Author Archives: awakening415

present for your life

Mindfulness: Being Present for Your Life

Mindfulness is what I call “the basic tool for a joyful life.” It’s really about being present for your life. When you’re mindful you know what’s actually happening right now without getting lost in the stories our mind is continually creating. It awakens joy in several ways. First, mindfulness helps us wake up from our confusion by grounding us in our actual experience. Coming back to this moment interrupts that momentum of ruminations about the past or future or grumbling about the present. It’s like pressing the “clear” button on a calculator. It doesn’t matter how complex the numbers have gotten, once you press that “C” button you have a fresh start. When you begin to lose perspective and your …

widening your intention

Widening Your Intention

Excerpt from Awakening Joy by James Baraz and Shoshana Alexander Whatever motivates you to grow in happiness becomes the wind in the sails of your intention. It might seem pretty obvious why you would want to be happy, but if you take a look at your motives, you might find a few other reasons. Maybe you believe that if you have more joy, you’ll make more money, or you’ll get the right guy or the great gal. Those are not necessarily bad reasons for intending to be happy, but you might also consider opening up to other options. The more inspiring your motivation, the more energy you can bring to fulfilling your intention. In 1994, I was invited to a conference for …

Intention

Dear Friends, We’ve recently started the Awakening Joy course. It's exciting even after 15 years to support so many in having more fulfilling lives. At the live class in Berkeley as I looked out at the sea of people and thought of all the many more taking the course online, a familiar thought occurred to me, “How did that happen? How did that little, insecure boy from Elmhurst, Queens get to do this?” Our first course theme is Intention. And looking back on my life I can see that once I had an intention that inspired me, life supported me as long as I kept listening honestly inside and showed up. From my current perspective I see everything in my life has been …

7 Simple Practices to Really Enjoy the Holidays

With the holidays upon us, is it possible to really make it a season of good cheer, even in what for many, are times of uncertainty and concern? How can we stay grounded and present and still let ourselves feel the holiday spirit? Though the next gadget or experience may bring fleeting pleasure, genuine happiness is about how we feel inside. To really enjoy the holidays, it's helpful to understand that true well-being is directly related to how contracted or open your mind feels. Contraction means stress. Openness allows you and others to feel your care and love. For true well-being, try these simple practices that will keep you connected to healthy mind states and help you really enjoy the holidays: …

A Star at Dawn

I recently asked a friend if she knew how her ex-husband was. They had shared a classical passionate romance that flamed and burned over 40 years ago. She told me that sadly he had died of cancer a couple of years before. She then added that she learned of his passing through a posting on Facebook. The strangest part of that for her was noticing her reaction to the news. It was simply, “Oh, that’s too bad,” and nothing more. “This was a person I was so head over heels in love with that I left my home, family, friends and life to live with him in another continent in a city where I knew not a soul.” After a stormy …

joy of letting go

The Joy of Letting Go

One of the main routes to true well-being is the experience of letting go. These words are another way of saying the practice of simplicity. We un-complicate our mind as we free ourselves from the pull of more stuff or imagined needs. Letting go is like weeding. When you get rid of the weeds it makes room for more of the beauty to be seen. In the same way when we let go of our extra stuff—whether material things or mental clutter—it gives space for our creativity and full potential to flower. And this cleaning out is usually a joyful experience. Our ability to let go is an expression of contentment. We can let go of our attachments when we feel …

thanksgiving reflection

Thanksgiving Reflection: Grace Disguised as Obstacles

With Thanksgiving upon us this is the time to reflect on the blessings in our life. Gratitude is one of the most direct ways to open the heart and awaken joy. Gratitude is said to be an antidote to anger, worry, doubt, wanting. It has also been shown to intensify positive memories by reflecting with appreciation on how they have impacted us. Gratitude is said to be the antidote to the complaining mind. In his Discourse on Blessings, the Buddha talks of the great blessings in a human life. Here are some of them: to live in a place that is good for you, to do good deeds, to keep yourself going in the right direction, to be well educated, develop …

With Happiness, Don’t Go for a Gusher

In our competitive culture, we usually think "more is better." Being Number One, winning at all costs, and "having the most" is deeply ingrained in our psyche as real success. This model of going for the max is often erroneously applied to our own well-being. People mistakenly think intense delight is a sign that their attempt at awakening joy is truly successful. However, when we look for bells and whistles as indications of true happiness we're misunderstanding a very important principle: Setting a high bar of intense happiness works against true well-being. Although I'm all for enjoying peak experiences when they arise, measuring that ideal against a moderate level of okayness can easily render this moment as "not good enough." One of …