Good morning and welcome to Sacred Sunday.
I am Kara Bradley and on Sundays I bring you a practice,
A guided practice to explore yourself,
Your mind,
Your habits and patterns,
And how you want to move in the world in a more conscious,
Collaborative,
Compassionate way.
And today,
Today's practice is about bending attention.
It's about becoming more familiar with where your attention goes.
And it really is in many respects the first step in mindfulness practice.
But while I say it's the first step,
It's something I continue to practice years,
Decades after my first mindfulness class.
So we are always going back to beginner's mind.
We are always returning back to the beginning to learn anew what our mind does,
Where our mind goes,
What is holding our attention.
Before we get started into the practice,
I want to just define a couple of things for you.
One is that attention is simply the act of noticing.
It's a way of taking regard,
Noticing things,
People,
Images,
Thoughts,
Feelings.
And when we work with attention,
We become more familiar with where our mind goes,
What holds our mind moment to moment.
And when we explore this and get to know our mind in this way,
It's really important to not place judgment on where our mind goes.
We want to be curious about what holds our mind moment to moment in practice so that we can become more aware of that and where our mind goes in our daily life.
So this simple practice is really about just sitting and becoming aware of the fluctuations of your attention.
You can sit comfortably.
You could even do this while walking.
And there are two ways to practice mindfulness at the beginning stages.
One is to focus and concentrate on an object such as your breath or a mantra or a candle,
But holding your attention in one spot.
And that's not what we're going to do today.
What we're going to do today is more of an open awareness practice.
In other words,
We're not directing our mind in any specific direction or on any object of thought or bodily sensation.
But instead,
We're going to just allow our mind to wander as it will and to notice where it wanders.
Because this is going to give you insight into how your mind wanders during your daily life when we're speeding through life.
So wherever you are,
You can just begin simply by either sitting or walking and starting to notice.
We're going to just notice our attention,
Noticing where our attention lands could be on a sound,
A smell,
Something you see if your eyes are open,
A feeling in your body.
Your attention may land on a thought,
Thought of the past,
Thought of the future,
Your mind may land on an image in your mind,
A picture of something.
What is holding my mind or where is my attention bending towards in this moment?
You can label it if that's helpful.
Sometimes I do that thought,
Smell,
Past,
Future,
Sight,
Feeling,
Sound,
Or simply just allow yourself to become familiar with how your attention bends,
Where it's drawn.
And remember in this practice of open awareness,
We're not trying to direct our mind.
We're not judging where our attention wanders.
We're simply becoming familiar with how our mind bends,
How our attention wanders,
Or what holds our mind habitually.
Simply noticing without judgment.
And the simply noticing without judgment is the practice of mindfulness.
It's not about trying to think about certain things.
It's not about not thinking.
It's simply about noticing and becoming familiar with habits of mind,
Habits of attention.
This is the first step to changing if you want to change your habits of mind.
If you find that you're habitually judging yourself,
If you're habitually judging others,
Grasping,
Pushing,
Forcing,
These are,
This is good information for how we are moving through our lives.
And so we watch,
We notice,
We take note of how our attention wanders or bends,
And we let it be in this practice.
So if your eyes have been closed,
You can open them,
Noticing what you see as well as hear,
Feel,
Taste,
Smell,
Think.
Recognize that this training of the mind,
This mindfulness practice,
Helps us to become familiar with our mental patterns,
Emotional patterns,
So that we can then carry it into our lives,
Our busy daily lives,
And become aware as well throughout the day.
Where is my attention bending?
What is holding my mind?
And it's in becoming aware of patterns that we can then redirect them,
Start to change our habits of mind.
Thank you for joining me for this practice.
I look forward to next time,
Joining me during the week for our morning messages.
And please,
If you find value in this practice,
In this podcast,
Please give it a review.
It'll help others find their way to these practices.
And that would be a really,
Really good thing.
Have a wonderful day.
Take care.
