Skiing and Mindfulness is a series by Val d’Isere & Tignes-based ski instructor and mindfulness coach, Bernard C.
I ski to reclaim my spirit from a conditioned world that is always seeking to limit my being.
On the list of limitations we find ‘expectations’.
Peace begins when expectations ends
Your ego teaches you to believe that you need a really good reason to be joyful and happy; whilst at the same time it is also teaching you that you only need a tiny reason to be upset about something.
The more powerful your ego is, more expectations will drive you crazy.
The energy of expectation
For the energy of expectation to exist, the energy of disappointment also needs to exist.
One cannot be without the other.
Let’s say that you arrive in resort Saturday evening in a blanket of fresh new snow and you awake on Sunday morning in a total whiteout…you are disappointed.
You can choose to be disappointed and you can mutter and whinge all day in your misery.
Or you can recognise that it is your attachment to your expectation, to what you wished for, that has soured your view of the world.
The whiteout just is.
It’s nothing personal and your personal cloud of grey will not affect it one bit. Your disappointment will only feed your insistence on being disappointed; it will only heighten the contrast between the day you had in mind and the day that is. Your disappointment can only exist within the self-imposed misalignment between your expectations and the reality that is.
Positive thinking?
Should you then douse your mind with positive thinking and pretend that the day is blessed with sun when it is not? No, because if you do that, you’ll create another misalignment between pretence and the reality that is.
There is no need to pretend anything because there already is a reality. To squeeze disappointment out of your mind, you have to choose, welcome and embrace the reality that is. You are now in alignment and there is no room for disappointment.
The eternal now
Ski in the eternal now, in the ever present here. That’s all there is anyway. And when you do ski here/now, the gates of all possibilities slide open and problems disappear.
Clearing the mind
As you free yourself from beliefs, judgements and emotions, you body becomes more and more relaxed and your antenna becomes more and more clear, allowing your being to perceive more and more of what it is you are meant to do to express your joy and your freedom.
Clearing beliefs is the biggest aspect of the process of eternal development because it is the most powerful one.