On Coffee and Other Matters

With palms together,

Good Morning Everyone,

The taste of coffee in the morning is like an old, old friend.  There was a time when I would drink several pots of coffee a day. I often worked 13 hour days, nearly always six days a week, for years and and a cup of coffee with every client was a welcomed way of taking a break without appearing to do so.  I could pour the cups, stir, breath a few breaths, then come back into the consulting room and sit down.  After chit chatting for a few minutes over the coffee we were ready to begin the therapy. 

  

In the before time, I was a psychotherapist and businessman.  I started a private practice with a hundred bucks while in the PhD program at CWRU and after ten years sold the practice and escaped the “corporate” world.  It was an exciting time to be in the field.  Lots of innovation, lots of money, and lots of stress.  It was in that climate I began to see the value in, and do the more formal practice of, meditation.  

Of course in the beginning most of us clinicians saw meditation as a tool.  We did not see it in the larger context of a “spiritual” practice, yet there it was.  I remember taking a seminar on meditation put on by some ‘self-hypnosis’ group or other and found myself actually amazed at the power of guided meditation. 

One of the most important things I took away from those years was the practice of mindfulness. I was dedicated at it’s practice.  I literally saw myself doing, feeling, seeing, tasting, smelling, and touching everything, and, at some point with true mindfulness, which is to say, without tagging it.

It’s beautiful and effortless. My coffee is getting cold.  To exist in mindfulness, do not say, drinking coffee, I am aware I am drinking coffee.”  Instead, just drink the coffee as fully and completely as you can without separating yourself from the coffee and the cup.  

Try it, you’ll like it.

Gassho

Daiho