Mindfulness: The State Of The Mind

At the very heart of our practice, is simply knowing the state of your mind at this moment. Without judging it, evaluating it, trying to change it. Knowing your emotional state in this moment – is there joy, sorrow, loneliness? This is mindfulness. And it’s important because how we perceive and frame each moment generates our reality. So the quality of your mind determines the quality of your life.

Transcript

So, At the heart of our practice, It's simply knowing the state of your mind in this moment without judging it or evaluating it or trying to change it in any way. Knowing your emotional state in this moment. Is there joy? Is there sorrow? Are you lonely? This is mindfulness. Knowing the state of your mind at this moment. And it's important because how we perceive and frame each moment of our life generates our reality. So the quality of your mind determines the quality of your life. And that may feel really big and like, Holy cow, I don't know that I can, I got to deal with this mind of mine. Knowing the state of your mind at this moment without judging it, Without evaluating it. I think that some people in practice, In our practice group probably as well, Associate meditation with being a particular way. Like it's an upgraded model of yourself, Somebody different. But the point is not to become a better version of yourself. The point is to become free, Meaning that you're actually freer to be who you are. You become free of the extra stuff that causes you suffering or causes your behavior to bring suffering to others. In her book, Radical Acceptance, Tara Brooke, She defines radical acceptance as fully and unconditionally accepting ourselves and our current circumstances without judgment, Self-criticism or resistance. So again, Knowing our thoughts, Our emotions and the experiences as they are, Without trying to change them or fix them or have them be different in any way. And her emphasis of radical acceptance is on two components, Mindfulness and compassion. Mindfulness without self-compassion, It leaves us spinning. This practice that we do is rooted in the idea that true healing and transformation can only occur when we embrace our whole selves with all of our imperfections and all of our vulnerabilities. So how are you relating to your imperfections? This is the consideration. How are you relating? Are you projecting your imperfections out onto other people as judgment? Are you bypassing them, Sort of like sweeping them under the carpet and adopting some identity that looks like an upgraded version of yourself? Like, Oh no, This isn't who I am. I'm all of these other things. So I invite you to take a moment and ask yourself, How am I relating to my imperfections? Is there acceptance there? Just to know. And then how does it feel in the body? What's the felt sense? How are you relating to the inner experience? And I ask this because the places where we get hung up are very important windows into understanding how we suffer or how we are more likely to cause problems in our life. It's a very important window. How am I relating to my imperfections? And so we start paying attention, Which all of us have the capacity to do. This practice, This mindfulness practice, It could be called honesty practice. It's the practice of honesty, Self-honesty. Every moment that we're mindful is a moment of recognizing what's actually happening and being honest about it to ourselves without judgment, Without criticism. And if the point of practice is to become free, It's an important understanding that freedom actually comes from compassion, From care. So another question, What do you have to let go of to have love for yourself? What story pulls you away? What do you have to let go of to have compassion, Care for yourself? What do you have to grieve? There's so much pain in the world right now. So much ungrieved loss, So much ungrieved pain. And I'm going to go out on a limb here. This is also us. So much ungrieved loss, So much ungrieved pain. Thoughts are very powerful. I'm sure you've noticed that. They pull you away from sitting quietly with your breath. And you may notice that when a thought arises, How quickly an emotion is born out of that thought, Liking or not liking or judging or evaluating. But mindfulness practice reveals differences between thinking and direct experience. So in directly experiencing something, Anything, And I invite you to try this out, There's no thinking. It's the world through our senses, Direct experience, Seeing, Hearing, Sensing, Touching, Tasting, Smelling, Direct experience has feeling tones associated with them. It's raw and it's unprocessed compared to thinking. Now thinking often is intertwined with direct experience. It sort of like follows it immediately. But basically thinking is just mental process. It's the process of cognition. It involves reasoning and problem solving and memory and imagination. Thinking helps us process and interpret and kind of come up with meaning from direct experiences, Making direct experience more than just sensory input. And it's my perception, I'll own that, That all of us here spend way too much time in our thoughts, In our thinking. And practice, Meditation practice is pointing us over and over again to direct experience. And I don't want to vilify thinking. Without thinking, We wouldn't be able to navigate our world or take care of ourselves or be safe. So thinking is an important part of our life, But it's also a place of tremendous suffering. The stories that we tell ourselves, The judgments that we place on others and we tell ourselves, Some of our judgments are debilitating, Undermining our vitality and our joy and our happiness. One of the most common misunderstandings about meditation practice is that we're supposed to stop thinking. The point is not to stop the thinking, But to find a relationship to the present moment that is not lost in thought. The thoughts are doing their thing in the background, Like sound, And we're just witnessing it, Becoming the witness, The awareness of what's happening. And the thoughts are just included in that. They're not the enemy. So it's useful to begin to recognize what you're thinking and when you're thinking. One of the very simple exercises that you can do is telling yourself when you're thinking with your inner voice. If you're alone, Maybe you say it out loud to yourself, Like, I'm thinking about lunch. I'm thinking about the news that I just read. I'm thinking about what my plans are for today. I'm thinking about what Lisa's talking about. I'm thinking about my fantasies. I'm thinking about my complaints. I'm thinking about my judgments. I'm thinking about how I am mean to myself. And we can start to develop the skill of learning to notice what am I thinking about right now? It's kind of like taking an inventory of what we're thinking. And when we start doing this, You begin to recognize how repetitive our thoughts are. One of my teachers, Jack Kornfield, Calls them the top 10 tunes. The top 10 tunes. And they're often on repeat. So one of the things we can learn when we start doing this kind of exercise is the attitudes we have about our thinking. And some people have really difficult, They have a difficult relationship with their thoughts. Some people are afraid of their thoughts. Some people are overly connected to their thoughts. It's like the most important thing going on is their thinking. For some, It's an antidote to boredom or an antidote to stress, To go into like the entertainment center of the mind. So for these next couple of days, The invitation is to go about your day and start recognizing what you're thinking about. Recognize the top 10 thoughts. Recognize that you're thinking. So thank you for your consideration in this practice that we do.

Reviews

As always, thoughtful and profoundly helpful 🌟