A Meditation on Endings – Mindful

By turning our attention to the way we end up and the habits we develop, we can learn how to step fully into our lives with appreciation and gratitude, says Frank Austasky.

How do you meet the end?

I want to draw my attention to endings: the end of a day, the end of a meal, the end of something precious and rare, the end of a sentence.

How do you meet the end? I mean, most of us have some developed habits about the way we end up. Are you aware of your habits? Without any judgment or criticism, let’s just take a look to see what our end has to do with it. Like, when you go to a party, or you go to a conference: do you tend to leave emotionally or mentally before the conference is over or before the party is over? Or maybe you’re the one in the parking lot waving goodbye to everyone as they leave. Or maybe you find a way of cocooning yourself, isolating yourself in some way, pulling back into a kind of protective stance. Or maybe you become vague or indifferent about the ending – maybe the ending is too emotional for you. Maybe you are sad or scared. Let’s just take a look.

When you end a relationship, how do you do it? Do you try to move it to another form of relationship so that it continues? Do you end it with a text? How do you say goodbye at noon when you leave work – do you say goodbye to your colleagues? When a friend is sick and dying, do you visit them? How do you meet the end? What are your samples? Are you happy with the way it met the end? You don’t have to marry your old ways. You have the freedom to change it right now, right now.

When the end comes, what happens to your body? Are you tight, contracted? What is emotional experience? Does it bring anxiety, fear, sadness? And what happens when you run out of brains? Do you remember ideas or planning ideas? How do you accomplish this experience?

Searching for endings and beginnings

The way we end one thing is the way the next thing begins. When we hang on to the past, it limits our ability to welcome the new. A lot of times we hang on because we’re still demanding something from the past, wanting what we hope to get out of the situation. The more comfortable we are, the more we can welcome the new and release the old.

The way we end one thing is the way the next thing begins. When we hang on to the past, it limits our ability to welcome the new.

I used to run a preschool with a friend of mine, and we had these three- to five-year-olds that we took outside. There, we would task them with collecting dead things, and the kids loved it. They would go into the forest and collect an old stick or a fallen leaf or part of a rusty old car, or sometimes the bones of a bird or small animal. And then we’ll bring them along and we’ll put all their discoveries in a blue tarp and a grove of trees. And then we had a sort of show and tell. And the children had no fear – they were full of curiosity. And sometimes when they presented what they found, they would make up a great story about it, like how this rusty old car part fell off a plane. Or the leaf was being used by a mouse – to keep it warm until summer came. They had no fear. I remember a little girl saying to me, I think trees are very kind to let the leaves fall off them so new things can grow. It will be really sad if the tree cannot grow new leaves.

We know that birth will be the end of death. And reflecting on this can infuse our lives with greater appreciation and gratitude. We know that the accumulation of things inevitably means their dispersion, and considering this can lead us to live a life of simplicity, of what we really have and can care for.

We know that everyone we love will die one day. Reflecting on this may cause us to think that we want to take care of them now. The way we end up creates the next moment. Studying extinction is a beautiful way to fully step into our lives.

Learning from the breath

And breath can help us recover. It can revive our life. Breathing helps us cope with daily stress. It balances the serious drive to fight, flight or freeze. The breath gives us a rare opportunity to see our relationship with the ending.

1. Let the stomach soften; Let the shoulders relax. Bring your attention to the breath, to the direct experience of breathing in and out.
2. Be aware of the sensations in the body: Large, gross sensations and subtle sensations of tingling or pulsing. Just let yourself settle into the rhythm of the breath however it is. It does not need to be controlled or shaped in any way.
3. See if you can be aware of the beginning, middle and end of the breath. Do the same with the breath: note the beginning, middle, and end of each breath.
4. See if you can become aware of the moment of change when the breath ends, when the breath becomes the breath. take rest Let the breath breathe itself. Then you feel this little gap, this pause, at the end of the breath – maybe it’s just a nanosecond. Bring your attention fully and completely there. What happens in space? Were there physical sensations? Is there an emotional response? Do you find yourself worried or breathing a sigh of relief? What happens in the brain? Is there a tendency to want to control the breath, micromanage it in some way?
5. Just let yourself relax into the space. Rest in pause. This pause: This is a moment of faith or fear. Do you believe that the next breath will emerge? Can you relax with things as they are? Breath is a microcosm of our entire life: coming and going, appearing and disappearing.
6. As we settle, we begin to feel as if the breath is breathing us. Give up control of your breath and let it breathe. Constant change – come and go, return to the beginning and end of all experiences.

Thanks for your practice.