Mindful Mom

As I’ve grown up and evolved myself, girlfriends have become increasingly important to me, and like sisters. They really do feel like a growing extended family, a net for me in case I stumble, a warm embracing hug for when I need that. I kind of mentally picture the women in my life as a circle around me, holding hands and full of life. Hmmm—kind of like those circles we made with our children in preschool holding a parachute.

When a child is not bogged down by a preconceived notion of right or wrong there is less of an emotional charge around taking a look at life experience exactly as it is. This doesn’t mean that whatever is happening is ethically neutral, it just means that it is useful to teach kids to view experience objectively before taking action.

I can’t wait for the new law to go into effect because my mindfulness has been seriously at risk thanks to using my cell phone in my car.

I’m a mom with a mission. Every movement has its breakthrough moment–a time when it no longer has to defend what it is saying and doing because the problem it has identified is so clear that others need no coaxing to join. Mindfulness training for children has arrived at that moment.

And, in that one moment, I thought I understood the meaning of the word “freedom”. I didn’t have to let my previous upset impact my interaction with my son. It was a new moment, all its own, and I was completely free to experience it independently of any other moment (or set of moments).

James Carse in his new book, The Religious Case against Belief, writes of various types of ignorance differing in the degree of effort present with each. As the flip side of ignorance is awareness, it also comes with various shades of effort. It does take effort to direct my eyesight inward and see the 1000+ regions of mind (good and evil) and to realize that perhaps the greatest purpose in in life is the discovery process.

My brilliant and erudite husband has a new book coming out and it seems as if the ‘author video’ is de rigeur - I uploaded a screenshot and posted it below . . .

Mindfulness is about balance: being aware of one’s own experience while being sensitive and attuned to our impact on others. In our lives, we are continually falling out of balance. . .

What I take issue with, and I am not alone, is Rebecca’s black and white take on mothering — there is her mother, the selfish careerist, and then there is her, the new mom who argues that all that should matter to a young woman with children is “a happy family.” What happened to the self-preserving and child-loving in between?

Scientists are showing that play is important for health and well-being, having fun makes us live happier and healthier lives. So what stops us from having fun?

• By 12th grade, our children score lower on math and science tests than most other kids in the world.
• We now have one of the highest high school dropout rates of any industrialized nation.
• Six million students are reading below their grade level.

When you get a chance, check out this Brookings Institute Report: Extensive research shows that when women run for office, they perform just as well as men. Yet women remain severely under-represented in our political institutions. In this report, we argue that the fundamental reason for women’s under-representation is that they do not run for office. There is a substantial gender gap in political ambition; men tend to have it, and women don’t.

Today on Huffington Post, Seth writes that: there was a time when a politician’s relationship with the universe was a private matter about which he or she could choose to reflect deeply, or not. But now religion is just another signifier, like lapel pins, an item to be checked off when we’re evaluating would-be presidents. Allow me to quote Eric Hoffer: “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”

In Israel itself, 60 years of existential peril have created a sense of living in the moment — currently there is a surprising sense of well-being among certain strata of the Israeli population that comes from focusing on family, on work and on materialistic concerns divorced from national and political concerns. When you live in the moment, you can live anywhere:

In this Teen Day of Mindfulness, one boy said, “I have been really upset since my girlfriend broke up with me this week. I noticed that if I just focused on my breath, I didn’t have to think about her. Every time my thoughts went there, I just returned to my breath. I felt less messed up than I have all week. That’s amazing.”