I recently started attending a weekly meditation group where we practice mindfulness meditation. Mindfulness is the art of paying attention to our present moment experiences with openness and curiosity and a willingness to be with what is.
It's about teaching us to come into the now, into the present moment. We tend to be lost in the past or the future. Our mind, if you are to check into it at any point in the day, is not present. It is actually thinking about something else, worrying, planning, obsessing, remembering, replaying, ruminating, but not right here right now or if it is in the present moment, we are analyzing, comparing, judging or complaining.
Mindfulness teaches us to be in the present moment with an open curiosity and a willingness to be with what is, to really show up for our lives. The way we learn this tool ( a quality of attention that we can have at any moment) is through meditation, how to be mindful, so we can bring it out to our lives and have it in any moment so we don't have to get lost in these thoughts of the past and future. But we can come into the present and in the present there is a reduction of stress. There is a sense of well-being that comes, a sense of ease. We are not lost in the stress that our mind creates in the past and the future.
What about those thoughts that come up and we wander off into the thoughts?
Our mind produces thoughts constantly and sometimes during meditation you have the good intention of staying in one place but your mind is all over the place. This is what our minds do. There is nothing wrong. Some people have this misconception about meditation that you are not suppose to have any thoughts. You are suppose to have a blank mind. With this type of meditation, mindfulness meditation, that is not the goal. The goal is to be aware of our thoughts, let go, and then come back into what is happening in the present moment which usually is the breathing but it could be body sensations, sounds. It could be a number of things. What tends to happen is that we get caught up in our thoughts and this is why we suffer ergo "don't believe everything you think.". Remember thoughts are just thoughts. They are coming and going. We don't have to believe them all the time. Of course there are wonderful thoughts that lead to something great in the world but there are thoughts that lead to a lot suffering; anxious thoughts, judging thoughts, comparing thoughts, sad thoughts, hate related angry thoughts. So what we learn to do in the meditation is not to get so caught in the thought and learn to come back to the present moment. An analogy to those thoughts that come up and what to do with them are like this. Imagine your thoughts as trains, going, going, going. What we typically do is find ourselves on the train and twenty minutes later you realize you were lost in thought worrying about something for twenty minutes. The idea of mindfulness is not get on the train. You just let it pass. You stay at the station and let the train go. Its a different way of relating to our thoughts. Instead of being lost in your thoughts, personalizing them, thinking "Oh no. Im having this horrible thought," let the train leave the station and we stay at the station centered and let the train go or if you find yourself caught in the thought, you get off the train. This tool is helpful in meditation and in life. www.waukenacuyjet.comhttps://www.facebook.com/ActivatingThePowerWithin
No comments:
Post a Comment