Chocolate

Chocolate for your senses. "When I eat, I eat; when I sleep, I sleep." - Old Zen Saying How often do you finish a meal and suddenly realize that you are not even aware of what each ingredient tasted like? This means that your mind and your senses were not in direct communication. Your mind was probably too busy running errands telling your senses that their impressions were not as important. You probably did not even fully enjoy the meal. It might have served the purpose of satisfying your hunger and that's about it. Contrary to popular belief, absolutely everything we do in life, from something as mundane as brushing our teeth, eating, going to work, paying bills, cleaning the house, running errands, recovering from the flu, sleeping, to going on the dream vacation of our life, should be as enjoyable and as "blissful" as having a piece of our most favorite chocolate on earth Easier said than done? Not necessarily. The reason most of us are failing over and over in achieving this state of complete contentment in our daily life is because we have been misinformed. The information we have been given has been wrong to begin with, in two accounts. First and foremost, we are taught to believe that, "being mindful" is not for us, it is not something that people living in the "real" world could achieve. However, simply looking up the definition of mindfulness in the dictionary, it reads: "Mindfulness is the quality or state of being conscious or aware of something." Well, after all, isn't that how we are supposed to be experiencing our daily existence, being conscious, being aware, in full control of our thoughts, feelings and emotions? Secondarily, we are misinformed in terms of the process. We tend to believe that mindfulness requires years of strict practices such as weird meditation techniques, pretzel-like yoga poses, scary breathing exercises, awkward smelling candles and incenses, or even worse, hanging out with some "guru" and waiting for their blessing. This could not be any further from the truth. As a matter of fact, Swami Vivekananda, the key figure who introduced yoga to the western world, during the late 1800's said: "Anything that is secret and mysterious in these systems of Yoga should be at once rejected. The best guide in life is strength. In religion, as in all other matters, discard everything that weakens you, have nothing to do with it." How extremely empowering these words are We have the ability to develop our own strength, in any area of our life we decide to focus our attention and our awareness on, as long as we choose our training tools wisely. Now, don't get us wrong. Choosing our training tools wisely, implementing them and moving forward with them may not be as easy as a walk in the park. It requires discrimination, discipline and even experiencing discomfort during the process, aka growing pains. However, the results are exhilarating, life changing to say the least In one of our favorite movies and 1994 classic, Forrest Gump shares with us that his Momma always said: "Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get." And even though that may be true, whether we are going to eat it or not, the choice is ours. Are you ready to design your own box of chocolates?