#726 Your Mind Transforms When Practicing Meditation

     1. Each time you focus on or return to the anchor, you are building your concentration
     2. Each time you focus on the anchor, you detach from your thought stream. This is a practice of letting go in the moment, which translates to letting go in the rest of the world.
     3. Each time you notice that the mind is wandering, that is the moment of mindfulness — not a moment of failure.
     4. Each time you are kind to yourself when your mind wanders, instead of criticizing yourself, you are exercising and strengthening your self-compassion for challenging moments in the rest of your daily life.
     5. Each time you notice where the mind is wandering, that is an opportunity for insight into your mind’s habits and patterns — what we might call wisdom or self-understanding.

       Christopher Willard. "Growing Up Mindful: Essential Practices to Help Children, Teens, and Families Find Balance, Calm, and Resilience." Sounds True, 2016.

Apple blossoms, Wolfville, NS

#667 Experiencing the Benefits of Meditation Practice

     "Gradually, by experiencing the benefits of concentration and insight first hand, you will gain confidence that you have the capacity to endure pain with equanimity, that you are able to let go of destructive habits, and that you are worthy of the joy of a deeply tranquil mind."

       Shaila Catherine "Wisdom Wide and Deep. A Practical Handbook for Mastering Jhana and Vipassana." Wisdom, Boston, 2011.

DavidAMWA   www.dpreview.com

#660 Strengthening Continuity of Awareness

     "For most lay practitioners, formal meditation averages only an hour or so per day - a tiny fraction of our time. Distraction poses a formidable barrier to concentration. Therefore, to build momentum, we must augment the sitting meditation with careful attention during daily activities. To strengthen the focus on the breath, become sensitive to the breath as you are drinking coffee, bathing, cooking, conversing, slipping on shoes, mowing the lawn, photographing your child, balancing your checkbook, delivering a lecture, or eating breakfast.
      Notice at any time and during any activity how your mind is disposed, where it wanders, how it apprehends sensory objects; then encourage a composed and calm awareness of the breath as you continue to do your work or engage in the activity. During daily activities, it is not possible to exclusively focus on the breath, yet, whether you are walking, working, talking, or eating, you can use your interest in the breath to encourage a balanced state of calm composure."

       Shaila Catherine "Wisdom Wide and Deep. A Practical Handbook for Mastering Jhana and Vipassana." Wisdom, Boston, 2011.

#658 Favorite Meditation Practice?

     Senior meditation teacher, Sylvia Boorstein, uses:

               "'May I meet this moment fully; may I meet it as a friend,'

     as a tool for cultivating concentration in formal practice and as a response throughout the day to moments of 
     challenge.'"

        Shambhala Sun, May 2015                      www.lionsroar.com/category/shambhala-sun/

ShopVac   www.dpreview.com

#623 Sanity 101 - From Trance to Agency

     We're surprisingly often caught in the momentum of a trance. Something triggers the memory of an old, meaningful event (pleasant or unpleasant), and we suddenly:
          • Overreact (our "button was pushed");
          • Freeze, become incapacitated by anxiety / fear;
          • Simply zone out, off in an imaginary world.
     Too often we don't engage appropriately with life, in real time. This seriously compromises our character, quality of life, and efficacy.

     Mindfulness practice helps us quickly recognize when we're "off" ie inappropriate to our present situation. We strengthen "the muscle" that efficiently, seamlessly brings our attention back to right here, right now, thus stabilizing concentration. Continuous awareness of, and appropriately responding to one's current circumstances, is the very basis of sanity.

#590 Mindfulness is NOT Suppression or Avoidance of Thoughts or Emotions

     Mindfulness practice first helps us become more comfortable with things as they are in the present moment ie helps cultivate a degree of mental stability. Then, with this stability - decreased ego-noise - we're able to have some insight into what's actually going on.
     So mindfulness is NOT about suppressing or otherwise avoiding thoughts, emotions, or any other aspect of life. We don't suppress thoughts. We do let go of habitually entertaining them, wrestling with them, being hijacked by them, identifying with them. The same goes for emotions. Thoughts and emotions remain, but become quieter & quieter background noise, no longer controlling & distorting our life.

     "Fully plumbing the depths of mindfulness requires time and exploration. There is a wealth of meaning and nuance in the experience of mindfulness that can enrich our lives in unimagined ways." 
       Goldstein J. "Mindfulness. A Practical Guide to Awakening." Sounds True, Boulder, 2013. 

Stephen Bright   www.dpreview.com

#573 Wise Effort in Meditation - Effortless, Instant

     "The next time you sit in meditation, notice how often you get lost in thought. What causes that drift into thinking? Did you deliberately try to lose yourself? If not, then getting lost in thought was not your responsibility.
     Now notice when you have awakened out of thought. You may take credit for waking yourself up, but the noticing you are no longer lost in thought occurs after having awakened out of it. 
     You cannot take responsibility for losing yourself or waking back up. What really happens is a mystery.

     The less we do to establish or cultivate awareness, the more it reveals itself."


       Rodney Smith. Awakening. A Paradigm Shift of the Heart. Shambhala, Boston, 2014.