How To Meditate Mindfully

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‘The thing about meditation is: you become more and more you.’ – David Lynch

Mindfulness is the awareness that arises from purposefully paying non-judgmental attention to the present moment.

This brief definition hides a significant amount of wisdom, so it is worth unpacking. Mindfulness is the awareness, not the act of meditation. We practice meditation to become mindful, first on the meditation mat, and then increasingly in our everyday lives. We do this by paying nonjudgmental awareness to the present moment. This sounds simple enough, but it can be deceptively complex. It involves observing the contents of consciousness, both internal and external, for what they are, as they are; without overlaying additional judgements, labels, thoughts, concepts, wishes, desires, or anything else.

This is reality at its purest, the present moment, untainted.

This may sound like an impossible state to reach, but do not be discouraged. We may never attain total, true, and lasting mindfulness; indeed, that state may not even exist. But what is certain however is that such a state is worth striving for. The benefits to functionality, mental clarity, self-awareness, and relationships of even partial or occasional bouts of pure seeing are worth the hours of meditation time. Later sections of this book will delve deep into the why and the how a mindfulness practice provides such benefits. It will also address the issue around striving, namely that to be truly mindful, we must drop all desires; even the desire to see the benefits from our meditation practice itself. However, since humans rarely act without a promise and evidence of future reward, it seems best to couch mindfulness meditation as a practice that has tangible benefits that will have a lasting impact on the real world. For the moment, it is best that we simply begin meditating and address any questions as they naturally arise through our experience.

Mindfulness requires the ability to maintain focused attention on a meditation object. And as you will soon experience, the untrained mind is often scatty and erratic; seeming to bounce from one thing to the next at random. This practice will not only show you what your mind is like in this moment but will also help you to start gaining some control over it. It is for these reasons that despite its simplicity, the following basic practice can be used throughout a meditators journey. Everyone, from absolute beginners to seasoned practitioners, will find benefit from this one.

Do this daily.

Meditation:   Basic Mindfulness

1: Sit down in a comfortable position.
2: Start a timer for five minutes.
3: Draw your attention to the sensations of the breath, entering and leaving the nose.
4: If your mind wanders, gently return your focus back to the breath.
5: Repeat for the duration of the session.

So how did you go? I know that my first experiences of meditation were quite eye opening. I was shocked at my clear inability to maintain my focus on the breath. Almost instantly my mind would wander onto something else: a daydream, a memory, or an itch. I would often lose myself in future planning, ruminating on the past, or find myself reviewing arguments. Emotions would flair up or I would get drowsy. Despite my best intentions, the vast majority of my time was spent on everything other than focused attention on the breath.

In my experience teaching meditation, most new practitioners have similar experiences as described above. As for the small subset who report that they ‘could maintain focus on the breath just fine’, most are quickly disavowed of that opinion. With repeated practice, their ability to monitor what is occurring during a meditation session increases, and they become aware that they were so lost in thought or so distracted that they did not even realize that their attention had wandered. But eventually their ability to maintain focus improves, and their internal monitoring capacity becomes fine-tuned. They become aware of their inner world, both its nature, function, and capabilities.

It is like we are wanting to observe our skin at a cellular level. Not only would we need to know how to use a microscope, but we would also want to use one that is of the highest quality, is well maintained, and clean; because if it is not, our observations will not be accurate. And just as we may fail to see the inner workings of our epidermis, without the skills of focused attention and mindfulness we may similarly fail to observe the reality of our mind.

Let’s take an example of a leaf for a moment. When mindful, we see the shape, colour, and texture of the leaf as if it were the first time we ever saw the leaf. We make no attempt to label it as a leaf, or classify the type of plant it is from, nor to remember previous times we interacted with leaves like it. It is as if we are a cross between a scientist and a young child, or an alien that is observing something totally foreign to our previous experience and we want to catalogue what we discover. With nothing to scaffold our sensory data to, we are forced to observe it for what it is, as it is. If that leaf were to make a sound, we would hear it as the pure sound that it is, without prescribing meanings to the sound like ‘trees rustling in the wind’ or ‘crunching underfoot’.

To fall into such a level of mindfulness is a representation of an advanced level practitioner, but it is one that beginners will quickly get glimpses of. Indeed, you may recall brief and fleeting moments of mindfulness in which you lost yourself in the moment, perhaps when observing the moon, the ocean, or some other kind of natural wonder. Epic music and art also can have a similar effect, we lose ourselves to it. Now, to be clear, this is not entirely true mindfulness, because the act of ‘getting lost’ in the music implies a potential loss of mindful awareness, but it approximates our goal.

Remember, mindfulness is the awareness that arises from purposefully paying non-judgemental attention to the present moment. It is observing what is happening now as it is, for what it is. Mindfulness is not the absence of thought or a blank mind. Such a state is not possible, rather it is the awareness and acceptance of the contents of consciousness as it is. It includes both external contents of consciousness, for example the vision of our hands, the feelings of our breath and the sounds of leaves rustling, as well as the internal contents of consciousness for example, our thoughts, moods, feelings, memories, and other mental phenomena.

To be mindful is to be aware of it all, without judgement.