Pausing for Enjoyment

From the Urban Tarot, the Nine of Disks; from the Principles to Live By, Mindfulness:

The paradox of impatience is that, in trying to hurry toward enjoyment, we hurry past it. 

―Dean Sluyter

The Thoth keyword for this card is Gain; Scott says it is our hard-learned prudence that gets us to this place. Yet Gain is not just about more money or things - it can also include time to enjoy the pleasures of life as this woman does. But for those of us who hit the floor running every morning, it may be hard to relax. We may be lying in a hot tub with cucumbers over our eyes, but our mind has jumped ahead to what we need to be doing later. Mindfulness is a reminder to rest the mind and let the senses take over, simply paying attention without judgment. It gets easier with practice.

When practicing mindfulness, even directed toward something as ordinary as breathing, we enhance the part of the mind that is aware of the way things are while diminishing the part that is stressed because things are not the way we want them to be.

—Andrew Olendzki

Mindfully Do Something Different

From the Sun and Moon Tarot, the Six of Swords; from the Wisdom Keepers Oracle, Mindfulness:

          Six swords pierce the symbol of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a sign according to Decort of being able to think analytically. Complementing that meaning is the card Mindfulness - Intentionally observing each moment as it unfolds without judgment. In other words, we're watching without letting our emotional reactive patterns drive us to do what we usually do. There is a lojong slogan that says, "Don't be so predictable." It basically means that most of us have certain buttons that can be pushed that cause us to behave with all the regularity of a robot. But these cards suggest we don't have to stay in those emotional loops; with mindfulness, we can become aware of them, feel the discomfort of not acting on them, and practice doing something different.

Nature has endowed the human brain with a malleability and flexibility that lets it adapt to the demands of the world it finds itself in. The brain is neither immutable nor static but continuously remodeled by the lives we lead. ― Richard J. Davidson