the "Surviving Mindfulness" collection:
possibly related
here's the deal
Mindfulness isn't just paying attention. That's step one.
The second is study yourself, your desires, your most vulnerable inner questions.
study yourself with earnest clarity; try some of the practices that are available to us—breathing, meditation, mindfulness of any stripe. you do that and you learn quick that there is more going on than simple body-minds moving through planet earth.
there's stepping back
there's we are not our body-minds
there's spaciousness and galaxies that intermingle like streams becoming togetherness where the great divide recedes.
This is the space between our breaths.
there's nothing there
It is there we find all we need: courage, strength, Love, whatever you are striving for, even non-striving.
Without this wider, deeper witnessing power, all that one sees and beholds is the hot wet messy of bodies and cravings and sadness and pain. Sure, there's often joy and gladness, but as with all ephemera, they pass, as do the hungers, except the ones that bedevil your sleep and bring you back lifetime after lifetime to go through the same dramas in different costumes.
i'm all for living on earth, but come here with eyes and soul wide open, with something to do, something useful and kind. and in that case, start now.
Step back, travel into the center of each breath, to the quiets in between and explore your own self, and you will find we are all connected, literally part of the same mesh, as inseparable as one sunbeam is from another.
pitfalls
the only big error seems to be we go too fast into this present-moment stuff, or we go too slow or not at all. maybe we're not supposed to go at all, just be Love, let ourselves reside in our original nature. hmmm, i see spelunking ahead :-)