The Art of Falling Awake: Meditations on Mindfulness, Happiness, and Radical Sanity
You may enjoy this introduction from my next book...
It was a sunny Friday afternoon in Alabama.
I was on my way home, jamming out in my new (heavily used) convertible. I whipped into a side street just as a guy and his dog were starting to cross. I slammed on the brakes. And he jumped back.
We froze – locking eyes in mutual startle, confusion, and anger.
He started mouthing and gesturing at me. Autopilot took over - I gave it right back. Next thing I know I threw open my door and started out after him.
And just as he turned around, I paused… And said – “hey that was my bad”.
*Hard Stop*
He couldn’t believe his ears. Frankly I couldn’t believe mine either. "I came in too fast. It was my fault. I'm sorry."
He said it was all good and we parted ways.
And as I got in my car, I thought – what the hell was that?!
Then I realized – that’s mindfulness. That’s meditation meeting real life. It's working on you even when you don't know it.
Mindful living is slowly falling awake: living with a spirit of intention and awareness. It’s the practice of learning to be where your feet are.
But you’ll find this practice isn't like running where you see faster mile times or step on the scale and see you’ve lost weight. With mindfulness, progress is often invisible. It’s not a 1-to-1 relationship. It’s nonlinear.
Progress goes slowly, then all at once.
If you make an intention to be where your feet are; to fall awake; to cultivate awareness with the practice of mindful living, you very well may be transformed. But you probably won’t even notice, until life happens…
And you realize you’ve transformed for the better.
This story is a microcosm of the transformation in my own life.
We can see in this what my default tendency looks like based on the initial script playing out above: self-righteous ego superiority, total lack of self-control, and anger - even rage. It is this same default mindlessness (in contrast with mindfulness) that led to my many proud accomplishments as a young man: breaking my hand punching a wall, dislocating my shoulder fighting my ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend, battling eating disorders, and a near brush with opioid addiction. This is not to mention the countless arguments and shows of ego (including this post below that now makes my stomach turn).
“Success is my Obsession” (with a capital O) – lovely! For my mother’s sake, I will spare you any more examples of my brilliance and wisdom.
Suffice to say I was an out-of-control, short-tempered, obsessive egomaniac. And in many ways, I was not on the best trajectory. As one Buddhist writer put it, I was “drifting unaware on a surge of habitual impulses.”
I now consider myself a reformed a–hole (accounts vary with respect to my progress). Frankly, I still struggle with neuroticism and have thought about starting or joining something like a “Productivity AA”.
I don’t have it all figured out, but since the days of that Instagram post I’ve spent five years studying happiness: I’ve spent four months living as a Zen monk, written books on meditation, and become a professional speaker on happiness and leadership. I haven’t gotten in a true fight - physical or emotional - in years. I haven’t touched a drug since I was 18. Outbursts of anger are rare. And I reckon I do okay in terms of living with humility, peacefulness, and intention (just ask my friends — actually, don’t because they’ll tell you about all the embarrassing shit I still do).
What I have to thank for this change is what I might call slowly falling awake – this is what mindfulness means to me. It is an intention to live with awareness. In doing this we may most effectively cultivate happiness. It is being there – with full attention – for more moments of our lives. So, we can experience them and make better choices.
Viewed in this way, mindful living is really a radical act of sanity (particularly relevant for our insane world).
This book is an invitation to living a life of mindfulness, happiness, and radical sanity. Slowly falling awake is awakening to life: embodying a spirit of intention, awareness, and intimacy with your experience of being.
This is, perhaps, life’s most important subject. And it is something we are never taught.
If you examine your lived experience closely, you may find that it is exceedingly rare for you to be where your feet are. It is much more common that we are not living life but living mind.
Dan Harris wrote 10% Happier. He originally planned to title his book The Voice in My Head is an A--hole. I would’ve gone with The Voice in My Head is a Freaking D—khead and an Idiot (that’s why I’m not a publicist). He describes how we are entranced by this nonstop conversation going on in our heads: so much so that we don’t even know it’s there.
I’m not talking about “hearing voices,” I’m talking about the internal narrator, the most intimate part of our lives. The voice comes braying in as soon as we open our eyes in the morning and then heckles us all day long with an air horn. It’s a fever swamp of urges, desires, and judgments. It’s fixated on the past and the future, to the detriment of the here and now. It’s what has us reaching into the fridge when we’re not hungry, losing our temper when we know it’s not really in our best interest, and pruning our inboxes when we’re ostensibly engaged in conversation with other human beings…
And if you find yourself saying - “I don’t know what you’re talking about” or “that doesn’t apply to me” – that’s the very voice we’re talking about.
The constant daydreaming and internal distraction are mostly concerned with rationalizing emotional reactions, worrying, ruminating, and protecting the ego. It takes us out of the here and now causing us to miss the lived experiences right in front of us.
As the saying goes — depression is a disease of the past and anxiety is a disease of the future.
On top of this problematic default mode of being, we have the challenge of modern life. Perhaps this call back to full engagement with our lives is what we need now more than ever.
In Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death - he provides startlingly relevant social commentary for modern life by comparing the perspective of two futurist authors: George Orwell and Aldous Huxley.
Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared that the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy… In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we desire will ruin us.
There seems to be truth in Huxley’s fear: billion-dollar media companies feeding on outrage, the brightest technical minds of our generation monetizing our distracted attention, and hustle culture demanding a frenetic pace. The present predicament of the modern human is grappling with an ocean of overwhelm, distraction, and busyness. It’s trying to carve out a little pocket of spaciousness to just be whilst an infinity of factors conspires to pull us away from ourselves.
Slowing down, turning towards, and leaning into life — what if we did more of this? What could life be – and what could our world become? Living this way is an act of radical sanity.
In this book you’ll find short stories, lessons learned, reflections, quotes, and contemplations on life’s big questions. You’ll explore life lessons, love, death, Zen, happiness, and more. Please do not feel you must read it in the traditional front to back way. Consider it a collection - go to the titles that spark your curiosity and read what pulls you in.
While sure, I hope you get a few laughs and learn a few things. My hope for this book is it draws you into a fuller experience of your own life…
I hope that someday, months or years from now, life will happen - and you realize you’ve transformed for the better.
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Joseph Campbell tells the story of a meeting at the 9th International Congress for the History of Religions – Tokyo, 1958.
A US professor of sociology met with a Japanese Shinto priest. The professor said something to the effect of – you know I’ve been to a number of Shinto ceremonies and shrines. But I don’t get the ideology. I don’t get your theology…
The priest paused and fell into deep thought for a moment.
He said - “I think we don’t have an ideology. We don’t have theology. We dance.”
In this book, we dance.
Interested in an advanced author copy? Just reply and let me know. As one of my readers I would love your feedback, thoughts, or anything else.
Yours,
Jackson K.