Mindfulness Meditation
Learn how by doing nothing but stay in the present can help you to stop knee-jerk reactions to what life throws at you
When the word meditation is mentioned, what is the first thing that comes to your mind? You probably imagine someone sitting in a lotus position, with eyes closed and hands resting on the laps contemplating on his navel.
But, meditation is much more than what you see from the outside. Although two persons may be sitting with the same posture, they could be doing something completely different inside. One person may be following her breath, while the other could be silently repeating a mantra.
There are many forms of meditation and which form you choose depends largely on your personal inclination as well as the reasons why you meditate. There is bound to be one form of meditation that suits you.
But regardless of which form you choose, I believe all of them eventually lead to the same results and that is, an increase in consciousness and a better understanding of your true nature.
Awakening the Unconscious Mind
In this article, we will explore one form of meditation called mindfulness meditation which trains us to become more aware of our thoughts and emotions.
This meditation simply requires us to leave our thoughts and feelings as they are and observe them without attempting to analyze, judge, interpret, or change them. We do not dwell in our thoughts and neither do we resist them.
In another word, you do absolutely nothing to your thoughts or any sensations they may evoke, except by being mindful of their presence.
Simple as it may sound, it is actually not that easy to leave our thoughts alone. We have been so used to interacting with our own internal melodramas that we are often unaware of the lively discussions and interactions that happen within. For instance, when a not-so-happy thought arises, such as a recollection of a painful experience, we would either try to push it away from our mind, or dwell in the most dreadful moments and relive the pains all over again.
What is Mindfulness Meditation?
Can mindfulness meditation help to curb incessant thoughts? The answer is no, mindfulness meditation won’t close the floodgates of thoughts in your mind. There is probably no way you can stop the mind from churning out thoughts.
It can, however, change the way you relate to your thoughts — by teaching you how to acknowledge thoughts without losing yourself in them — and set you free from their imprisonment.
Through mindfulness meditation, you’d realize that there’s no need to take every thought seriously, let alone being tormented by any of them.
You can instead learn to meet your thoughts, especially the old recurring ones that used to enslave you, like friends.
“Ah, there you are again, my old friend.”
When you learn to change your relationship with your thoughts through meditation, you gain a new found freedom to pick and choose the thoughts you’d like to act upon and decide which you’d rather ignore.
Suppressing or even pretending that your thoughts aren’t there is a zero-sum game. The moment we thought we have succeeded in overcoming one, another one jumps in to replace the void.
Since we can’t stop thinking, then a better option is perhaps to learn how best to live with them. Just as they come, they must surely go. Thoughts and emotions come and go even without us lifting a finger. On the contrary, the more we try to control them, the more persistent they become as it’s the very act of control that keeps them alive.
So are you ready to change your relationship with your thoughts? Let us begin:
How To Do Mindfulness Meditation
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Scrap the agenda. First of all, leave what you know about meditation at the door before you meditate. Every meditation session is as unique as the thoughts that you will come to face each time. Try to approach meditation like a beginner each time.
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Find a quiet spot. Find a quiet place to sit, especially if you are new to meditation. This will reduce the amount of distraction and help you to focus your attention inward. Set aside 15 minutes or longer for this meditation. You can set a gentle alarm using a clock or use this online meditation timer to tell you when the time is up.
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Relax and sit comfortably. Take a few slow and deep breaths to relax yourself. If you feel tense, I suggest you do a relaxation exercise first. It will help you to concentrate better.
Like most sitting meditations described on this site, there is no special meditative pose you must adopt. But it’s important to sit with your spine in a neutral position (that is, keep your spine reasonably straight) so that you don’t hurt your back or strain your neck. You can adopt one of the classic meditation positions with your legs crossed in full lotus or half-lotus. They are after all tried and tested postures for meditation. But you can also sit on a chair with your feet planted on the ground if you wish to.
Once you are seated comfortably, close your eyes softly, or keep them half-closed with your gaze directed downwards.
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Stay aware of your thoughts. Open yourself to the thoughts in your mind. What do you see or hear or smell or taste or feel? You will find some thoughts dash in and out quickly like a swallow flying across the sky. Sometimes you may find your mind momentarily blank. It’s like shining a torch in a dark corner. Creatures that once dwell there instantly scurried away. But not for long, of course.
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Don’t meddle. As you observe any thought that arises, don’t mess with it. Don’t attempt to suppress, run away, comment, judge, evaluate or hold on to them. It’s tempting to get involved in the scenes that played out in the mind, especially those that get us emotionally charged because we believe we’ve a stake in them. But don’t.
Instead, acknowledge each one of them and maintain a non-judgmental view. Say, a thought about the presentation which you need to give tomorrow comes up. Recognize its nature and say quietly to yourself, “Oh, I’m worrying about tomorrow’s meeting”, then let it go. Go back to observing your mind. Refrain from going along with the plot and get yourself carried away.
As you meditate, some insights, ideas or reminders may pop up out of nowhere. You’ll be tempted to break your meditation and attend to them. Unless it’s a really important matter, train yourself to remain steadfast in your meditation. You will have plenty of time to deal with any worthwhile thoughts after your meditation. For now, your time and attention are reserved for developing mindfulness. If you’re afraid that you might forget them later, my experience is they’ll usually come back after meditation with some deliberate remembering, or as you get on with other tasks.
You may also experience emotions that are associated with certain thoughts during meditation. If you feel an emotion arising, don’t be afraid to experience it fully but don’t fuel it further. Let the emotion dissipates on its own. Soon, the feeling will pass. It’s a delicate balance to strike — feeling an emotion and yet not be drawn by it — but it’s definitely possible.
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Lost and found, again. During this meditation, you will invariably find yourself getting lost in your thoughts or feelings time and again. It doesn’t matter. It’s bound to happen, even for those who have been meditating for a long time. So don’t lose heart.
The crux is to realize that you’re entangled in your own drama, to recognize that you’ve been ‘sleeping’, and bring yourself back to the present moment each time. The very act of bringing yourself back and again to the now trains you to become more mindful and goes a long way towards elevating your consciousnesses.
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Extend your consciousness beyond meditation. When the session ends, take your time to open your eyes and get up. Do a gentle stretch to limber up. Bring your heightened awareness to your daily life. That means, staying open and being mindful of what you’re doing and what’s going on in your mind. Even if you are daydreaming, be aware of what you are daydreaming about. Mindfulness isn’t reserved for the short time that you spent sitting in meditation. It should and can be extended to your everyday life.
I WISH TO BE A MEMBER OF THIS EXCITIMG SITE TO HELP ME TRAIN MY MIND.
You’re most welcome, Amos! This website is opened to one and all. And your training starts as soon as you put what you’ve learned into action.
Excellent post.
I love how it doesn’t proselytize a specific method, but merely tells us we can be peaceful by becoming aware of our thoughts.
I think when we meditate mindfully, we recognize that by trying to suppress our thoughts, we wont recognize that we are actively maintaining belief in separation from what we are thinking about—and therefore remain oblivious to our belief in separation.
I hope this isn’t too confusing. It’s almost like a math problem, but our running minds tend to make an uncomplicated thing complicated.
Thank you for sharing your perspective, Braden! I couldn’t have put it better — mindful meditation as a way to disengage from our belief in separation. Well-said!
it is possible to control the thoughts for the moment but to control them through out the day when they chase you every moment how it can be dealth with.?
Hi Naila, The point is not so much to control our thoughts, but to live in peace with them. We’ll always have thoughts, both good as well as bad. As what you’ve realized, trying to control them is futile. In one moment, it may appear that you’ve successfully manipulated them to go in the direction that you want, but at the next instant, you found that you’ve total lost control of them.
That’s when meditation comes in handy. Meditation helps us to be aware of the thoughts in our mind and trains us not to go along with them. In other words, we know of the thoughts in our mind, but we are not influenced or become less influenced by them. We’ll selectively engage with thoughts which we find worthy and discard those that are meaningless, frivolous or even harmful to us. As you continue to meditate more, you’ll find that this awareness isn’t just confined only within your meditation sessions, but it’s also present when you are eating, walking or going about your daily routines. Hope this helps.
This is a really interesting subject, where can I get more information from?
Hi, what sort of information do you like to find out more? If you like to learn more about meditation, there are a number of books and websites, including the one you’re reading now
, to help you. If there’s a specific question you like to ask, feel free to post them. Thanks.