Mon Feb 22, 2016 12:59 am
Hi Callez ... stay with it ..... You may not get ' results' in the way that you expect. Changes are subtle and gradual as we learn to respond to life 'as it is' rather than reacting to our conditioning.
Mindfulness isn't so much like a magic carpet ride to happiness, rather a skill we cultivate that, among other things, helps us to notice our 'internal dialogue'.
Really examine feelings that arise when you are sitting and practicing ..... For example, if I feel lonely and disconnected , I feel a tightness around my heart and throat area ..... When I become aware of the feeling I am able to allow the tightness to soften .... I am able to let the tightness dissolve. (Being mindful of the feeling aspect of my being takes attention away from the thinking aspect. )
My experience has been that in cultivating this aspect of mindfulness....mindfulness of body, if you like, it allows space for beliefs about myself to come to the surface, and to notice how the beliefs affect my feelings and emotions. Beliefs are thoughts, and thoughts are fluid and ever changing, with no fixed or solid permanency, arising and dissolving.
Our self image is created by a set of beliefs that we have gathered and taken on board over the course of a lifetime ... And mindfulness allows us to notice these beliefs and to see if they still serve us .. Right now.
No matter what we are thinking or feeling, whether 'replaying' old hurts, ( like a movie in our head ) or projecting imaginary fears into some unknown and unknowable future, it is all taking place right now.
Being mindful of what is happening right now ( whether we are sitting in meditation or driving to work .... Whatever we are doing.. ) allows us to stop the habit of overthinking our situation and allows us to engage fully in the moment. And when we can do this our entire experience changes.
Be kind to yourself ..... try starting the day with an ' attitude of gratitude'- this can make a big difference to our mood ( I still wake up thinking how grateful I am for little things, like a comfy bed, a roof over my head, hot and cold running water and tea bags ... Well you might prefer coffee, but you get my drift. )
Being ' mindful ' is a skill that we can learn to apply to every waking moment. And if we are fully here and now, ( and not ' there and then ' ) our authentic self can shine, and one day we realise that our old fears and negative self talk have dropped away all by themselves.
In my opinion, mindfulness is a skill that can be practiced every waking moment. It stops becoming a ' doing ' and is more of a way of 'being'. ( With the benefit that in striving to be mindful all the time there's no need to find 'time' to practice!)
When we are fully here and now, every now, there is no place for negative self talk to seep in and spoil the moment. Try to allow life to unfold with a sense of gentle acceptance and curiosity, without the personal storyline.
This is the profound beauty of mindfulness, that in paying attention to our thoughts and feelings, we bring ourselves into alignment with life, as it is, right now, sometimes raw and confronting, sometimes beautiful beyond imagination, and always changing, moment by moment. In that noticing, we see 'the thought' (for instance, I am happy, I am sad, I want more friends, I don't like my job, etc etc ) has already been and gone ... it is in retrospect that the noticing takes place.
Here and Now has no discernible quality .... (we ourselves apply the label good, bad etc) .... and the label itself has no intrinsic reality.
Practice of mindfulness will cultivate a quality of acceptance of things how they actually are , right now, and with acceptance comes peace. Happiness and sadness will come and go as will all emotional states, but the background peaceful awareness will become the 'default position', as we learn to respond to life as it is, rather than reacting with fear, anxiety and other 'fight or flight' responses that have become conditioned behaviour over a lifetime ... which for some of us can be many decades.
Being fully present in the moment as much as possible gives us a contrasting experience by which we can examine how our thoughts and beliefs have come to control us and our behaviour. It also offers us a direct experience of how we CAN let go of that conditioning, and how conditioned beliefs and behaviour can only sneak back in when we are NOT being mindful of the present moment and have slipped back into 'unconsciousness.'
