In Part One of this post, we discussed the inherent problems involved in having this great little tool we call our mind – namely that it acts largely out of our control. You want to move on from a painful break up, but your mind won’t stop thinking about it. You want to sit down and study, but in a few minutes you find yourself lost in the endless scroll of Facebook. Someone says something and it offends you; instead of being able to move on, you’re left wondering if what they said was true for the rest of the week.
Meditation is a powerful way to bring your mind under your control. In the last post we discussed how there are two main types of meditation – “focused attention”, where you narrow your field of focus to one object or sensation, and “diffused attention”, where you remain passively aware of sensations as they arise.
Focused attention types of meditation have obvious benefits – by being able to strengthen the mind so that you remain aware of one thing to the exclusion of others, you’re able to redirect the mind from negative thoughts and emotions and towards positive ones.
But what about the benefits of diffused attention types of meditation?
Awareness and Phenomena
When it comes down to it, there are two things that make up the experience of your life – your awareness and everything else.
Your awareness is simply that part of you that is conscious, that is aware of what is going on. It has no emotions, has no will of it’s own, it is simply, passively aware. It’s sometimes called “The Knower”.
Everything else, everything that awareness can be aware of, falls into the category of “phenomena”. This is a key point – if you can be aware of it, you can create some “space” so to speak, and step back from it. You can step back from grief, from anger, from boredom, from pain or any other negative emotion or sensation, which greatly reduces it’s influence over you.
The more you are able to operate from that part of you that is pure awareness, the more you are able to find peace. Put another way, the more you practice meditation techniques, which train your awareness and allow you to see things as they really are, the less you’ll be at the mercy of negative emotions.
Watch just the first two minutes of this video for an explanation from none other than Jim Carrey.
http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pI1KKveHFGA
Very closely tied to your awareness is your ego – your will (that which decides what to do), your wants, your desires, your fears. These are so close to your awareness that they can be difficult to see clearly at first – where as something such as the sensation in your foot or even a thought crossing the mind can be easily “seen” by awareness, it’s a bit more difficult to “see” that part of your mind that identifies as “you”.
The next layer of the mind has all your memories, your visualizations, your thoughts, your emotions, your feelings, all these things that the mind registers and that is somewhat easy to see as distinct and separate from awareness.
Still further from awareness is the sensations of your body, the sensations coming from all 5 of your senses, and further still is the “exterior world”, which you only interact with through the 5 senses.
All of these come together to form the almost seamless experience of “you” and “your life”. But when it really comes down to it, there’s just awareness, and everything else.
When it comes to meditation, it’s good to be able to split these things up, and it offers a useful paradigm through which you can understand the mind and your experience in the world. Suddenly things aren’t so solid, things aren’t so stiff and inflexible. “You” aren’t angry, there’s just awareness of this certain set of sensations that’s called “anger”. “You” don’t want 3 bowls of ice cream, there’s just awareness of this set of sensations that we call “desire”.
The more you’re able to identify with pure awareness, the less power emotions, desires and fears have over you. This doesn’t mean you’ll become an emotionless robot, it just means that when negative emotions hit with full force, you’re able to take a step back, analyze them and tone the volume down quite a bit. You’re able to view a negative emotion as just one more temporary sensation. Once the emotion is defined, described, measured and observed, it loses almost all of its power over us.
Mindfulness Meditation
To be mindful of something is simply to be aware of it. When practicing mindfulness meditation, the mind remains actively aware of the phenomena in the present moment. You can choose to be aware of your entire field of sensations, including those coming from the 5 senses and those coming from within the body and mind, or you can limit your field of awareness, say to the sensations of walking or the sensations from eating food.
Basic Mindfulness Meditation – In it’s most basic form, mindfulness meditation involves simply bringing the mind into present moment awareness. Instead of allowing your mind to wander willy nilly, just gently bring it back to the sensations of the present moment. It can be summed up as “Be Here Now”. If the mind starts thinking about something that happened yesterday, you bring it back to the here and now. If you start wondering what you’ll do tomorrow, you bring the mind back to being aware of the present moment. The mind can switch between being aware of the sensations in the body and being aware of the external world, or even a combination of the two, as long as the mind isn’t daydreaming unchecked.
This has the dual effect of not only strengthening concentration as a “focused attention” type of meditation would, but also allows you to more clearly come to understand your mind and with it, your emotions, desires, fears, etc.
Play around with the following types of meditation and see which kinds you like best.
A nice mindfulness-based practice is called body-sweeping – you slowly sweep your attention from the bottoms of your feet to the top of your head, noticing all the sensations along the way. You may notice that your feet are sore from standing, that there’s tightness in your lower back, that you can actually feel some of what’s going on in the digestive system. You’ll notice your heart pumping, your lungs breathing and you may even feel your pulse in multiple parts of your body. Start from the feet, slowly work your way up to the top of the head, and then back down again, completing as many rounds as time allows.
Conversely, you can sit and just watch as thoughts pop up in your head. Simply remain passively aware of your thoughts and pay special attention to how they show up unannounced, stay briefly and then disappear. Watch as this process happens again and again and again, but don’t interfere with your thoughts. Don’t try to block them, suppress them or encourage them – simply remain aloof and aware. The thought “I wonder what’s for dinner tonight?” pops into your head. Simply watch this process begin, last briefly and end, without continuing to think about dinner.
Mindfulness of Emotions –
By being mindful of things as they are happening, we’re able to notice negative emotions brewing and nip them in the bud, as well as to be aware of our behavior and adjust accordingly.
Further, if we can take a step back and begin to catalogue our emotions, this can lead to some powerful insights. The best way to do this is to describe emotions in as much detail as possible when they arise.
- By being mindful, you’re able to notice when any sort of emotion arises. When it does, take a second to really get to know it and map it out.
- Let’s say you feel anger. What exactly does anger feel like? Where do you feel it in your body? Is there a sudden tightness in your chest? Are your hands clenching? Has your stomach tightened? Take a minute to notice where anger seems to reside in the body.
- How does anger feel mentally? Is your mind suddenly reeling? Has your mind become a bit heavy, or has it become more active? Does the mind feel “hot”?
- How has it changed the content of your thoughts, the words and pictures in your mind?
- What does the actual emotion of anger feel like? You’ve felt it physically, you’ve noticed it mentally, now try to describe it emotionally. This might be hard to describe verbally, but it’s important to recognize the feeling of anger.
- Finally, try to zoom in and dive deep into this emotion. Just become as aware of it in it’s entirety as you possibly can. Recognize it as a certain type of energy within the body and become as aware of it as possible.
- Once you’ve looked at it from all these points of view, you’ll realize it doesn’t have as much power over you anymore, and the more you do this, the less power negative emotions will have. It’s suddenly just a well-defined, limited collection of sensations, and further, you’re able to see that it isn’t you, and that it doesn’t last. You’re the calm awareness at the center of the storm, which remains unchanged as different emotions come and go. Remember that.
BONUS TIP – Go do some Shinrin-Yoku, the Japanese word for “forest-bathing”, while practicing mindfulness of just sights, sounds and smells.
“Every study so far conducted has demonstrated reductions in stress, anger, anxiety, depression and sleeplessness amongst the subjects who have participated. In Japan there are now 44 accredited Shinrin Yoku forests.”
Simply go take a walk in a forested area, while being mindful of the sights, sounds and smells of the forest. When the mind wanders, bring it back to present moment awareness of the experience of being in the forest, out in nature.
There are plenty more types of meditations out there, the benefits of which I’ve just barely begun to dive into. Interested in how to use meditation to overcome specific problems in your life? Contact me.