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Good in the Beginning

Posted by on July 28, 2014 in Blog, Writing and Meditation

Good in the Beginning

I came across another piece of advice about meditation that I found useful, and thought I would share it, this from The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, by Sogyal Rinpoche, a book that was recommended to me about fifteen years ago and was one of the first books I ever read about meditation. In a chapter on meditation, called “Bringing the Mind Home,” he talks about a method for making meditation more powerful and useful. He calls it, “Good in the Beginning, Good in the Middle, and Good at the End.” Good in the beginning refers to setting a positive motivation at the beginning of the work. Good in the Middle refers to doing our best, and having as clear a mind as possible, while we’re doing the practice. And then Good at the End is remembering, when we finish, to simply dedicate the work—that it will become of benefit to ourselves, and, if this makes sense to us, that it will also, in some way, begin to benefit others. I like the symmetry of this advice and the way it can frame one’s work, and I’ve been trying to put it into practice, not just for meditation, but for writing as well: Good in the Beginning: May this writing be for the benefit of myself, for all who come across it—and for all sentient beings. Good in the Middle: Trying to stay clear and aware and focused as I work. Good at the End: Remembering to dedicate the work—may this writing be of benefit for all sentient beings. I think there could be countless ways to adapt this. What could make your own work good in the beginning, good in the middle, and good at the end? The book, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, can be found...

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Writing and Healing Prompt: Ira Progoff’s Stepping Stones in Three Dimensions

Posted by on July 13, 2014 in Blog, Writing and Healing Prompts

Writing and Healing Prompt: Ira Progoff’s Stepping Stones in Three Dimensions

Another useful way to work with stepping stones, building from last week’s prompt, is to take a set of stones and add another layer:   What did I want at each stone? What was my motivation?  And why did I want that? And why did that matter? And what was beneath that?   It’s like taking a two-dimensional map and adding another dimension—the dimension of depth. The dimension of why.   You can begin to deepen the map in this way. You can notice threads that emerge—patterns. You can see how your motivations may have changed over time. The previous piece on stepping stones is here. The photo, Stepping Stones, River Rothay, is by Chris Heaton and can be found...

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Steppingstones as a Way to Examine Your Life

Posted by on July 6, 2014 in Blog, Map, Writing and Healing Prompts

Steppingstones as a Way to Examine Your Life

Ira Progoff, a student of Carl Jung, who developed an elaborate process of journaling for self-discovery, one that involved binders and dividers and multiple colors, used the term stepping stones to describe a way of looking back and examining one’s life. I’ve always found his term evocative. I see the stones on a path with spaces between them, the stones stretching back as well as forward. Our lives are a river of moments. The stones are those key moments—often ones we remember vividly—often ones where something of significance turned, or shifted. In his book, At a Journal Workshop, Progoff writes: They may come as memories or visual images or inner sensations of various kinds. Especially they may state themselves in the form of similes or metaphors in addition to expressing the literal facts of past experience. Let your attitude be receptive enough that the continuity of your life as a whole can present itself to you both in symbolic forms and in literal factual statements. He compares the creation of stepping stones to a running broad jump. “We go back,” he says, “into our past in order to be able to leap forward into our future.” He recommends “placing” eight or ten steppingstones.  No more than twelve. Simply naming the stepping stones is a beginning—and later, if one chooses, one can come back to a single stone and explore it in more depth. The book, At a Journal Workshop, can be found here. More about Progoff’s workshop process can be found here. Photo by Chris Heaton at Geograph: a footpath over the River Rothay in Cumbria, Great Britain...

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