GMMP Class #4

Gold Mind Meditation Project                       Free Class and Parking (I will provide vouchers!)
Brain Injury Connections NW / BIRRDsong
Meets this Weds. April 8, 6:30 - 8:00PM
Legacy Good Samaritan Hospital at NW 22nd & NW Marshall, Portland
In Wilcox Building to right of Main Entrance from NW22nd, Conference Room 'B' (downstairs)
(Park in Parking Structure #2 or #3 on NW Marshall, take a ticket from machine and get a voucher from me in class)
Led by Had Walmer, Founder GMMP,

For this weeks GOLD MIND CLASS #4: BEING honestly with our life experience.

Our lives aren't about feeling 'all better,'  all the time,  that is a fantasy. Let the good times roll! There is a natural rolling cycle of starting, fulfilling/doing and completing our actions. Take the actions you've started to completion confidently; Or be surrounded by remnants of incompletion, which drain your energy.

Tonight is about bringing wisdom forth in your life experience, using the light of awareness, which is what guides our mindfulness practice.  This is accepting all of our experience. Accepting and consciously having it, so it doesn't have us!
This must include feeling bad (note the hindrance we talked about last week - aversion, pushing away, >Denying that we are feeling bad).

Impermanence is one ground of our being. Bad feelings can be faced directly, intimately. Get to know them now, on a first name basis.  They are visitors that will leave as quickly as they come.  Look and see. Are you the same as yesterday, last year, last decade?

We can learn that the 'sultry bummers' and pain of our life experiences occur and Recur!  Good feelings arise and then... the tide goes out.  Good feelings pass away. We aren't ALL BETTER all the time. We can declare this intention; it is a path and goal of NEUROPLASTICITY. The brain can heal itself, over time.

Rather - the way 'all better now' looks is simply,  exactly the way our experience is occurring for us right now.
AND we actually can be more skilled in transformation, freeing ourselves of self created suffering
And discontent. This freedom happens in the present moment!
OBSERVE and let go of the demand that we be different than we are. This is liberating!

I have a brain injury, that isn't going away! Brain is part of our body and BODY is the First
Foundation of mindfulness. How is it in the body now? What are the feelings: pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral? This is it! It doesn't get more real than this. Welcome to 'drivers ed' for the new era.

I have focussed this insight on the brain plight of my community, this community of brain injured peers. The brass ring, NEUROPLASTICITY  is now becoming understandable, still hard to get to. It is skillful to hold this as a goal and aspiration-
fine as that goa lis, we are still in the plight of having this human life with concomitant dukha or suffering, however there is also a cure available in mindfulness meditation.

One called the Buddha discovered liberation from that plight
 -Accept what is, and suffering will abate, depart! There is freedom from dukha!
There is an eightfold path!

Enter OBSERVATION and ATTENTION to what is, to how I am holding my experience.

We can take a stand for wellness holding it honestly, joy denying and if we can, letting go
Of the unpleasantness and letting it pass.
Liberation is the promise of this practice!