Mindfulness Meditation Primer

In this mindfulness meditation primer you will learn the fundamentals that you will need to begin and continue to explore your mindfulness meditation practice. Being familiar with these basics will allow you to get a lot more out of your practice.

Transcript

Hello,

I'm Michael Morphis and welcome to this primer on mindfulness meditation.

Mindfulness meditation is the practice of using two skills that we already have,

Two skills that we're born with,

Paying attention and noticing.

And what the Buddha,

Who is basically the creator of these mindfulness meditation practices that we do now,

2500 years after he suggested them,

Is that if we are able to simply pay attention to what the mind is knowing in the moment,

It has this deeply calming,

Soothing and centering effect.

It's really amazing now that modern neuroscience is showing that to be the case as well.

They do brain scans on people that are serious meditators,

Long-term meditators,

And it literally changes the brain.

It shrinks the parts of the brain that tend to become triggers of stressful behavior and reactivity,

And it enhances the parts of the brain that seem to enable us to be calm,

Centered,

Peaceful and balanced.

So what is mindfulness meditation?

Mindfulness meditation is the deliberate practice of paying attention to what the mind is knowing in the present moment in a specific way.

In this practice,

We think in terms of the mind being this very multifaceted jewel that it is,

As having this part of itself that is what we might call the knower or the knowing mind.

And that's the part of the mind that just simply is able to tell what is being experienced.

It's really as simple as that.

So there's all kinds of different facets of our mind.

There's the part that figures stuff out.

There's the part that worries.

There's the part that's fun.

There's the part that's depressed.

There's the part that's challenged.

So there's the part that watches and notices.

And that's what we're really interested in in our mindfulness meditation practice,

Because it turns out that the part that is able to simply notice and pay attention has this really remarkable personality.

It never gets flustered.

It never gets agitated.

It never gets freaked out.

It doesn't have panic.

It doesn't have anything but this ability to simply notice and it can handle it all.

Whatever is going on,

It can simply notice and to kind of give it again this personality,

It's kind of almost like it's just saying,

Okay,

The mind is noticing this.

The mind is noticing that.

The mind is noticing being completely enraptured in joy and ecstasy.

The mind is knowing being completely freaked out and panicked.

The mind is knowing a smell.

The mind is knowing a taste.

The mind is knowing thinking.

And this is a really remarkable thing to be working with and playing with,

Because when we are not aware that this is something that we can do,

We are moving through our life kind of on autopilot.

This is almost a whole new phase of consciousness.

We are becoming aware that we're aware.

We're using the mind to watch the mind.

It's quite radical.

And so in our mindfulness meditation practice,

We are practicing the skill of using the mind to watch the mind.

This is the part of the mind that's the supervisor,

The conductor,

The decider,

The wise part of the mind.

And by engaging in a mindfulness meditation practice,

We are enabling ourselves to nourish the wise supervisor,

The wise organizer,

And enhancing our ability to really tell what we're doing and why we're doing it.

Because very often,

We are running kind of on autopilot.

Our hormones kick in,

Our habit patterns kick in,

And we feel like we don't really have a choice many times other than to go along with these impulses.

But the good news is that we do have a choice.

And that as soon as we notice that we are caught up into a habit pattern,

As soon as we notice that consciously,

We can then move from habitual reactivity,

Program reactivity,

To more conscious decision-making.

Is this useful?

Is it helpful?

Is it wholesome?

And then we can at least be in the game of making more informed decisions.

And the mindfulness meditation practice is the deliberate,

Specific exercise that we do in order to cultivate the skill of honestly and fully assessing and feeling what it is that's going on here in the present moment.

In the practice,

Again,

We think in terms of there being six ways that the mind can know anything.

What we see through the eyes,

What we hear through the ears,

What we smell with the nose,

What we taste with the tongue,

What we feel with the sensory nerves,

What we feel on the body or in the body.

And the sixth way of knowing is thinking,

Cognition,

Planning,

Remembering,

Fantasizing,

Stressing,

All under the category of thinking.

It's very common to do two types of meditation when we do sitting practice.

There's many types of meditation,

But most commonly when you come to a mindfulness class or a mindfulness setting or group dynamic,

Or even when you do it by yourself,

There'll be kind of two main first ways that we approach the practice.

The first is what we call single object noticing.

And it's the very classic way of approaching your practice where you'll,

For instance,

Sit down and you'll decide,

I'm going to pay attention to my breathing.

The breath is a very classic object of noticing.

And in the simplest of terms,

What you do is you say to yourself,

I'm just going to feel and pay attention to the breath as it comes in and out of my body.

I'll hear the sounds,

I'll feel the sensations,

I'll acknowledge the process.

And then invariably the mind will start to wander.

You'll start to think about other stuff.

And then the practice asks us to acknowledge that the mind has wandered and to,

In a nice way,

In a kind way,

But with a,

You have to have the intention to remain doing the exercise.

You remind yourself,

Oh,

I'm doing something here.

I'm doing an exercise of watching the breath and watching myself,

Watching the breath and watching for the inclination for the mind to wander and then ushering it back.

And we do this over and over again.

The second type of practice is what's called open awareness,

Where we acknowledge that the mind is a thinking machine.

It's a noticing machine and a machine is a,

It's a very paltry word to use for the incredible jewel that the brain is,

That the mind is,

That the complexity of our existence is.

But just for this technical exploration,

We will say that the mind is always noticing something.

And what's tending to happen is that we get caught up,

Entangled and wrapped up into what the mind is noticing.

We'll go down a path of thinking about something and then we're kind of distracted.

In terms of this practice,

That would be considered to be distracted.

So in this practice,

When we do open awareness,

What we do is we acknowledge the fact that the mind will be noticing different things and we practice staying disentangled.

We notice,

Hey,

I'm hearing something.

Can I leave it at that?

The mind is knowing,

Hearing a song that I'm familiar with.

Can I just say,

Okay,

The mind is noticing sound.

What is it noticing next?

And then you might notice you're thinking about it.

You're thinking about your practice.

You're thinking about,

Well,

How am I going to get the mind back to noticing?

That could fall under the category of skillful thinking,

But it's also the mind is knowing thinking.

The mind is knowing a sensation in the body.

My knee is hurting.

The mind is knowing sensation.

I just had a lovely meal.

My belly is full.

The mind is knowing satiation,

Et cetera.

So it's a process of noticing and letting go,

Noticing and letting be.

Sometimes there are very intense things going on.

We're having a very difficult time emotionally,

Physically,

Mentally,

Financially,

Whatever.

We sit,

We turn awareness inwards.

We're noticing,

Feeling distressed.

What does that feel like?

What is physically happening when you feel distressed?

This is a way of skillfully leaning in,

Maybe one more layer into your practice.

But then we see we're not trying to,

And this is a very important part of the practice,

Is that counterintuitively while we're practicing,

We're not trying to change anything.

We're trying to practice skillfully accepting,

Radically accepting whatever is true for us in the moment.

And again,

This is counterintuitive because I think the truth of it is that we all come to our meditation practice because we want to feel better.

This is totally normal and wholesome,

But how do we feel better?

Counterintuitively is by not trying to change what it is that we're experiencing in the moment.

To feel it deeply,

To say yes to it,

To sit with it.

And then this creates the internal conditions,

The internal environment in which the change that we are moving towards has a chance to begin to flourish and to manifest.

So the two main practices that we will probably encounter when we sit is what's called single object noticing or neutral object noticing,

And then open awareness.

A last note is that if we are engaged in open awareness and our attention keeps going back to something that is challenging for us,

We're ruminating,

There's cyclic thinking,

We're stuck,

We're freaked out,

We're upset,

Keeps going back to that,

Keeps going back to that,

It's considered skillful to try to pay attention to what is called a neutral object.

So for instance,

Let's say you're heartbroken and you keep on thinking about this thing that you want that you can't have and it's killing you and it's hurting you.

That's true.

But what else is true in the moment?

So if you open your eyes and you look out the window and you see a tree or the sky,

Say the mind is knowing seeing the sky,

The mind is knowing seeing a tree,

The mind is knowing seeing the building across the street.

You may look in your room and see a chair,

The mind is knowing seeing a chair.

These are relatively neutral objects of noticing.

They probably won't trigger you as much as thinking about your heartache.

They're valid because they are real.

The sky is real.

The tree is real.

The chair is real.

You're not pretending to notice something that is a fantasy or an illusion.

You're just deciding skillfully to not pay attention that is causing you suffering.

And you can do that.

That's your choice.

We want to do this in a skillful way,

Meaning that we do acknowledge that something is very difficult.

We do this only if it's too difficult.

If continuing to pay attention to the challenging thing is going to really freak us out.

We need a little break at that point.

And we do want to come back to sitting with what's challenging as directly and as deeply as we can.

But sometimes it's too much.

And in those situations,

Going to a neutral object of noticing is the right thing to do.

When we feel centered again,

When we feel a bit calmer,

We can go back and sit with our pain.

We can go back and sit with our anxiety.

We can go back and sit with what's difficult.

And that is why we practice,

Is to get really familiar with these things.

Because unless and until we give ourselves permission to feel what's challenging us honestly and deeply,

We won't become motivated to figure out how to work with it and what to do about it.

So this is why we practice.

To notice what's going on.

To,

To,

If something is challenging us,

To feel it deeply,

To find the motivation to work with it.

And then on the other side,

If something is really great,

If we're feeling relaxed,

If we're feeling calm,

If we're feeling love in our lives and everything is wonderful,

Then we get to experience that fully without distraction.

So it's a no-lose situation.

If we can pay attention to what's happening in the moment mindfully,

We have a more complete experience,

A more profound experience.

And we are training ourselves to really show up for our lives,

To be a warrior in the best sense of the word,

To really be here in the work,

In the love,

In the challenge,

And to live fully.

These basic concepts are a lot of what you'll need to know to do your own sitting practice,

To join a sitting group.

The instructor may say,

Well,

We're going to do single object noticing.

You'll know what they're referring to.

The instructor may say,

We're going to do open awareness.

You'll know what they're referring to.

This is some of the most basic stuff.

Two more things.

See if you can relax into your practice.

Try not to force anything.

Try not to freak yourself out in this exploration.

Simply hold,

Be curious if you can find humor and lightness and love,

But you want to stay attentive.

Notice when the mind drifts,

Usher it back to the moment with care and loving kindness.

And in order to make traction,

The second thing is if we want to really benefit from the practice,

We have to do the practice.

And it's great to do a formal practice where you set a timer and you sit for two minutes,

Five minutes,

10 minutes,

An hour,

Whatever you can do.

But you can also do this anywhere at any time.

From the moment you wake up to the moment you go to sleep,

You can check in and say,

What is the mind knowing?

Something that you're hearing,

Seeing,

Smelling,

Touching,

Tasting,

Thinking.

Can you notice and just let it be?

Not try to change it,

Not try to fix it,

Not try to alter it.

Notice,

Feel it,

Let it be.

I hope this is helpful and there'll be other primers on loving kindness practice and gratitude practice.

I hope your day is filled with peace and well-being.

Until next time,

Be well.

Reviews

I have been doing both single object and open mind meditation techniques for many years without really understanding the why. Thank you for the insight

Very helpful talk and meditation . Very grateful I found you on Insight Timer . Namaste🙏