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Introduction

Proverbs exist in every culture. They capture wisdom and set guidelines for each society’s paradigms. They frame the lived and shared experience of a culture’s people, speaking of the collective consciousness and also to the single individual seeking awareness or wisdom. Many have come down through the generations to educate and edify each new generation. Within Irish culture they are prized so much that there is even a proverb about proverbs – ní féidir an seanfhocal a shárú – a proverb cannot be refuted. At this point, you may think that remains to be seen, but by the conclusion of this book you may have a new understanding, along with a set of tools to cultivate mindfulness, psychological wellbeing and spiritual awareness.

Mindfulness, psychological wellbeing and spiritual awareness are really the same thing. They are all a means and an end, and they are each a solace and a catalyst in life. Think of it like this: a river is water, a glacier is water and rain is also water. You may perceive and interact with each one differently, but they are all water nonetheless. So you may engage with mindfulness to find yourself or to find God; you may use it to break negative thought patterns or energise your self-worth – it still comes with the potential to secure those other possibilities too. The thawing glacier becomes a river and the river may evaporate to become rain. Mindfulness is you knowing that you are water, and being aware that today – or in this now – you are also a river, rain or glacier. Mindfulness is feeling the solidity of the glacier and not denying your potential to be a stream. Mindfulness is not fretting over being rain or stream – you are water, ever moving and multifaceted. Mindfulness is experiencing life, and, through that experiencing, manifesting both psychological wellbeing and spiritual awareness.

Mindfulness is often described as ‘now’ – as the ultimate present – but nothing in life is so easy. Yes, you can and will master the switch to ‘fully present and in control’, but that’s not an instantly acquired skill. Some work and a little time is required. Before we can be, we must first become. This is a book about becoming, but there is also a measure of doing. You may find stillness in the meditations and peace through mindful living, but you will also find dynamism. Action is as spiritually and psychologically potent as quiet rectitude. The actions and exercises in this book are catalysts to transformation – just as the proverbs and my thoughts on their meanings are prompts to becoming more mindful.

Mindfulness and the other techniques that I weave throughout this book – positive psychology, cognitive behavioural therapy and awareness activation – are not mastered in a moment. The title of this book makes that clear – by time is everything revealed. Time is involved, as we must build up skills and rewire the brain. But soon enough, the effort and time we apply will yield awareness and a mindful self – everything will be revealed. If you take the time, then there is potential to apply the content as a method or course, to achieve a more integrated mindful experience and to develop some sustainable practises that will benefit you over the rest of your life. I use fifty-two dedicated proverbs as motivational jump-off points for mindful reflections, actions and exercises throughout the book.

The Irish language word for a proverb is a seanfhocail. A seanfhocal means an old word, but these old words are not just ‘sayings’: they possess a gravitas that has been carried down through time. Some are uniquely Irish – indigenous sayings that speak volumes about the Irish psyche – and some are manifestations of biblical proverbs, English idioms or the paradigms of a particular epoch. They are not passed on as cultural curiosities, out of historical interest or even out of nostalgia – they are relevant in each generation and survive on their own merits by the power of their proverbial wisdom and connection.

When I sat down to write this book, the phrase ‘old words for new ears’ struck me. During the writing process, the ‘new ears’ signified not just the modern world, not just the uninitiated or first-time participant. The ‘new ears’ were also symbolic – to hear afresh, to hear with newness – to come to the seanfhocail as more than an old saying but as a living voice for here and now.

In mindfulness we experience the now. In Christianity you are invited to be renewed, in Buddhism you awaken and become. Each of these and other faiths and systems ask participants to listen to and hear a message in order to experience a transformation. Some of you will know these proverbs well, some of you will be new ears. Either way, I hope that in their new context as lessons of mindfulness, the transforming spirit of these old words will renew, refresh and reinvigorate. Let nothing refute that either.

My personal path to mindfulness

I was the sort of kid who wanted to be the Indian and not the cowboy (even before I empathised politically and spiritually with that side). I didn’t care much for cops and robbers and really would rather have been off inhabiting the persona of Cú Chulainn (one of the greatest Irish heroes from our mythos) or Bruce Lee (whose philosophy would soon impress me as much as his cinematic martial arts). Maybe both of those figures were shaped by a self-perception as an outsider warrior, which necessitated dignity, respect for others, honed skills and discipline. So the play scenarios of my formative years were as much about feeling the power and honing it as asserting power itself. Self-control and self-confidence came when I joined a karate club aged eight. I joined with several school friends and I was perhaps seeking to perfect my inner Bruce Lee, if not my command of martial arts. My school would show martial arts and action hero movies on Fridays as an ongoing fundraiser, and that sparked in us a desire for these action hero skills.

The karate would eventually bring me into direct contact with the difference between being ‘mind full’ (inner dialogue and the noise of unfocused thoughts) and having or adopting ‘in the moment clarity’ – that which we now call mindfulness. Clearing your mind before a bout, being super alert to the reality of your opponent and focusing attention on their body language and movement patterns meant you could defeat them more quickly, without bruises or humiliation. Decisiveness kept everybody’s honour intact. You respected your opponent, so ego was not a factor, and being mindful in the ring was as important as your physical moves. So over the next few years and into my early teens, being mindful in the ring taught me to be mindful in life beyond the ring. And so it came to be that faghann iarraidh iarraidh eile – the seeking for one thing finds another.

That’s not even hindsight – that is just how it happened. Events follow events, decisions beget other decisions, life experience leads to more life experience. Picking up this book is perhaps a start, but there is a next step. In fact, picking up this book may be the next step in something that began much earlier. Not everything is linear, and not everything is so apparent. I joined karate to jump around and kick, but it kicked me in the eye with insights into something else. There are so many things that happen in life that lead to a different place than expected. I am sure there is a science behind why people pick up one hobby or interest over another, and I am sure there is a debate as to whether it’s because you were wired for it (physical aptitude or mental aptitude) or it wired you (the interest in sports made you fitter and so healthier, or the chess made you good at your eventual business career). Whatever the case, we know mindfulness can rewire you – adjust your thought patterns and the thought-to-feeling relationship – and so control your mood and reactions. We know it can condition your stress reactions and provide self-control and movement out of negativity and ruts.

The karate could have led to me being a sportsperson, but it led somewhere else instead. What I do know is that no experience is wasted. It is all part of the fabric of life, and some experiences may result in rewards years later. We can also use mindfulness to alter our reactions and move beyond the experiences that may affect us in less than positive ways, freeing ourselves from limitations on our full potential.

Looking back, I guess I first encountered mindfulness at quite an early age. It was not yet the globally embraced tool it is today, and it was not even called mindfulness at that time. Between the ages of eight and fourteen it was showing itself to me as I was engaging with it as a martial arts discipline, as a device to get in the zone and out of bouts unharmed. It was not to the front of my brain as a natural part of my everyday experience of life, let alone a spiritual technique or a physiological tool to calm my issues or get through bouts of depression. I had suffered from periods of despondency and depression from early childhood and in keeping with everything else I had experienced spiritual crises early on too – all of which I now see as the mud and sediment required to root the lotus. It would take its time to grow and unfold but the negative experiences did not rot the bud – they just made it flower more beautifully. I was in my twenties before I came to this realisation – tá fáth le gach nidh – there is a reason for everything. I am grateful to depression for teaching me resilience, independence and compassion. Nothing in life is wasted.

By my early teens, I had read a couple of books by Bruce Lee and also Morihei Ueshiba (the founder of aikido), I had begun to read Sun Tzu, Lao Tzu and Confucius and I was leaning more into the spiritual side of things. Simultaneously, I had become a vegetarian, more respectful of nature, and had encountered the Krishna consciousness with the Hare Krishna community in Dublin. The martial arts had led to personal discipline, which had led to meditation, and that led to reading more about Zen and other Buddhist philosophies, which had led to exploring the tenets of all religions and a search for more insight. Sati – as ‘mindfulness’ was called – and satori (self-awareness) were just around the corner. I was at that point in life where everything seems to be happening: spiritual yearnings, sexual yearnings, the call to be individual but also to belong. At that age, the big questions arise. Who am I? What am I? Why am I? And at that time I personally didn’t find satisfactory answers to those conundrums within the Catholic tradition in which I had been raised – so it was easy for me to drop it and look to other faiths and their texts and systems to get a different perspective. When I wasn’t listening to music or thinking about the girl down the road, I read everything I could get my hands on about religion, philosophy and psychology. I had a thirst for knowledge and an interest in the human condition and the divine experience. Eventually, I found the translations of Thomas Cleary and began to really explore Buddhism. All of a sudden, ‘Who am I?’ was replaced with ‘What is mu?’ and spiritual and metaphysical conundrums became koans for a time.

That is not to say I became a Buddhist, or a Hare Krishna, or a born again anything. I became both faithful and faithless – I felt I didn’t need a religious structure to define my spiritual self or my self-expression and I soon realised that the questions ‘Who am I?’ and ‘What is mu?’ didn’t matter – the answer was the same: everything and nothing. I acknowledged that the giving of attention to those sorts of questions could bring about a portion or invocation of sati/ mindfulness – that the activated mind in the moment of the question, in the moment of the pondering, in the moment of realisations or non-realisations, was, in that instance or ‘now’, of absolute purity and unity. It was, in that moment, utterly connected to everything that is everything and all that is nothing. And therein is satori – comprehension and understanding. But once that hit me, I didn’t need to keep asking. I wasn’t searching any more, I was just enjoying looking further – or, perhaps I should say, just looking more.

By my late teens and early twenties I could again look at and gain great joy from the works of writers in the Christian tradition such as Thomas Keating and Anthony de Mello – exploring parables, a system I knew well from my first fourteen years on the planet. For the first time, I saw a message that I had missed in the faith of my parents – ‘the Kingdom of God is within and all around’. I could live the rest of my life in the Kingdom of God. Life was the Kingdom of God. Prayer was the Kingdom, drinking was the Kingdom, chasing girls was the Kingdom, fasting, feasting, running, sitting still, whatever I did was the Kingdom – the Kingdom was mindful living. Being was and is the Kingdom.

Sometimes you forget that every second of your life is the Kingdom of God, and other times you bubble up with the joy of it. For the most part, life goes on – as the saying goes, ‘before I was enlightened I chopped wood and carried water, after enlightenment I chopped wood and carried water’. Enlightenment/ mindfulness is a superpower, but you won’t get a cape and the ability to fly or stop bullets. You will remain human – mindfully human – and human fully. The firewood won’t chop itself, and if it did, you would miss out on chopping it mindfully. I move in and out of the moment, in and out of grace, in and out of depression and in and out of palpable joy. That’s life. That’s even a good life. Mindfulness has made my lows more bearable and less frequent. It has made my pleasures and highs all the more of an experience – because I am with them as they happen. I am living my life. So many people just daydream their life. To me, it doesn’t matter if you only live once or are eternally reincarnated – live your life or live your lives – but live. Experience it. Life can be cruel, heart-breaking sometimes, but also beautiful and joyous. Live the low, live the high, know you have lived.

I have a background in holistic therapy and have spent a large portion of my working life delivering workshops, clinics, courses and programmes in the therapeutic use of both horticulture and art, incorporating the dynamics of holistic practices to heal the whole person and not just the condition, to form social cohesion and not just paint over a graffiti wall or create a community garden on waste ground. I have worked with children at risk, adults in recovery, self-help groups, corporate and state bodies. So mindfulness has not just helped me personally, it has also been invaluable to me professionally. It was a professional context that led me to first use seanfhocail as a trigger device to open debate or tempt enquiry. I was creating a garden with a dementia group, and the old sayings and songs were great motivational tools to keep the group in good morale and encourage active participation. Later, I worked with some early school leavers on a community park project and we researched the local history to find an appropriate theme and design. Part of that included taking oral history from within the community (to make it an intergenerational project) and here the old sayings broke some barriers and made it fun. Those experiences sowed the seeds for this book – to cultivate positivity through interaction with culture. With some groups and clients, the art project or the gardening activities or whatever the means of self-expression was as much about catharsis or distraction from negative thought patterns or painful real-life situations as it was about building skills and steps to self-esteem and confidence. I have studied psychology, sociology and other social sciences to develop integrated programmes and as part of that I have trained in the therapeutic use of mindfulness.

My own interest, love and respect for Irish traditions means I approach this book as an opportunity to explore. It is as much my journey as it is a journey I invite you to partake of therapeutically or, indeed, spiritually. I am not a guru on a mountain, dispensing pearls or kicks in the eye. I am within the human condition and continually undertake journeys and exercises to explore my own spiritual and psychological awareness. I do have experiences and awareness that I share through my writings here, but you may find a different solace or foothold in some of the seanfhocail – that is great if you do. It is the trigger point that is most important. The exercises and actions will help – but it is your life, your own roadmap. I do not say follow me. I do not say I can solve it for you – although I hope this book helps. I intend it to be helpful. But you steer your own ship, you climb your own rocks, you feel your own footing – that is how to live. You must take your own journey and solve your own self. I am not the mountain – I am my own mountain. This book is not the mountain. If anything, life is the mountain. You are your own mountain.

This book is an opportunity for me to explore what Zen masters may call kenshō – ‘seeing essence’ or looking into one’s nature. In my case, this means looking into my cultural heritage – the seanfhocail. In doing so I invite you to walk a little with me, for it is a pathway to mindfulness and to psychological wellbeing and spiritual awareness. But the pace you take is your own, the stops you rest at are yours to choose. It is a helpful road to the base camp; the mountain you will scale in your own time. Remember: by time is everything revealed.