This 2-minute video clip provides a summary of 4 key points. It is part of the 25-minute video about embodied relational mindfulness.
Transcript:
In summary, I’m going to give you four points to remember:
One: Look at the situation as a whole. We’re not just talking about a person, a self, any more than we’re talking about the sunflower without paying attention to the sun, which is why the sunflower is oriented the way it is.
Two: We’re going to be paying attention to the Orienting that is implicit in the inner movement. I talked to you about paying attention to what’s happening inside. And paying attention to what’s happening inside is a way to understand what it is that you’re doing as a whole organism. Your whole organism is responding in an embodied way to how you’re perceiving the situation: threat, pleasure, whatever… How you’re perceiving it, and how your organism is responding to what you’re perceiving.
Three: In order to change, we’re not just paying attention to something that we do on our own – from inside through insight, through intelligence, through willpower. But we’re also paying attention to the situation as a whole, in paying attention to how, in essence, we create another sun. That is, that the circumstances that are going to pull us and help us go in that direction.
And four, last but not least: As much as I love that metaphor of Sunflower Mind, I want to caution you to remember it’s just a metaphor. So, you know, it’s going to be of great value to pay attention to the poetic truth of it. But not to the point of trying to be so consistent as to then look at the situation top-down, trying to fit everything into that metaphor. It is just a metaphor.