Remindfulness
  • Home
  • APP EDITIONS
    • Classic Edition
    • Recovery Edition
  • The Remindfulness Blog
  • Get app
  • FAQ
  • Support
  • Subscribe
  • VIDEOS
    • Mindfulness Help Video
    • Demo Video

The Remindfulness Blog

Joy, frustration, excitement, peace and hilarity on the bumpy road to mindfulness.

Click here to get the Remindfulness app

The whole problem of mindfulness

1/13/2013

2 Comments

 
Is that it's boring. Well, at least to the egoic mind, anyway. The IDEA of it is thrilling. The ego LOVES the idea -- how could it not? It's so lofty and yet so sensible at the same time. It clearly would solve the world's problems.

But once you get past the abstract stuff, it's about paying attention to the boring details - anything from washing your hands to listening to your own breathing - until they aren't boring anymore.

This is easy when you're in emotional pain and boring details are like a warm beach you want to lie face down on while the turbulent sea of your unmanageable life churns at the drag marks you've left in the sand.

But when life is pretty good and things are fun and you're having, as described in A Course In Miracles, "a happy dream", there's certainly less motivation to put down that newspaper or stop thinking about that do-to-list or even to stop congratulating yourself on the number of minutes you've been working out this time.

Mindfulness, as I understand it, can be lived every minute of every day of your entire life. But it takes enormous effort. At first, anyway. And then it becomes second nature. I hope. What inspired me to create the Remindfulness app was something Eckhart Tolle said. Not sure where - could have been "The Power of Now", or "A New Earth" or a few years ago when I heard him speak to a crowd of 2000 people at the conference center in Sydney. He said something like, 'instead of sitting in perfect meditation for two hours and then going out into the world and living the rest of your day egoically (is that a word? my spell check says no...) it's far, far better in terms of your spiritual development to return to the present moment for even just a few seconds, multiple times throughout your day'.

That really hit home with me.

That, and this second thing which I also believe Tolle said which was that we need to stop thinking of enlightenment as something to be attained at some future time. That the truth was we are all, most of us, enlightened for at least a second or two each day. The key is to expand on that, make those seconds longer and happen more frequently.

Cool!

So, cut to a few years later and a head full of great spiritual concepts and I am not sure I have expanded on those seconds of enlightened mindfulness a great deal. Well, I just keep forgetting to! Life is so...busy and that "to do" is just too damn sexy.  But what if this smartphone I spend so much time on could help me instead of distracting me?

Ta-da!

During a meditation at a find-your-true-groove-in-life workshop/retreat run by the gifted Naomi Nonu-Carling (called "From Mainstream to Your Stream") the idea for the app was handed to me in its entirety - the name even coming in a moment later like I'd ordered it from some kind of quantum vending machine.

I'd never made an app before. I was a screenwriter, not a programmer. "Ding" the quantum vending machine plopped out a lead. One of the other participants in the workshop had a geography teacher daughter who had just lost her app-ginity creating a test-study app for students and I could tap her for guidance.

Well, it's been a long and wildly fun process making this app a reality. But it's also been challenging - to my skills, my patience -- and my purpose in even creating it! Imagine how many times I was stewing frustration over a bug that STILL hadn't been fixed...when one of my lovingly crafted reminders came popping up on my phone's screen instructing me to feel gratitude or send Love light to someone I was angry with. Grrrr. LOL. I had the thing set to deliver them every 5 minutes for most of the testing phase of development, in order to more quickly move through the process. It was sometimes HILARIOUSLY ironic, the contrast between what was on my screen and what was in my mind.

I found myself often longing to have the app DONE so I could just be the user and enjoy it the way I had always intended. It did not escape me that this was the ULTIMATE irony! Those challenging times are exactly what the app was designed to help keep me mindful through. I have to admit I often failed the (let's not call it a test...) the opportunity that the app presented to float mindfully through those times. Instead, I'd just promise myself that when the app was done...

Okay, so it's done. And I love it. And I'm proud of it. And now I have to use it - really use it - no more putting off the practices when they come up. I'm starting with 5 random reminders per day and random sounds. Wish me luck - and I'll see you back here to report how it's going!  Highest and best (trying), Naomi

2 Comments
laura
1/14/2013 09:35:54 am

man oh manifestation! love the app, love the blog, love you. I am on the mindfulness journey more intentionally then ever before too... putting music on the front burner. played last night, writing more songs, eating healthily... and breathing. little by little we are making differences in our lives. deaths and births can inspire that. say goodbye to a parent, say hello to a new child, or in your case an idea-baby has finally fully come to the planet. So proud of you, app-mama. thanks for your creation and your candor. deep bow

Reply
Benny B link
3/25/2014 08:00:39 am

Hi Naomi! You are the BEST. I've had the app for over a WHOLE day and it's already made me so happy. Today I was working with some people that I didn't know and the app told me to send love throughout the room and I did it! And it felt so good.

This app is an accomplishment and a gift. Thank you.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Picture

    Author -
    Naomi Janzen

    Hi everyone and welcome to my first blog. As a screenwriter in Hollywood for over 20 years, I was too busy writing for a living to jump on the blogwagon. Now that I've diversified and channeled my energies into a wider range of pursuits, my keyboard isn't getting the workout it used to get -- so I thought maybe it was time. That and the fact my journey towards mindfulness has suddenly gotten rather public with the completion of my app, Remindfulness. This blog is going to be my own personal mindfulness diary, nothing more and nothing less. Because really I'm not sure there's anything more important -- though EVERYTHING SEEMS more important when it comes down to whether to take those 10 deep conscious breaths or interrupt that resentful thought and replace it with a loving thought. I've been attracted to spiritual ideas my whole life and felt the rapturous expansive joy of moments of Oneness...(a few of them, not many, I will be honest) while reading an enlightening book or meditating on a new concept. But integrating what I am learning into my real, daily, brush your teeth, pay bills, procrastinate exercise, life -- that's an whole other thing. That's what I'll be writing about. That journey. And I'd love to hear about yours.

    Recent Posts

    February 2015
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    January 2013

    Subscribe to get my blog updates via email

    * indicates required
    I promise your info is safe with me - I won't give, sell, rent or lend it to anyone - ever.

    RSS Feed

Copyright 2013-2022 Freedom Techniques   www.ozfreedomtechniques.com
Contact us      Support      Privacy Policy