7-Day New Year's Practice: Day 7 Mindful Observation

We can't control the outside world and even our own mind isn't under control. When we meditate, sooner or later, it will go off to think, get busy or want to change something. We can cultivate goodness and mental concentration, yet ultimately, we'll need mindfulness to completely eradicate our personal suffering.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to day seven of seven days of guided meditation.

This is Salima and I'm so happy that you're with me today.

In today's practice,

I would like to bring everything into focus so that we can see what we're actually doing.

Why are we here?

The reason why you're listening to this meditation and the reason why you may be interested in meditation is because somewhere inside your heart,

You know that you have suffered.

You might be at a phase in your life right now where you are suffering,

You're experiencing some disappointment or sadness or anxiety.

There might be times in your life where that anxiety comes up when you least expect it.

We don't know,

We don't have any guarantees in this life that things are going to go smooth just because we're successful or just because things are going our way for a period of time.

There's no guarantee that life is going to stay that way and it can't.

We can't guarantee that.

What happens to us when we're caught off guard,

When we have an experience that is painful or difficult?

How do we meet that experience?

How do we fare in the face of sadness or anger or intense loss or intense anxiety?

Things that happen out there in the world.

We think that that's the problem.

We think that the problem is out there but we can't control the world.

We can't make sure that all situations and circumstances are to our liking.

We largely can't control ourselves and if you've been listening for the past several days you might have noticed that you can't even control your own mind.

So the mind isn't something that is under control.

What we can do is see that we're walking around with our own baggage,

With our own beliefs,

Ideas,

Feelings.

Some of them are being expressed.

Some of them are being suppressed and that we're walking around with a certain level of pain in our heart and that pain doesn't come to the surface until something triggers it and again there's no guarantee that we're going to walk around in this life without having any triggers.

So what we're doing today is we're going to look at the practice of mindfulness and how mindfulness comes up for us in our daily life.

I'll give us a hint and that is that mindfulness doesn't just arise because we want it to or because we want to pause on a particular issue or an instance where we're uncomfortable.

We can't pause on something and then decide how we want to react or respond to that experience and then respond that way and call it mindfulness.

That's not mindfulness.

That's a technique and largely a suppression.

What mindfulness actually does is it shows us the truth of this body and this mind and in order for it to come up in our day-to-day life where the rubber meets the road so to speak is to practice it but it needs to be practiced with the appropriate kind of mind and so we've done a little bit of work earlier in some of the sessions to set ourselves up for success to create a heart that is more wholesome that is more pure than what we have walking around in our day-to-day activities and what we want to do is now learn how to observe this being,

This person that we believe that we are more clearly.

We want to take the stance or the position of a researcher,

A scientist,

Someone who is interested in studying the behavior of this body and this mind.

What are the things that come up when we're not controlling it?

If we're trying to control this body and this mind,

The natural processes aren't going to happen.

We're going to be stifled.

We're going to be unnatural and then we aren't going to learn what's going on and when I say learn I'm not talking about an intellectual pursuit but an experiential learning,

The kind of learning that enters the heart immediately.

So in order for this to happen,

For us to really see,

We need to practice some kind of formal mindfulness practice every day and it doesn't have to be very long.

You will probably have noticed that a lot of our recordings have been fairly short and I wanted to make sure that they were short so that we would have the ability to practice every day and so for those of you who stuck it through all seven days and you're here on the last day,

Thank you so much and congratulations and I hope you continue.

And so let's continue with our practice building on what we've learned so far and to begin let's practice some formal mindfulness.

So this means observing this body and this mind and as we do this I'll guide us through understanding a little bit more about formal versus informal practice as well.

So to begin just give yourself a moment to see without moving or changing your posture whatsoever.

Notice how this body is sitting.

Notice how it's feeling.

Just sense the posture of the body.

The mind may go off.

That's okay.

Notice that the mind went off.

Notice any part of the body that feels uncomfortable and just pay attention to that uncomfortable feeling.

There might be a recognition that this body is moving,

It's breathing.

There might be a recognition that the eyelids are opening and closing.

There might even be a feeling in the hands.

Some of us may feel that the hands aren't completely still.

Lots of little micro movements there.

Just get into a place where it feels comfortable for you,

Allowing your back to be upright and feeling free if you'd like to.

Take a deep breath in and lengthen the spine with the crown reaching all the way up to the sky and bring your shoulders up if you'd like.

And on the exhale,

Release the back,

Release the shoulders back and down.

In order to practice mindfulness formally,

We have to give the mind something to do,

Something to rest with.

And the reason why we give the mind something to rest with is because we want to gauge what the mind does when it leaves that object.

So we could choose watching the breath or observing the breath,

Just noticing how when the in-breath comes in,

The center of the body expands and when the out-breath leaves,

The center of the body releases.

So we may be watching the body in this way and we may notice that the mind goes off somewhere.

Usually the mind will go off to think,

But it's very hard for us to observe the mind thinking.

It's also very hard for us to return to something like the breath because it's so subtle.

Both of these things can be subtle because we're immersed in them all day.

The researchers say there's 65,

000 thoughts that go through a human mind in a given day and I don't even know if they're counting dreaming at night.

So we might want to give ourselves something a little bit more obvious in that case.

The other thing that we can do is if the breath isn't something that's comfortable for us,

If it brings up any anxiety or any worry,

We can use a mental object like a mantra.

So choosing a word or a phrase that feels good to us,

Like may I be happy,

May I be peaceful,

May I be free,

Or even just the name of a loved one or a happy place that you know of.

And so this mental object is repeated in the mind.

It could be a few words together or just one word.

And we repeat it over and over again and we notice that the mind doesn't stay even with that mantra,

Even though the mind is the thing that's doing the repeating of that mantra.

The mind goes off very quickly to go and think.

So choose something that you enjoy that makes you feel happy.

And we'll just take a few moments to practice with a word or a phrase.

Okay,

So for some of us,

This might be a little bit more involved than the breath.

And so it might be something that we're able to be with more often,

Remembering that the point of our practice is to know this body and this mind and to see this body and this mind as they naturally are.

So if that means the mind is busy and it goes off to think,

Then we want to know that the mind is going off to think.

The object we're using is just a place from which to gauge what the mind does.

It's like a control.

And we see what the mind does when it loses control,

When it goes away,

When it does what it does naturally.

So as I'm talking,

I'm going to continue with a bit of a lesson for the next few minutes.

Take your index finger and just put it on either a table or a desk in front of you on your knee.

Just one finger.

And just let it be there.

Hold it there like that.

And I'd like for you to know a few things about this mindfulness practice that perhaps you may not have learned elsewhere.

The first thing is that when we're practicing with an object like this,

We do so for short periods of time,

10 or 15 minutes to start with.

We may go for longer if we wish,

But 10 or 15 minutes is adequate to begin with.

And we do so in order to have the correct mental posture,

In order to be able to observe and get practice observing this mind and this body,

And to encourage something called samadhi,

Which is translated poorly into concentration.

So what we would normally think is that concentration means holding to that object,

Observing that object and not letting the mind think.

And this is why it's a poor translation.

What I would like for us to understand about samadhi is that samadhi is an alert,

Awake awareness.

Samadhi is the kind of awareness that we have when we're able to observe this body and this mind without getting lost for a long period of time.

So if the mind goes off to think,

We know so very quickly.

We don't have to say a word or to call it anything or label it anything.

We don't have to pause and recognize that the mind has gone off into being anxious or being upset or thinking and then be with it or sit with it or pause with it or contemplate it.

We don't do any of that in mindfulness practice.

Those are healing techniques and they have a place but not in mindfulness practice.

For our practice,

What we want to encourage is the correct type of this concentration or this awareness,

The correct type of samadhi where the mind is very powerful,

Very bright,

Like an overseeing presence.

And this overseeing presence becomes aware very often every single time the mind starts to escape,

To go off and think.

And rather than interfering with the thought,

It just knows that the mind went off to think.

And that is the whole point of the practice.

So once we've seen that,

We know that we've seen it and we return to our object or we reintroduce our object,

We start again with our object.

And we continue like this and the more often we see the mind go away from the object and know what it did,

The better our practice.

So in some minds,

We might consider these to be distractions.

These are not distractions.

These are the entire purpose of the practice.

And the reason why we want to understand this is because it helps us release that baggage.

It helps us release our suffering.

We practice with an innocuous object,

Something that feels good and happy to us because we want to start practicing being very good and very quick at noticing what the mind is doing.

How does this help in our daily life?

So informal practice is something that we can do while we're doing any kind of chore in our day-to-day activities.

We could be preparing a meal.

We could be commuting.

We could be standing in line.

We could be gardening.

We could be doing any activity that we normally do that doesn't require our complete mental involvement.

So if we're talking to somebody or we're at work,

Do what we're supposed to be doing in those times.

But when we're alone,

We might be in the shower brushing our teeth.

We might be getting dressed.

Those are times where we're largely just lost in thought.

And instead of just wasting that time,

We practice,

We have an intention to practice informally to become aware of this body and this mind with some level of samadhi,

With some level of understanding what the mind and the body are doing.

So as we're brushing our teeth,

We notice what the mind and the body are doing.

The body's brushing the teeth and the mind is assessing what it's seeing in the mirror or going off to plan the day.

How's that finger?

If you've noticed that the finger was on the knee and your attention went to it while I was talking over and over again and then came back to listen and you knew it,

Then that was practicing.

So what this does and why we do this is then when something triggers us,

When we have an unhappy situation arise in our life,

Perhaps something catches us off guard.

We don't have to pause or try and regulate ourself or try to suppress something in order to function optimally in the world.

We'll start seeing very,

Very quickly even the beginning of a difficult emotion start to come up and it will fall away by itself.

The baggage,

The bags themselves will drop and this is the real letting go.

We don't actually let go of the baggage.

The baggage lets go of us and we're free from that suffering in that moment and this is why we practice mindfulness.

It's probably the most important thing that we can practice.

So I encourage us to continue our practice of observing this body and this mind just for a minute together now.

If you wish,

You can use your finger on your knee or you can rest your hand and choose one of the objects that we were discussing earlier.

Every time the mind leaves and goes off to think or feel or goes down to notice some part of the body,

Just be aware of it,

Notice it and then reintroduce the object and start again.

Let's go without a Mixer here.

Okay,

So I hope that all of us here are able to practice this in our day-to-day life.

10 or 15 minutes with our object and then as much as possible in our waking life.

As always,

Let's bring our hands together,

Palms together,

Thumbs up to the chest.

May we all be happy.

May we all be peaceful and free from suffering.

May we know the correct practice and may we have the strength and the courage to practice regularly.

And may all beings be happy.

May all beings be peaceful.

May all beings be free from suffering.

And may each and every being,

All living things,

Near or far,

Large or small,

Seen or unseen,

Known or unknown,

May every last living thing share in and benefit from the merits of our practice together.

Thank you so much for being with me for seven days of guided meditation and I hope you continue to practice every day.

Namaste.

Reviews

Thank you Salima!
Your beautiful!

Thank you Salima for the 7 days of meditation and learning. Blessings. Namaste 🙏 Rena

💖such a great series💖

Thank you, Salima, for this mindfulness teaching and the seven day practice. With much appreciation. Namaste.🙏💜