7 Unseen Blessings of Being Mindful

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Making mistakes in life is one of its inevitabilities…but it is impossible to transcend any individual limitation without first agreeing to meet it. Such encounters are the path we must walk if our wish is to fulfill whatever may be our Divinely dispensed possibilities.

Have you ever been stunned at the ways in which you act against yourself? Only to find out after the act that you did so? Within us lives a nature, a conscience, that cannot be made to act against itself. But to know its protective influence, we must be mindful in the moment.

To be mindful is to be aware of the stream of all that is not mindful. If we’re mindful to what might seem positive but is secretly punishing, then we can stop taking its directive.

The more awake we can be -- the more mindful of the whole of ourselves we are before we start moving toward any aim in life -- the less likely we are to find ourselves feeling stressed, angry, or fearful over where we end up.

Use the following seven unseen blessings of being mindful to help you realize just how nice it would be to see a pit before you fall into it!

If I were mindful, I would never hang on to a fear or a worry.

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Why do I hang on to fear and worry? Because there is something in me that values it! Why don’t I pick up a rattlesnake? Thank God, my body is more mindful than I am! I wouldn’t pick up a rattlesnake because I know the thing is likely to kill me. So why do I pick up a fear? Because I can’t see it as being harmful. Rather, the reaction brings with it everything that I need in order to continue feeling like me – that ever-so familiar sense of self that has me locked into a cycle of reincarnating a lower nature that I have seen from my own experience cannot do what it promises it will for me. If I can be mindful, I can take the inadequacy I feel when fearful or worried, and remember what I know is true… that it’s a familiar feeling, not a power. I can act-knowledge in spite of the fact that it seems to do nothing when compared to the turbulence of the moment. When I see the fear, instead of seeing through its eyes, I choose to be chosen by the truth I love now, and I stand in the place of real power where that fearful self can be changed.

If I were mindful, I could never be made to act impulsively.

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In general, does anything good come of actions that are done impulsively? As a rule, do I get into trouble or do I stay out of trouble when somebody says something to me and I blurt out my immediate reaction? If I were mindful, I could never say anything cruel to anyone, anywhere, for any reason. If I were mindful, I couldn’t be brought to blame any other person for my pain. Do I tend to make wise choices when I feel compelled to make a decision urgently in order to satisfy some desire, or do I often find myself in over my head? Does my rush to take action in order to be better off in some future time result in my miscalculating the consequences? If I were mindful, I would never be in a rush... even if I had to move quickly. If I were mindful, I couldn't be tempted into making the same mistake repeatedly, let alone believe in the sense of regret that always follows. If I were mindful, neither the imagined joy, nor the sorrow of some tomorrow would hold any attraction for me.

If I were mindful, I wouldn’t misplace things, let alone my sense of self.

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When I misplace my keys, aren’t I sure it’s just because I’m some genius absent-minded professor? That’s what I like to tell myself, isn’t it? “I have much more important things to do.” But the fact is, when I put something down, I didn’t know I put it down. If I were mindful, when I put it down I would know I put it down. But I don’t realize I put things down because I’m already on my way to what my mind is telling me I have to go do and get. If that is true, then in scale, I may well wonder how often I misplace my sense of self. What is a misplaced sense of self? Any sense of identity that is produced by thinking of and identifying with something outside of myself in the present moment. If I were mindful, I would always be aware of where I was inwardly, keeping my attention in the here and now instead of being dragged off into thoughts about the past and future.

If I were mindful, I would know the difference between a want and a need.

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Do I want people to like me? To be seen as powerful or special? It seems like a positive thing, but as long as my whole idea of a self that’s special depends upon the confirmation of something outside of me, the self that seeks that sense of being special -- and every relationship that is created from it -- is the seed of just another fear that will drive that self deeper into despair and push it all the more to achieve what it believes it must have to be content with itself. It’s a law. If I were mindful, I would know that my wish to be seen a certain way is a want, not a need, and I would have no need whatsoever to put on any kind of pretense or act against myself in a vain attempt to gain an ultimately worthless prize.

If I were mindful, I would lose all fascination with talking about myself.

Aren’t I a master of talking about myself? And that doesn’t just mean saying, “I this” and “I that.” Talking about myself can be any time that I fill the moment with any kind of self-talk, like my plans for the future, because when I’m talking to myself about what I’m going to do, where I’m going to go, where I’ve been, who I know… every last part of it is fascination with myself. That’s all it is. It is just love of an energy, an air moving through the system that produces a vibration that feels like me. If I were mindful, I wouldn't have to talk to myself for any reason, let alone explain or justify myself for whatever may have just happened. If I were mindful, I could listen to others without having to inject anything about myself into the moment.

If I were mindful, I would be aware of anything that I take into myself.

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Why is the world being buried in nonsense? In food, in trivia, in the love of taking “selfies,” or looking at pictures of others? Because when I take that kind of “food” into myself, I am looking at the self that I love -- not the ones I say I love, not the things I say I love. I’m taking into myself a confirmation of an order of myself that feels the love. By the same token, when someone says something, or posts something on social media, and suddenly I feel that someone has betrayed me or lied to me, now I’ve taken in a bitter kind of food, but still one that bolsters my sense of “me.” When I take something into myself, I become what I take in. Whether it’s taking in food of a physical nature, thinking about someone who hurt me, or watching some thrill-packed action show – I’m taking that nourishment into myself. If I were mindful, I would not engage in useless outer or inner conversations. I would never feed myself the bitter food of judging those around me, let alone myself. Instead of taking in the negative manifestations of others, I would be able to use them for the highly positive purpose of furthering my own inner growth.

If I were mindful, I would enjoy an effortless sense of gratitude and reverence for life.

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To be mindful means to be in a place that is “made in the image of God,” where creation itself is occurring. The me that wants to be someone special, or that proves that it exists by the amount of suffering it has, can’t live in that place of creation. Why? Because everything there is new. I say I want new things, but which is better, to have new things or to be something new? If my being was actually new, then it wouldn’t matter if I had new things or not. Even if I lost the new things, I would still be new. I would understand that new things don’t add anything to me, because at the level of my true being, I am already new and not dependent upon things. If I actually understood that there is within me an order of being that is itself part of a timeless changing, producing a new birth in every moment -- if I could be that -- wouldn’t it make sense that being would be of most value to me? I would stop pursuing and taking into my life all of the food of thought and of self. By being mindful I would now pursue only that which is real and truly fulfilling, and a genuine gratitude would be my natural reward.

Learn to be mindful.

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So you have to ask yourself -- given these blessings of being mindful -- in the name of all that is Good, Holy, and Divine, wouldn’t it be better to place being mindful before all other pursuits? And shouldn't you dedicate your life to being as perfectly mindful as it is possible for you to be? Answer these questions in the affirmative, act accordingly, and all unseen blessings will be yours. To ignore them is to turn your back on yourself and -- with your inner eyes thus closed -- to walk in ever-smaller circles, going nowhere but down.

Agree to stop saving yourself with un-mindful behaviors, and be at peace. Daring to be at peace is the incredible act of choosing to be chosen. Why? Because you are helping yourself to a portion of the life that God has made available to you in any given moment. You don’t have to go looking for it; you don’t have to change anything. You don’t have to control yourself. You simply have to understand and then act from that understanding. You can be at peace right now if you so choose. You may be in the middle of a moment you don’t like, but you can remember a Love of a different order than the upset that is the outcome of some love you have of this world that has been denied. Right at that moment you can remember the whole of yourself – a veritable ocean that contains all the passing waves and currents -- and be at peace. The disturbance within the awareness is part of the peaceable action of the whole moment. Being mindful is what you must dare to be.