Right mindfulness

I learned mindfulness from my teacher Zen master Thich Naht Hanh.

But good teacher doesn’t mean good student. I know the drill, but to truly practice right mindfulness, it’s taken me like a more than a decade and I’m still fumbling.

Just how hard is watching your breath, being mindful of your daily actions?

It’s hard because it becomes a tool to avoid stuff.

If I’m mindful, this negative emotion will go away.
If I’m mindful, this hard issue will disappear.
If I’m mindful, this too shall pass.

Right tool but applied wrongly.

A psychopath can be stabbing someone very mindfully.
That’s not right mindfulness.

Right mindfulness (to me) starts with a sigh, a sense of defeat, or acceptance. The kind you breathe out a long one, and then say, “Ok I get it now. I’m here for you. For real. I won’t try to run. I’m here.” Right mindfulness is not an escape, not a flight from threat.

It happened when I was trying to manage my nerves/anxiety for an event. I was trying to use mindfulness to make the nerves go away. Breathing in, breathing out twice as long. Shaking and jumping a bit. Trying everything—and therefore nothing—just to avoid the nerves, make it go away.

Then a moment of “Ok I’m here for you”, and then calmness came back.

And the whisper of an answer I heard after that: “I’m afraid of not being good enough.”

Bingo!

Epiphany.
There it is.

Thank you, right mindfulness.