{"id":2764,"date":"2009-07-09T00:31:44","date_gmt":"2009-07-08T16:31:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/?p=2764"},"modified":"2009-09-17T15:08:33","modified_gmt":"2009-09-17T07:08:33","slug":"raisin-surprises","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/2009\/07\/raisin-surprises\/","title":{"rendered":"Raisin’ Surprises"},"content":{"rendered":"

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While attending a psychology workshop, all the participants did an exercise in mindfulness together. I was one of them. At first, when we were all given a single raisin, I jumped to the conclusion that it was going to be a cliched ‘taste the food’ thingie. I was right about the nature of the exercise – but the experience was surprising. We were instructed to hold the raisin up close, to look at its details, and to feel its texture. Suddenly, raisins taken for granted became something amazing and alien. With a Zen-like ‘beginner mind’, I almost didn’t recognise it. It never struck me that the wrinkles of a raisin were so many, and that it felt so plastic.<\/p>\n

Next, we were told to place it in our mouth, to feel its form again. For the first time, I felt the true weight of a raisin on my tongue. It was very light, and it does feel plasticky – even with the tongue. This was followed by chewing the raisin slowly. It was shocking that there was so much juice in the little dried fellow. Raisin juice was savoured… till the raisin became but a truly shrivelled form. I had never tasted a single raisin so fully before.<\/p>\n

It was utterly delicious – especially when there was just mindfulness in the moment, no greed to milk it of its worth, no rush to swallow it quickly, as I would usually do. It was astonishing indeed. This was no cliched experiment at all – just something I habitually prejudged as so. It made me reflect on this negative tendency which makes me but another cliched unenlightened being! If I have failed in my daily life to fully experience even one tiny raisin, how much more in everyday life am I missing with lack of mindfulness via the senses, while I assume I have ‘seen them all’? It was very humbling. A puny raisin was my silent teacher, but a great one!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While attending a psychology workshop, all the participants did an exercise in mindfulness together. I was one of them. At…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[89],"class_list":["post-2764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mix","tag-mindfulness","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2764\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moonpointer.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}