Smiling Meditation

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A smile is the happiness you find right under your nose. The moment you smile, the universe smiles back at you.

(If you want to uncover the secrets of how to put your smile to work for you, skip to the last paragraph below.)

When you meditate, you practice with your present moment awareness. As soon as we get off the cushion, we get captured by the day's flow and can't connect with the awareness we had while meditating. How do we bring meditation awareness into the rest of our life? Most meditation instruction doesn't usually model this, yet this is the vast majority of our life.

1.4% of my day is spent in formal meditation.
98.6% of my day represents the rest of my life.

Even if you two hours every day meditating.
8.3% of the day spent in meditation.
91.7% spent in the rest of life.

We have to find a way to undermine the boundary between a formal period of practice and what happens in ordinary life. It's helpful to be less precious concerning the formal sessions and less cavalier about the rest of your life.

Bring happiness to your day by putting your smile to work for you. Let smiling be the queue that starts the cascade of falling back into awareness. Throughout the day, every time you notice you are not smiling, smile. Let your cheeks rise, stretch your lips, let the energy of your smile move about your face how it wants. Notice that this energy can move down your throat and into your chest and belly. Notice the energy as it spreads out into your body. You need only a half-second for this. At first, the feelings may be vague. You may only remember your smile a couple of times in the day. With practice, smiling will become a superpower, instantly connecting your awareness with the present moment.

This post is meant to help us renew our commitment to caring for the world and remind our future selves to be fractionally better than before. This post points to where I want to work on my mental fitness and ‘adulting.’. It is a reminder to operate in the world with love and compassion and includes tips put together in moments of clarity to help when caught up in the world’s uncontrollable chaos. Please, continue the conversation anytime: will@kestrelcreek.com.

A Smiling Experiment

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We are happier when we smile. I don't have to tell you that; entire books have been written about the astonishing power of smiling to create sparkles in life. Scientists have run many long term experiments, tallied zillions of data points, made tons of first-person observations, taken loads of surveys, compared notes on discoveries. They have confirmed how voluntary smiling changes brain activity making you look, act, and feel smarter.

These ideas aren't new to you. You have the first-hand experience with smiling. I'm sure you've smiled once or twice in the past and seen how the situation was transformed by your smile.

You're making your world by smiling with it. Smiles get reflected back from what is smiled at in a feed-back loop like a snowball gains size as it tumbles down the hill. You feel happy, and that makes you smile. But it works both ways: when you smile, your brain can detect this.

"I'm smiling. That must mean I'm happy."

So happiness makes you smile, but smiling can also produce happiness.[^1]

Don't hold your smile ransom thinking you'll get around to smiling in the future when all your to-dos are done, when your health is perfect, when all your desires have been met, and all the news is good. At random times during your day, notice if you have a sullen expression. Notice how you hold your face when you read, when out on a walk when preparing dinner for your family, notice if you are smiling. Then just smile, observe the results, and tally another data point in the grand experiment of your life.

References

[^1]: Neuroscience Discovers 5 Things That Will Make You Happy

Walk Time! Smell Time!

The air is still, and the temperature is in the high 20's. The bright sun is peeking out from between the broken cloud cover. Winter solstice signals short days and long nights. A rabbit on the hillside caught Zivon's attention for a moment. We see the same rabbit or maybe her partner again a couple of more times.

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Walks with Zivon afford exercise, fresh air, and partial solitude. Zivon looks forward to them because he gets the previous night's news stories left by the local animal life.

Zivon operates on a different plane. He smells the activity and nuances of the characters of the night, closer than I can imagine. Fresh tracks are everywhere in the snow. The coyote, moose, deer, and rabbit tracks are identifiable. Some of the tracks are unidentifiable, possibly raccoon or porcupine. Earlier, I saw evidence of porcupine activity in the wood lot. An eight-foot-tall sapling had the bottom reaches of the trunk denuded of bark. The top was green and vibrant, not yet realizing that its life-giving supply of nutrients from its roots has been cut off.

Zivon meanders amongst the trees, tangling his lead, but he knows where he is going. He lives in a different world filled with smells unavailable to me. He has a different experience of walks, and this is so foreign to me as to be unknowable. The woods are filled with smells, on the trails, in the footprints, on the grasses, in the air. Here and there is fresh coyote shit, the leavings from last night's rendezvous of the local pack.

Zivon puts his head down and is concentrating on deciphering the news contained in the scent. When he puts his nose in the coyote track, what is it telling him? Does it tell him that the coyote family is getting enough to eat and adapting to the presence of the bull moose who has moved into the coyote's home territory? When he puts his nose in the moose track, what is it telling him? Does it tell him that the moose is a bit lonely waiting for his partner to arrive so he can do his bull moose romancing?

This is my flash non-fiction practice for today.

More noticing

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Most of us walk around, thinking we know what things around us are. We barely glance at the things we pass. More time is spent lost in thought than not. We fail to notice our experience. Too much of my life goes by unnoticed. What isn't notice can't be a source of gratitude.

This is a keystone skill that leads to other human skills like listening in a conversation, being present in the company of others, and being less forgetful.

It is the repetition of attention, and the ordinary noticing of the details of the day, that conspires to wake us up. Take a moment and notice how you are feeling at this moment. It seems a frivolous luxury be stopping to notice the small details of our day. But, think about it; we go through the day not even noticing how we feel. Sure the big things that force us to pay attention are the things we remember. If asked to describe our day, we'd say it was pretty good, or we were crazy active, insanely hectic, overly busy. But would that be 100% true? Day's are variable, and describing our day like this shortchanges a curious inspection of how things actually are.

To learn to navigate the sea of complexity, you need a sense of curiosity and the habit to notice the nature of things around you. You need to nurture the ability to learn new things. [^1]

Here are a few tips that are helping me get in the habit of noticing and might help you. [^2]

Notice the small things

The big things are easy to notice. They scream for attention. You can't help notice chest pain and your spouse yelling. Notice small, insignificant things like the warmth and tingling sensations arising from the back of your calves or the sound of rain on the roof as it impinges on your eardrum.

Commit to the challenge of noticing

To make this work you'd want two things, a time frame and a way of recording progress. Don't overthink this. Your commitment could be, "For one week, I'll take the time to notice two small things and put two check marks on the calendar." At the end of the week, see how you do. Don't judge. Notice how you feel.

Keep it simple

Don't try to be an Olympic Noticer on the first day. Start slow. Let the positive feedback loop develop naturally.

When you fail to notice and start again as if for the first time

Failing to notice is called lost in thought. When I notice I'm lost in thought, noticing brings my awareness back to the present immediately. I can begin noticing my experience, as if for the first time.

How can you be grateful unless you notice the objects of gratitude.

References

Other stuff I've written on this topic