What is Mindfulness all about?

What is mindfulness meditation all about?

l will start by telling you a little bit about what mindfulness meditation isn’t…

Mindfulness isn’t blanking out your mind. It isn't about emptying your head. It isn’t a relaxation technique. (Although relaxation is an enjoyable side effect.) It is not about learning to sit without moving.

Mindfulness Meditation can be divided into many parts, but the main 2 components of Mindfulness Meditation are the meditation and the mindfulness, which are two different things.

Meditation is concentrating. Learning to meditate is learning to place your concentration on one single object and choosing to keep it there for as long as you want to. This can be your breath, a candle flame, the fragrance of incense, a visualisation. There are many kinds of different meditations. Meditation in the mindfulness context is essentiallyt training your mind. Learning to place your mind where you want it to be. We think we are in control of our mind, but often it is very clear to see that we are not. When we are overwhelmed by strong emotions, we are not in control of our mind, our mind is in control of us. When we can’t fall asleep because our mind is running at a million miles an hour, our mind is dragging us along. When we replay scenarios of an argument with a friend or partner in our head, looping around, around, around and around, our mind is pulling us into places we most likely would rather not be. This is what I mean when I say that we think we are in control of our mind, but often we are not.

The Mindfulness part of Mindfulness Meditation is awareness. Paying attention in a particular, special way. It is also about learning to control the mind so that we can refocus our attention to the present moment ( as opposed to the future or the past) and in this way allow our mind to concentrate on a different point of view, emotion or attitude. In other words, we can shift our focus at will.

1.) We learn to train our mind to understand itself: so we learn why we do what we do, why we react how we react, why we struggle with certain things, what motivates us, what moves us, how our mind works.

Its about learning to be aware of what our mind is doing while we are doing it. Because without this awareness, awakeness, understanding, we don’t see what is really going on. Instead we will see things as WE are, not as the situation really is. We see things around us in a very subjective way. With mindfulness we learn to bring more objectivity into our seeing.

2.) And with meditation we also learn to see how everything is in a constant state of change. Nothing in the universe stays the same. Everything is constantly changing. The earth is changing as we walk in it. We can't control that kind of thing. There is nothing, nothing, nothing in the universe that doesn't constantly change. And it's because we forget this, and we work so hard to trying to keep things the way we want them to remain, that we experience stress and mental suffering. With mindfulness meditation we learn to work with changes. The way we are, the way we think, the way we see things, influences the way our experience rolls out. This doesn't change the essence of the experience necessarily, but our outlook can change how we experience the event. When we stop trying to keep things tightly under control and working hard at things around us not changing, we can relax and let go.

ANALOGY:

Dog analogy: one person who loves dogs has a good energy and bends over to pat the dog on the head, the dog comes wagging his tail. The other person is afraid of dogs, runs away and the dog chases it and maybe bites him.

Alfred Adler analogy of the well:

On the outskirts of the thousand-year-old city lived a philosopher who taught that the world was simple and that happiness was within the reach of every man, instantly. A young man who was dissatisfied with life went to visit this philosopher to get to the heart of the matter. This youth found the world a chaotic mass of contradictions and, in his anxious eyes, any notion of happiness was completely absurd.

PHILOSOPHER: You may already know this, but well water stays at pretty much the same temperature all year round, at about 18 degrees. That is

an objective number—it stays the same to everyone who measures

it. But when you drink the water in the summer it seems cool and

when you drink the same water in the winter it seems warm. Even

though it’s the same water, at the same 18 degrees according to the

thermometer, the way it seems depends on whether it’s summer or

winter.

YOUNG MAN: So, it’s an illusion caused by the change in the environment.

PHILOSOPHER: No, it’s not an illusion. You see, to you, in that

moment, the coolness or warmth of the well water is an undeniable fact. That’s what it means to live in your subjective world. There is no escape from your own subjectivity. At present, the world seems complicated and mysterious to you, but if you change, the world

will appear more simple. The issue is not about how the world is, but about how you are.

So in a nutshell:

By watching our breathing in meditation, we practice concentration. By concentrating and observing what our mind is doing during meditation, we eventually become Mindful. We know exactly what our mind is doing. This mind is not judgmental, not discriminating. It only observes.

Mindfulness knows when there is concentration and when there is not. Mindfulness knows when the mind wanders off and when the mind becomes peaceful. Mindfulness knows every moment what is happening in our mind, why and how.

My meditating, we also learn that, whatever comes up, we continue to sit. We don’t avoid, we don’t get caught up. We just continue to sit and observe. We do this lightly, with an ease and smiling mind. There is no tension, no striving, nothing to get right, nothing to do wrong. The trick is to learn to just sit and watch what comes up. Maybe with a smile on our face and a sense of humour in our heart.

Mindfulness also teaches us how to handle difficult feelings and to see them more as a positive thing rather than a scary thing.

If we know how to deal with difficult emotions, we suffer much less.

For instance, we always, immediately, see unhappiness, worry, anxiety, sadness as a bad thing. But is it? What if we don’t see it that way. What if we don’t feel it that way? It doesn’t always have to be. It can also be our teacher and bring about great transformation.

That is meditation’s true purpose: to transform our minds. We can do that anywhere, even at home. We have everything we need to practice this.

_/\_

metta