God or Mindfulness?

The great spiritual master and Trappist monk and hermit would perhaps chuckle at the title of this blog, "God or Mindfulness?"and the not so subtle implication that there is a difference... One clearly evokes the Abrahamic religions, the other, either Buddhism or Taoism... But what if we "bend" the title into something perhaps more manageable? 

What about "practicing the presence"? Leaving aside the question of "presence of what?", might we just consider "practice" and "presence"? In other words, if you are at all like me, thoughts run helter-skelter, giving both you and I barely a moment's rest before we are hanging onto the tail of the fast disappearing creature dragging our mind far away from us...

In this case, "practice" is the deliberate choice to "let go of that tail" and return to a natural self-awareness: it can be as simple as an intentional incoming and outgoing breath: coming and going with no other thought intruding on that moment... Meanwhile, "presence" is the intentional cultivation of Mystery: a quantum physicist like Amit Goswami, Ph.D. argues for the essential quality of Self-Awareness of the Universe. For him, and the mystics before and current, consciousness seems to be the Root-Source-Reality of us and everything...

"Presence" is the grunt work of cultivating the possibility of a Unifying Consciousness behind and within everyone and everything: delving deeper, one works with the naked assumption that that Unifying Consciousness is Itself Self-Aware as Loving Compassion... Admittedly, with the oh so evident violence, hate, greed, racism, and sexism all about us and everywhere, why the hell should a Unifying Consciousness be given the benefit of doubt that perhaps "It" both Is, and Is Loving?

Atheists are truly amazing people! They have so much more courage than I! Me? I really don't have an interior orientation towards grandeur: I'm not looking for a brass ring or streets of gold when I die. Rather, I'm simply looking to increase my happiness and that of my family, friends, neighbors and community now. So I practice: I practice moments of mindful breathing. I practice the blessing of my memories, especially those that still cause me immense pain. I practice, as I work, a remembrance of loving-through-my-breath. I practice releasing loving-thoughts out into the Universe. I practice reverence and adoration: I know very little, but the practice of embracing the Unifying Consciousness in the persons I spiritually identify with (like Yeshua, Mother Mary, Hildegard, Francis and Clare, Rumi, Yogananda, Anandamayi Ma, and Kuan Yin) in devotion and gratitude for their loving examples, re-orients my "self" towards the "Self"...

So the question is not "God or Mindfulness?" Rather, it is more simple, actually much more simple... How about, do you enjoy receiving surprise gifts? Practicing the presence is sort of like a big "boo!" from a best friend, or maybe a flower from your lover... it's breathing in and breathing out in thanksgiving for this moment... and this moment...