Practising Mindfulness

Why does it matter? Why should we bother to seek the means to advance beyond our primitive instincts? Are we not doomed anyway?

Because it’s a perfectly natural – and neutral way for us to be – we should make our motivation to develop a completely selfish one. Forget the childhood training that we shouldn’t be selfish as this only creates conflict. We are naturally selfish. What we must seek to move beyond, though (using selfish motivation), is our tendency to be self-centred. Self centeredness does belong in childhood. Selfishness is a different thing entirely.

Selfishly (this is for me) focusing on developing the mind results in improving the quality of your life. Paradoxically, improving the quality of your life helps others improve theirs

This is why keeping the motivation selfish is important. Important because people always act on example and rarely on advice. Be the thing you would wish for others, and this will help them. Initially, you are the one who’s moving forward. Others follow or be left behind. This is their choice.

Now we come to the issue of why. Why should you seek to improve when it seems hard to see the reasons?

You should seek to improve because it will improve your experience of life. It doesn’t matter about anything else. It doesn’t matter if humanity is doomed to fail because it’s all about you and your experience of life. Do you want a beautiful life? I do. And the way for me to get close to this is to understand my mind and how to control its influence. My motivation is entirely selfish.

Some scientists feel we have a very heavy responsibility to make it as a species. They feel this way because they’re fairly certain we are very, very rare

The extreme view is that we are the only intelligent species in the observable universe. If that’s a bit hard for you to swallow, you could safely assume that we’re the only intelligent species in the galaxy. This is believable, and if we believe it, this means we have a great responsibility to move beyond our primitive instincts. Because, amongst other things, it seems that our primitive instinct is to destroy ourselves. Think of this: What would happen if the majority of us shuck of our self-centeredness and selfishly decided to move beyond our primitive instincts?

If you’re interested in taking a different path and learning how to become more aware, through a Meditation to Mindfulness Workshop, contact me: philip@practisingmindfulness.co.uk