The Turning Point

An extract from The Turning Point, a new mindfulness book by Jon Wilde and Gerard Evans.

Devised by Jon Wilde and Gerard Evans, who jointly run the Brighton Mindfulness Centre, featuring key contributions from expert nutritionist Martina Watts, The Turning Point is a unique mindfulness-based course geared towards firmly grounding you in the practice.

The lives of Jon and Gerard have been radically transformed by mindfulness and they are firm believers that, with application and patience, mindfulness can transform anybody’s life.

by Jon Wilde & Gerard Evans

Like many others, perhaps you have spent most of your life longing for that certain something that would bring you a greater contentment and peace of mind, that would make you more comfortable inside your own skin, that would help you cope more skillfully with challenging life situations.

That certain something has been inside you all along. It just needed to be noticed, and cultivated with

the practice of mindfulness-based meditation with its far-reaching potential for catalysing profound learning, growing, healing, and personal transformation.

Mindfulness can help any of us enjoy a more wakeful, healthier, happier life, a life turned towards experience rather than away, a life of connection rather than alienation, a life travelled lightly rather than weighed down with fears and anxieties.

Mindfulness wakes us up to a true sense of intimacy with life. So what is it exactly?

Teacher/writer Christina Feldman defines mindfulness as, ‘the willingness and capacity to be equally present with all events and experiences with discernment, curiosity and kindness.’

Simply put, mindfulness is about awareness. The capacity to be with your experience, non-judgmentally, as it unfolds.

Mindfulness enables us to be present in our own lives. It offers a healthy alternative to living our lives ‘inside our heads’, forever at the mercy of our thoughts.

When we are being mindful, we are paying attention in the present moment to things as they are rather than losing ourselves in thoughts about how we would prefer things to be.

By consciously directing our attention to our present moment experience, we become grounded. If we are aware in the moment, we are able to choose how to respond adroitly to our situation rather than react unconsciously.

Thus, decisions are more likely to be made from a place of relative calm than from a state of deep worry or blind panic.

As we develop a more open, more intimate way of relating to body sensations, thoughts and feelings, we wake up to our experience rather than sleepwalking our way through our lives. We begin living without the weight of anxiety, depression, self-doubt, self-criticism, low self-esteem and social awkwardness.

We stop feeling overwhelmed by thoughts, feelings and body sensations. We can begin living with some peace of mind, comfortable in our own bodies, no longer feeling separate and isolated in the world. Whatever is happening in our lives at any moment, we can approach our situation with equanimity and serenity.

While it is important to understand what mindfulness is, it is just as important to recognize what mindfulness isn’t.

It is not about stopping your thoughts – a common misconception.

Nor is it about achieving a certain state. For example, relaxation is often a very pleasant by-product of mindfulness practice but mindfulness is not a relaxation therapy. Not exactly.

Feeling more relaxed is one of the many welcome by-products of mindfulness practice. But we don’t meditate in order to feel relaxed.

Confused? Look at it this way…

If you do a relaxation exercise and you feel other than relaxed at the end of it, you would probably feel a sense of disappointment, even failure. But, if we are being mindful, what matters is that we are paying attention to our experience and being with it as it unfolds. Simply noticing whatever comes up – be it pleasant, unpleasant, or something in between – rather than turning away from it, wishing it would recede from our experience.

At all times, what we think and do is determined to a large degree by what we fail to notice. If we are noticing, paying attention, we cannot fail at mindfulness. If we are turning up in our own lives, we cannot be doing mindfulness wrong.

Imagine the following scenario.

You are on holiday, walking along a sea front on a beautifully sunny summer’s day. There is so much that you could be bringing your attention to: the sandy beach; the noise of children playing; the gentle forward movement of the waves; the reggae music joyfully booming from a pair of speakers; the heady scent of cold vinegar cascading onto hot chips wrapped in newspaper.

However, you are completely immersed in thoughts about what your father-in-law said to you at the fete last week…and in thoughts about how you never enjoy meeting the in-laws as you feel judged by them…and you start wondering what your in-laws really think about you…and then you begin wondering what your friends really think of you…and the memory arises of that kid at school who called you an idiot even though you’d never knowingly done anything to deserve the insult…then there was the time…

Meanwhile, you are barely aware of anything the beautiful summer’s day has to offer. Your experience has narrowed itself down to a stream of gloom-ridden thoughts.

Now imagine this scenario.

You are in a restaurant, having lunch with a friend you have not seen for some time. You are delighted to see them but, halfway through the meal, your thoughts drift towards the meeting with your boss the following day. There have been a few redundancies at the firm recently. Maybe you are next in line for the chop? If you lose your job, how will you pay your mortgage? If your house is repossessed, what will become of you? Will you end up living on the streets, picking through waste bins for something to eat…? What will become of your wife and two kids? Will all your friends desert you?

Lost in the chain-reaction of thoughts, you barely notice the taste of the food you are eating and the wine you are drinking. You are barely aware of what your friend is saying to you. When you return home later and your partner asks you how the lunch went, you have scant recollection of anything that happened or anything that was said. You can barely remember any of the worries and concerns that swept your attention away like leaves on a stormy day.

You get the picture. When your attention is snatched away by thoughts about the past or the future, you are not participating in the present moment. You are somewhere else. In a sense, your body is in one place, your mind in another. The gap between your body and mind then becomes a fertile breeding ground for feelings of anxiety and general unease.

The fact is that, no matter how hard we try, we cannot influence the past. Nor can we influence the future.

We can learn from the past but we cannot reside there. Furthermore, we don’t need to dwell on past events as though they are happening in the here and now. With this realisation, we can give up on efforts to rewrite the past.

We can plan wisely for the future but thoughts about the future should not paralyse us with worry and fear. We might think we know how the future is going to unfold, but the truth is that we can never be certain. At best, the future is an educated guess.

Mindfulness teaches us to be with our experience in the present moment. It also teaches us not to expect the present moment to be a certain way. When you accept your experience fully, you are much less likely to get caught up in it, be defined by it, or feel overwhelmed by it.

Most of us will be familiar with the feeling of being ‘miles away’, lost in thought and unaware of our surroundings. According to experts, our minds wander at least 50% of the time, which sounds like a conservative estimate. Either way, for at least 50% of the time, we are on auto-pilot, acting without conscious intention. In other words, we are not aware of what we are doing while we are doing it.

It’s perfectly normal for your mind to wander. Mindfully speaking, the important thing is realising it, then bringing your attention back to what is occurring in the present moment.

Research has shown that people are less happy when their minds are wandering than when they are focusing on what they are doing. Thinking about what is not happening makes us more unhappy than paying attention to what is happening.

Doing some things automatically, without having to think too hard about them, can sometimes be an advantage. Driving a car would be exhausting if, every time you got behind the wheel, you had to think carefully about where the clutch pedal, throttle and brake pedal were located.

But, if you live your life on automatic, you miss what is going on around you.

If our wandering thoughts amounted only to occasional bouts of harmless daydreaming, there wouldn’t be a problem. But our minds seem to be primed to focus on negative rather than positive stimuli and it is all too easy to get drawn into negative spirals of thinking.

It’s as though we are programmed as human beings to seek pleasure but it is the unpleasant stuff that detains us. We seem to have a natural tendency to hold on to unpleasant experiences, to dwell on the negative.

The brain’s bias has been described as ‘Velcro for negative experiences and Teflon for positive experiences.’

Happy thoughts come and go. But bleak ruminations about the past or speculative thoughts about life as a series of potential dangers can lock us into a state of never-ending anxiety that can be highly detrimental to our health.

Mindfulness can go a long way toward helping us change these thinking habits. Being mindfully aware rather than being on automatic pilot allows for the possibility of freedom from the mechanical, reactive, habitual patterns of mind.

Scientific research has consistently shown that regular mindfulness practice can reshape the mind so that it is naturally geared towards greater emotional equilibrium and therefore greater happiness and well-being.

Until a few decades ago, scientists were convinced that our brains were fundamentally unchangeable. Subsequent research has established that neurons and neural networks in the brain change their connections and behaviour in response to new information, environment and experience.

The brain changes both structure and function depending on how we pay attention and what we pay attention to.

Numerous studies have shown that participating in an 8-week mindfulness course such as The Turning Point brings about measurable changes in brain regions associated with memory, emotion regulation and stress, and brings lasting cognitive and psychological benefits.

* * *

So much of our lives seems to be spent trying to get, or wishing we were, somewhere else. Anywhere but where we actually are in the present moment.

Ultimately, mindfulness isn’t really about getting anywhere. It’s about being where we are right now, opening to our experience just as it is.

So many of us spend a great deal of our lives wishing that the present moment was other than it is. We want the moment to be brighter or shinier. We don’t want to be feeling the way we are. We don’t want the moment we are experiencing. We want the moment he is having, or the one she is having. And so on.

The stark fact is that the present moment has already arrived. If we try to wish it away, we are engaged in a futile fight with the universe.

It’s as though we believe that we can step outside of life’s natural flow and manipulate the universe so that we get exactly what we want every time.

The universe is not ours to control. And wanting things to be pleasurable all the time, wanting to be happy all the time, are impossible fantasies that only lead to frustration and discontent.

Besides, the word ‘happy’ comes from the same root as ‘to happen’. So you could say that to experience happiness means to participate whole-heartedly in whatever is happening right now and to feel whatever is arising. Which is as good a definition of mindfulness as any.

Think about all your great experiences in life and you’ll notice they were all times when you were fully in the present moment. You won’t be thinking about great times you had when you were looking forward to things.

We tend to buy into the idea that certain things in life will bring us lasting happiness: the ideal partner, money in the bank, the perfect job. When we are not happy, we tend to look outside of ourselves for things to blame for the fact that we are not content. Our partner doesn’t measure up. We don’t have enough money. Our job is unfulfilling.

We convince ourselves that happiness, lasting happiness, will come just as soon as we get the things we want. Then, as soon as we get those things, we find that the cycle repeats itself.

It doesn’t seem to occur to us that our lack of contentment may have something to do with the fact that we are living for some future moment, rather than finding meaning and contentment in the simplicity of living, breathing and being.

We seem to spend so much of our lives stiffly braced against life’s inevitabilities, as if worrying about things will ward off the unwelcome and the unpleasant. But there is a better way to live, one given to responding more skilfully when difficulties arise.

This principle is illustrated by an ancient parable about the pine and the willow in heavy snow. The pine branch, being rigid, cracks under the weight of the snow; but the springy willow branch yields to the weight, and the snow drops off. Mindfulness teaches us to live life more like the willow than the pine, and to notice the difference.

Mindfulness will not completely eliminate life’s pressures and it will not solve all our problems, but it can help us respond to them in a calmer, more resourceful, more conscious manner.

Mindfulness doesn’t pretend that it will take you to a place where everything is just as you would like it. That place does not exist and has never existed.

Instead, it offers an alternative to turning away from the experiences we instantly label as unpleasant or unwelcome.

The idea of turning directly towards difficult thoughts and emotional pain would sound counter-intuitive to most people. But haven’t we all found that turning away from these thoughts or emotions hasn’t solved anything? It hasn’t even protected us.

When we learn to turn towards experience, opening ourselves to challenging experiences, strong impulses and physical cravings, we allow ourselves not to be swept away by habitual patterns. We learn to recognize those habits when they arise and, with that kind recognition, they tend to loosen their hold on us.

Instead of being swept away, we return our attention to the present moment which is, of course, the only moment we actually have. It is sometimes easy to forget that the time is always now. Mindfulness teaches us that we have a choice: whether to be aware of what is unfolding in our minds, bodies and the world around us; or to be somewhere else.

We can think about the past and think about the future but only from the standpoint of the present moment.

Mindfulness allows us to be right there, inhabiting the moment fully, letting ourselves be.

For many of us, everyday life can often narrow itself down to little more than a list of pressing demands, things to tick off as we go about our day. If we can take a mindful pause once in a while, we might ask ourselves, ‘Where am I on this list? What am I giving to myself?’

And it’s not just about you. When we begin to lay the foundations for mindful living, we become more tuned in to the wellbeing of others. Traditionally, in meditation circles, compassion is viewed as the noblest quality of the human heart, the motivation underlying all paths of healing and personal transformation.

Mindfulness is as much about becoming more compassionate to others as it is about self-compassion. What we practice, we cultivate. If we practice being kind and caring, we will become kinder and more caring.

With practice we learn to meet our own suffering and that of others with kindness, patience, equanimity and, crucially, without judgment.

With compassion, we can approach our own suffering and that of others with a more generous, more open heart. When we are compassionate, when we experience loving-kindness, we see that every one of us shares the same wish to be healthy and happy, to be in touch with our intrinsic wholeness, to transcend fear and despair. We learn to appreciate our common humanity.

We start to notice that all unpleasant behaviour, in ourselves and others, is born of pain and fear. With this on board, we can learn to react more considerately and less judgmentally to that which we find unpleasant. This in turn, rewards us with a greater inner peace.

When we start practising mindfulness, we’re embarking on a journey that helps us connect, to live life more fully, and to realize our full potential as conscious and compassionate beings.

With practice, we learn to fold mindfulness into our daily lives so that being mindful becomes second nature. We learn to be instinctively more awake in our daily lives. Practice is a commitment to openness, a saying no to avoidance.

It takes courage to say, ‘I refuse to live this way any longer.’ But it doesn’t have to be difficult. You just need to be ready, to be open, to be receptive to whatever arises moment to moment, accepting that this is what life is presenting to you right now.

Mindfulness is a great adventure. Make it the centre line in your life, and reap the benefits.

The Turning Point: 8 Week Mindfulness & Wellbeing Course by Jon Wilde and Gerard Evans is available from Amazon here.

For further information on the Turning Point course visit the Brighton Mindfulness Centre.