Break the Pattern

“Everything good has awareness for its root.”
-Bodhidharma

Habit is the enemy of everything good.

Whether you want to improve any sort of performance, or just want to be a little happier, replacing habitual reactions with appropriate responses is key.

As you increasingly become aware of your mind’s activity, you’ll gain the ability to untangle its habitual, negative reactions from its helpful responses.

Negative reactions cripple, like when you want something that cannot be changed to be different, or when you want something you cannot have.

Helpful responses assist, as you select items to prepare a meal, or pick out your outfit for the day. 

If a thought is not helpful, it’s worse than useless.

Keep watching your mind; become more aware of unknown thoughts. As the internal commentary is increasingly recognized for what it is: debilitating, it is abandoned, without any effort on your part.

As you keep working with being move attentive, at some point, “you” may disappear. You, as you are normally aware of yourself, will have ceased to exist for a bit. You will know that happened as you “return”—from what felt like a state of impersonal witnessing—to normality (whatever that is). With an absolute lack of personal concern, whatever just happened will have been nothing short of perfection.

There is a performance related saying: Attention beats habit every time. If perfection is your goal, replace habit with awareness.

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Comments are welcome, and all questions will be answered.

I’ll post a new topic each Friday afternoon, in one of two categories. One will be on shooting, and the other will be on living. Or: how I learned to live from what I learned by competing.

Thanks for coming in.