightened qualities of mindfulness.

Mindfulness means much more than just “using” one’s mind. It literally means “becoming” the unlimited power contained within the human brain’s capacity for understanding, a process that goes beyond ordinary “thinking.” When a person understands at this higher level, the creative energies we all have, innately, are unleashed in flood-like proportions.

 

Choosing Happiness

Being Happy is a basic precept of our humanness. Of course, that phrase, “Being Happy” means something different to every single person. To an organic farmer, how weather patterns are is an intrinsic factor of their happiness quotient; to a corporate leader, not so much. Harvesting at peak plant-production time is also a consideration for a farmer, whereas a businessperson might think more along the lines of creating marketability, rather than relying on weather, soil enrichment, culinary trends, or market values for their products’ monetary success.

To a CEO, Being Happy more than likely means how well their corporation is functioning, what its profits are, how well its growth is, and everything else affecting a robust business. Would a CEO, CFO, or anyone in the higher echelon of the corporate world even consider their own personal happiness when they reflect on what is, exactly, their company’s successful business?

If a person thinks their “worth” is what their personal value is, they are in for an alarming realization one day, hopefully before they arrive at their death bed. How many folks do you know who scoff at those who choose happiness above financial achievements? I know a few. Obviously, they are neither particularly joyful nor inspiring individuals. Wealth, as all of us know, does not automatically engender happiness. Just take the example of a rich person who contracted cancer, and no amount of procedures, expensive treatments, or fancy specialists could save their life. When a deadly illness comes banging on your door, it can mean one of two things.

One, is that you’re going to die.

Two, standing right alongside the shocking illness at your door, you recognize your “free will,” an alias of your mind. You see, at last, the choice you have, we all have, to acknowledge an invisible connection to All That Is. That mind of yours is “knocking” on your “psychic” door (by causing a serious, life-threatening situation), giving you another chance to make some much-needed changes in the way you’re living. If you’re “awake” enough, that is, mindful enough, you realize that that is the true purpose of illness, or any other type of malaise (yes, even a pandemic). Right then, you have the opportunity to take stock of what has been sucking up your life’s energies. With this knowledge, this insight, you can immediately make healthier choices. There is time! Illness is a “sign” that something’s amiss.

I’m not just talking about an illness within a person’s body. I’m quite frankly also pointing out whatever illness, whatever dis-ease (an uncomfortable, uneasy situation) that happens within human society, in general. I think the COVID plague, caused by the invisible coronavirus, has been—besides its being a life-stopping tragedy with too many deaths already—an inadvertent, auspicious opportunity. COVID’s symbolic significance is, to me, the need for humans to “re-boot” and “re-prioritize” much that previously had gone amiss, dis-eased, and no longer serves the higher good in our often-wayward, over-material ways. How many shopping sprees, violent films, over-sexualized performances, over-prescribed antidepressants do we need? Now that we’ve been deprived of a majority of those things, people are seeing that the more natural, less-stimulated lifestyle might be healthier and wiser: more conducive to happiness.

Whether you’re a corporate executive, farmer, politician, poet, or an unemployed person—we all get to choose how we use the power of our individual minds. We can focus our mind’s energies—just as invisible rays from the sun’s focused energy produces abundance in our farmlands—pointed toward healing what’s broken within ourselves, in our world, in our business enterprises.

We can do this! We can heal what’s gone wrong. How? By simply making the choice to be more mindful. Before the cancer arrives, we can prevent it. But we must act now. We must become more mindful, NOW. Can I say it any louder? Before disgruntled-ness arises from those surrounding us, we can choose to spread peace. Before disruptions in the flow of creative, peaceful collaborations become saturated with despair, we can be more kind.

COVID, like all dis-eases, has brought the opportunity to look at ourselves. We can look within our own lives, first, to see where we need to “make things right” or more fulfilling. Many of us have been doing just that for the past eight months, since we’ve had to deal with the threat of infection from merely walking out our front door.

The opportunity to change is upon us! Not just because the worldwide pandemic has not been arrested yet, but because of the many other dis-eases, dis-ruptions, dis-comforts, and confrontations we’re facing. Unrest is being exacerbated because of the pandemic’s forced isolation adding to tensions of our times. For whatever reasons, racial injustices suffered by people of color are now finally out on the table, in full display. People can no longer hide from the truth of violence in our society. Finally, society is being forced to reckon with how treating someone unfairly because of the color of one’s skin has been a real, horribly unjust part of society, worldwide—not just the USA. I’ve lived outside the States, and I know how prejudice is like a cancer, eating away the human heart.

 

How Can We Help?

It’s time to eradicate reasons for this cancer, this illness within our society. COVID has catalyzed a reality check for our blended family of humankind. Before we begin, again, the mass gatherings of need-to-be-entertained assemblages, whether for sports, stadium concerts, political rallies, or mega-church gatherings—we have to ask ourselves, each and every one of us, whether peasant, priest, or corporate prince—are we being as mindful as we can be?

Because if you can’t answer a resoundingly honest, “YES!,” I’m here to tell you: It’s time you looked in the mirror and saw that you are blocking the healing power of higher-minded mindfulness. Unleash the creative flow of unbridled energy that is the result of the consciousness-expansion within every human’s capabilities. Help eradicate the cause of society’s dis-ease: ignorance and fear of change.

Are you going to help heal our world? Or are you going to remain focused on how much you own and have in your fragile, susceptible portfolio? There is something glorious about the possibility of not just an ordinary person, but an enlightened politician, an inspiring head of a major corporation. Our leaders being mindful. Ahhh, that is soothing to think about. The evolution of our species has arrived at this point, right here and now. Now is when a heartful and thoughtful person can, and many very successfully do already, operate in the world of high finance, manufacturing, complex sales, and deals and bargaining, just as the organic farmer does at mindfully planting seeds in fertile soil, pulling weeds, harvesting, and selling at local markets.

With focused minds, trained on positive thoughts and embracing all people as equal, our corporate leaders are as useful and loving-kind to fellow earth-dwellers as the humble farmer who has chosen to stay connected to the soil, to raise food by which we humans thrive. In this way, all of us not only keep staying alive, but bask in spiritual prosperity, enjoying true happiness.