mindfulness

24 October, 2014  by

Who Thinks Your Thoughts?

The notion that how we feel is merely caused by events around us or directly involving us, is a scourge of our modern times. To believe that the external world and its perceived relationship to us is the major determinative factor in how we feel (“I can’t believe he/she said that to me—that’s so outrageous!”) is disempowering and self-destructive.

We impose our “shoulds” on what we perceive as “the world out there”, and then when it fails to live up to our arbitrary and abstract standards, we pout, mope, grumble and complain that it “should” have been different. Rather than tweaking our perception, we demand that the thing we perceive should tweak itself! When people fail to conform to our whimsy, we often then fall into yet another error avoided by the mindful: we replay upsetting events (events that we perceived as upsetting) and our emotional response/s to them in our heads over and over, further upsetting ourselves!

Many people like to imagine how they would have responded differently to an unpleasant scenario: perhaps some pithy and scathing repartee to put the aggressor in their place, or some supremely composed nonchalance in the face of adversity. But these mental rehashing and rehearsals have several negative effects, including: further encouraging sloppy, undisciplined and counterproductive thinking; distracting us from the present, wasting our time and energy; and the internally generated fight-or-flight stress response needlessly releases more cortisol into our blood, aging us even faster and suppressing our immune systems)—even though the moment has passed.

This function of our “time-binding semantic circuit” (as Tim Leary and Robert Anton Wilson have referred to it) makes us unique among the creatures on this planet. Only we humans choose to torture ourselves by replaying imaginary scenarios from the past that are unrelated to the present moment! We are unique among the creatures on this planet in our ability to squander the gift of the present moment by our thoughts of the past.

The remedy?

Firstly, we need to drop our “shoulds” in the moment and adopt a more “go with the flow” mindset wherein we acknowledge the infinite diversity of the multiverse and accept that there will always be things that crop up along the way that we won’t necessarily be overjoyed about. Believe that that is okay (and that it may ultimately be in your best interests!), and, as Niebuhr said, try to cultivate the serenity to accept the things you cannot change.

Next, we need to learn not to RE-act unconsciously to stimuli, rehashing our established habitual response to some perceived stressor. (“I can’t believe you’re doing this to me again!”) Instead, we need to develop a modicum of detachment and learn to observe what is occurring without identifying with it. That goes for both external processes and internal thought processes.

People forget that no matter what happens, there is always a multitude of angles to view it from, all of them complimentary. Too easily do we adopt the idea that our personal viewing angle trumps any other: “How I see it is right. I am completely objective. THEY are wrong.” It can be an extremely useful and healing exercise to step into another party’s shoes and try to humble oneself enough to see things from their perspective.

If it’s too late for you to try multi-angle viewing in the moment because you’ve already gotten swept away on a wave of emotion, all is not lost. You can still step back from your own thoughts and feelings: they are not you. Any thought or feeling you can observe (which is all of them) must be something other than yourself, something less than the totality of who and what you are.

Your thoughts and feelings come and go, they are transient, and yet through them all, you remain. Observe an emotional response, resist the temptation to fight it, and allow it to pass without judging yourself for having the feeling. Feelings are only human, but as the observer, you are uncolored, untainted consciousness.

Before we ever thought or felt, we were simply consciousness being. We can be that consciousness and train ourselves out of unconscious identification with our transient thoughts and feelings. You have feelings (and beliefs and thoughts), but they are not what you are. As Stephen Wolinsky notes in Quantum Consciousness, if a part of you can observe your feelings of sadness, then you must be more than merely the sadness itself. Observe it, don’t identify with it: it isn’t you. Thus, we learn to become the master, and emotion the servant.

Given the realization that you have a choice between neutrality, humor, offense, sadness, pain, anger, or even joy, in virtually any given circumstance, “Surely,” you might reason, “only a masochist would consciously choose anything other than enjoyable psychological assessments of and responses to events, or at the very least, relatively peaceful or neutral ones.” But we habitually and unconsciously choose anything but peace, neutrality or joy. Through effort, we can cultivate the mindfulness that allows us to recognize (“know again”) in the moment that we are the ones who choose our thoughts and feelings, no one else.

What will be the next choice you make in experiencing your subjective observer-created reality?  If finding the lighter side of adversity comes to you with difficulty, then try to cultivate the habit of observing, and then observing yourself observing. You’ll be amazed at the number of cognitive options you see at your disposal that would go completely unnoticed if you were identifying with your perceptions, beliefs, and judgements, and the feelings flowing from them.

No identification, no suffering. From an “observer space” you can consciously choose what to think and feel—you have options. Identification, on the other hand, leads to transient reactive emotion (often pain). In observer mode, you might see that no one does anything “wrong” according to the world view they have constructed.

In identification mode, you can be upset and offended and will judge and label instead of observing. This often leads to festering resentment, and the aforementioned mental replays of an upsetting incident ad nauseum, thus allowing the “culprit” to live rent-free in your mind (“I’m not going to let them get away with that!”). But once a troubling or challenging event has passed, if there are still lingering thoughts and replays running in my mind, I find it a useful strategy to get honest with myself and ask: “Who is thinking my thoughts? Who creates my emotions?” Obviously, the answer is me, so therefore it is I who is now causing myself the grief — what a masochist! Knowing this, I can acknowledge that I and I alone, get to choose what I believe and think, and therefore how I feel. Observing that is a powerful thing!

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Author: Brendan D. Murphy.

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21 October, 2014  by

The Matrix of Four Forms of Meditative Breath

Breath is the basis of all life. Breath is also the basis of all meditation and meditative movement. Breath is the primary manner in which we all obtain life energy. The other three in metaphysical understanding are water, food and prana or chi. The most important concept to understand about breath and meditative movement is that one moves in coordination with the breath. One moves in and out of postures with the breath and one deepens and lengthens postures in coordination with the breath. Inhalations equate to tension whereas exhalations equate to relaxation and release.

There are four important aspects of meditative breath. It is important to breathe slowly, deeply, steadily and consciously. It’s said most people breathe wrong. Most people breathe either from high, mid or low points. A complete yogi breath is a cyclical movement beginning from low point moving like a wave. Meditative movement leads to proper cyclical, complete breath.

Balanced breathing is utilized most frequently. Balanced breathing means the four parts to one breath cycle are equalized. The inhalations and exhalations are the same length of time to each other and the pause full and pause empty are the same length of time to each other too. For example 8 seconds in, 2 second pause, 8 seconds out, 2 second pause is an example of steady balanced breath. Meditation practitioners from long ago would count the breath not in seconds, but heartbeats.

There are innumerable variations of meditative breath, however in most all meditations awareness of the matrix of meditative breath is a primarily important perception. Some more developed meditation practitioners move beyond focus on the breath, however even masters come back to and start with the breath. For the rest of us focus on the matrix of breath can calm the distracted monkey mind that swings from vine to vine, thought to thought. Trouble in meditation equates to, in general having a full mind, perceiving the breath allows one to be alternatively mindful so as to begin and develop meditation.

Balanced breath is beneficial to balancing one’s energy, often all we need. As one masters balanced breath one can implement new patterns to enhance energy movement in four basic patterns beyond balanced breathing similar conceptually to the depiction of the Yin Yang mandala. Unlike balanced breath these forms build and release energy in specific ways. There is the enhancement and lengthening of the pause full, in/pause/out patter for building Yin energy. There is the enhancement of pause empty, in/out/pause for Yang energy. Then a pause is inserted midway between either the inhale or exhale for energy movement, in/pause/in/out for Yin and lastly in/out/pause/out for Yang.

Meditation is mindfulness – the fullness of mind of the present. Whether distracted or focused, whether in still or moving meditation or in daily life, simply being mindful of the breath can connect mind and body. It is especially important to simply realize the four parts to every breath cycle and the four aspects of meditative breath.

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Author: Ethan Indigo Smith / Wake up World

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18 October, 2014  by

Researchers Finally Show How Mindfulness and Your Thoughts Can Induce Specific Molecular Changes To Your Genes

With evidence growing that training the mind or inducing specific modes of consciousness can have beneficial health effects, scientists have sought to understand how these practices physically affect the body. A new study by researchers in Wisconsin, Spain, and France reports the first evidence of specific molecular changes in the body following a period of intensive mindfulness practice.

The study investigated the effects of a day of intensive mindfulness practice in a group of experienced meditators, compared to a group of untrained control subjects who engaged in quiet non-meditative activities. After eight hours of mindfulness practice, the meditators showed a range of genetic and molecular differences, including altered levels of gene-regulating machinery and reduced levels of pro-inflammatory genes, which in turn correlated with faster physical recovery from a stressful situation.

“To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper that shows rapid alterations in gene expression within subjects associated with mindfulness meditation practice,” says study author Richard J. Davidson, founder of the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds and the William James and Vilas Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“Most interestingly, the changes were observed in genes that are the current targets of anti-inflammatory and analgesic drugs,” says Perla Kaliman, first author of the article and a researcher at the Institute of Biomedical Research of Barcelona, Spain (IIBB-CSIC-IDIBAPS), where the molecular analyses were conducted.

Mindfulness-based trainings have shown beneficial effects on inflammatory disorders in prior clinical studies and are endorsed by the American Heart Association as a preventative intervention. The new results provide a possible biological mechanism for therapeutic effects.

Gene Activity Can Change According To Perception

According to Dr. Bruce Lipton, gene activity can change on a daily basis. If the perception in your mind is reflected in the chemistry of your body, and if your nervous system reads and interprets the environment and then controls the blood’s chemistry, then you can literally change the fate of your cells by altering your thoughts.

In fact, Dr. Lipton’s research illustrates that by changing your perception, your mind can alter the activity of your genes and create over thirty thousand variations of products from each gene. He gives more detail by saying that the gene programs are contained within the nucleus of the cell, and you can rewrite those genetic programs through changing your blood chemistry.

In the simplest terms, this means that we need to change the way we think if we are to heal cancer. “The function of the mind is to create coherence between our beliefs and the reality we experience,” Dr. Lipton said. “What that means is that your mind will adjust the body’s biology and behavior to fit with your beliefs. If you’ve been told you’ll die in six months and your mind believes it, you most likely will die in six months. That’s called the nocebo effect, the result of a negative thought, which is the opposite of the placebo effect, where healing is mediated by a positive thought.”

“It’s a complex situation,” said Dr. Lipton. People have been programmed to believe that they’re victims and that they have no control. We’re programmed from the start with our mother and father’s beliefs. So, for instance, when we got sick, we were told by our parents that we had to go to the doctor because the doctor is the authority concerning our health. We all got the message throughout childhood that doctors were the authority on health and that we were victims of bodily forces beyond our ability to control. The joke, however, is that people often get better while on the way to the doctor. That’s when the innate ability for self-healing kicks in, another example of the placebo effect.

Subconscious Beliefs Are Key

Too many positive thinkers know that thinking good thoughts–and reciting affirmations for hours on end–doesn’t always bring about the results that feel-good books promise.

Dr. Lipton didn’t argue this point, because positive thoughts come from the conscious mind, while contradictory negative thoughts are usually programmed in the more powerful subconscious mind.

“The major problem is that people are aware of their conscious beliefs and behaviors, but not of subconscious beliefs and behaviors. Most people don’t even acknowledge that their subconscious mind is at play, when the fact is that the subconscious mind is a million times more powerful than the conscious mind and that we operate 95 to 99 percent of our lives from subconscious programs.

“Your subconscious beliefs are working either for you or against you, but the truth is that you are not controlling your life, because your subconscious mind supersedes all conscious control. So when you are trying to heal from a conscious level–citing affirmations and telling yourself you’re healthy–there may be an invisible subconscious program that’s sabotaging you.”

The new science of epigenetics promises that every person on the planet has the opportunity to become who they really are, complete with unimaginable power and the ability to operate from, and go for, the highest possibilities, including healing our bodies and our culture and living in peace.

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Author: Michael Forrester / Wake up world

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14 October, 2014  by

Finding Our Peace: The Art of Loving Our Experience

The usual tendency in our modern secular thinking is to view the outer world as separate from ourselves, but really it is just a partial reflection of what we fundamentally are. Objective reality is one of two pieces. Both pieces make up one whole. The other part is our subjective world, which are our feelings, thoughts and beliefs.

In this ancient and rebirthed understanding, we are realizing we are both the inner and outer worlds.

Now I could go into why quantum physics specifies that these two portions are inseparable, or why ancient wisdom and modern mystics say the same thing, but if we’re on this path we intuitively and possibly even logically know this already.

Instead, here I’m going to focus on what actually makes up our experience, as well as ways to find our peace by loving our experience, because it’s not always easy to accept and embrace all of what we perceive in life.

Some of it is simply hard for our hearts to take and challenging for our minds to fathom. But our experience is much like an intimate relationship: it has its ups and downs, there are things that need to change, there are things that we wouldn’t change for the world and there are hard lessons involved which hopefully inspire us to develop ourselves. And just like we love our partner regardless of their positives and negatives, we should also love our experience, irrespective of its strengths and weaknesses.

Another way to begin to look at it is by considering how we love ourselves. Just as we don’t condone everything about our partner, yet we still love them, we still love ourselves, even if sometimes we’re not proud of all our feelings, thoughts and actions. After all, we make mistakes, learn and navigate our entire lives growing into our new, more developed selves.

But our experience is much bigger than our ego, or our perception and the ingredients of our ‘illusory separate’ selves. It’s also the objects of our experience, because if we change the objects, we also change the experience. Therefore, it is the two realities combined; it’s an intimate interconnection between the inner and outer worlds.

Let’s put it in a simple model:

Subjective world = feelings, thoughts, beliefs, actions

Objective world = body, people, earth, universe.

Experience = the interconnected total of our subjective and objective worlds.

This means that there is something which is the bridge between or the basis of these two seemingly separate realities.

Both pioneer scientists and contemporary spirituality view consciousness (or something like consciousness) as the ground of all being and therefore the bridge of these realms. Though to be clear: it’s not our individual consciousness but the whole of consciousness which is the unifying factor.

One way to illustrate this is through the analogy of a fire. The whole of consciousness is the fire, the objective world including our brain is a flame in the fire and our subjective world is our flame’s heat. All are the fire. All are consciousness.

One common assumption about our individual consciousness is that it is generated by the big brain (containing 100 billion neurons), the second brain (100 million neurons embedded in the walls of our gut) and the heart (which contains 40,000 neurons); much like a generator creates electricity. Even though this is voiced by some materialists as being a proven scientific fact, it’s not – it’s speculation based primarily on the evidence that if we tamper with the brains (particularly the big brain) in certain ways, it tampers with our awareness in particular ways too.

But just as all scientists and laymen alike should know – correlation does not imply causation. Just because our individual consciousness changes when we alter our brain does not mean that the brain created the consciousness in the first place.

The alternative to this explanation, one that is receiving support from emerging scientific evidence, is that the brain receives or tunes into consciousness, much like a radio or television tunes into signals. If we tamper with our radio or TV set, then it will no doubt have an associated impact on the way the signal is received, without actually changing the signal itself. Therefore, just because modifying our brain can alter our experience, does not inherently mean that we have changed consciousness itself. We have simply changed our experience of consciousness.

This makes sense when we acknowledge how our experience is influenced by what’s happening both inside and outside of us. We’re tuning into particular frequencies of consciousness to have an experience which is co-created by both our inner and outer worlds.

When we begin to meditate this point becomes even clearer. Think of our conscious awareness as the light from a torch and the darkness as our subconscious mind. When we meditate, we can navigate through our subconscious mind by making it conscious with our light. Meditation is the act of navigating our awareness through our subconscious mind. The more skilled we become at expanding our mind with meditation, the deeper we go into the darkness of our subconscious. Then suddenly – as many experienced meditators agree – we potentially reach beyond our subconscious mind.

In other words – advanced meditation can craft our individual awareness into a cosmic consciousness or even consciousness itself. This is also a common experience when taking a psychedelic substance. Over and over again, through countless individuals and a wide array of tribal, traditional and current cultures, it is believed that during a psychedelic trip (or other trance-induced activity) the mind becomes one with the whole of reality.

The line between the internal and external worlds has become reverently blurred. This is a big concept to entertain, but once we do, we arrive at an inevitable conclusion. If our experience is a melting between two interconnected worlds, and we love our experience, then we love both worlds. We therefore have a solid foundation to establish and maintain our inner peace.

That isn’t to say that we like everything within it – such as war, murder, emotional dysfunction, suffering etc. – just that we embrace it for what it is. We’re at peace because we understand it as a manifestation of what we fundamentally are: consciousness (or the more traditional term of God). The way we then operate through our lives is based on love, because we view our experience as a reflection of ourselves and we love it as we would love ourselves, and all humanity.

This is when it loving our experience becomes an art because we learn to consciously co-create our experience in a way that is beautiful, inspiring and above all loving. Ultimately, you should love your experience like you love yourself, because it is you. It’s a sure-fire way to be at peace.

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Author: Phil Watt / Wake up world

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29 September, 2014  by

Can’t Get the Hang of Meditation? Try This Instead

I’m sure you don’t need convincing that chronic stress is bad for your brain, and that if you are stressed out you need to relax. But that’s easier said than done!

One of the most widely heralded stress reduction techniques is mindfulness meditation. But many people find it difficult, if not impossible, to quiet their mind.

It’s not unusual for people to feel frustrated and disillusioned with their meditation practice. Then meditation becomes an additional source of stress!

There are some excellent reasons to pursue meditation, even when it seems to be the problem and not the answer. And there are other ways to achieve the same benefits if you can’t get the hang of traditional meditation.

Stress Destroys Brain Cells

When a situation you perceive as stressful occurs, it initiates a launch of biochemicals such as adrenalin and cortisol.

Too much stress over prolonged periods actually changes the structure and function of the brain. Cortisol kills brain cells in the hippocampus, the seat of the memory. It literally excites your brain cells to death.

Stress conversely causes the amygdala, your fear center, to grow, causing you to become more fearful and anxious.

Research suggests that chronic stress stimulates the growth of certain proteins that might even be the cause of Alzheimer’s.

Benefits of Meditation for Stress Reduction

There are many lifestyle changes you can make to reduce stress, but meditation keeps popping up as one of the best. Over 1,000 studies have been published showing the health benefits of this relaxation technique.

Meditation has become a mainstream relaxation technique which has been reported on favorably by prestigious medical institutions such as the Mayo Clinic, National Institutes of Health, and Harvard’s Women’s Health Watch.

It helps your brain by reducing stress, but meditation does a lot more too.

Meditation has been shown to improve learning and memory by increasing the communication between the right side and left side of the brain. It also puts your brain in a desirable brainwave state. Meditation enhances the brain’s ability to regenerate new brain cells and new neural connections. One of the most exciting findings is that mindfulness can even slow down the rate of cellular aging!

Problems with Mindfulness Meditation

Mindfulness is one of the most common types of meditation.

It involves sitting quietly while trying to keep your mind focused on the present. This can be done by concentrating on your breath or by repeating a mantra.

Some of the most common complaints about traditional meditation include feelings of impatience, frustration, boredom, and not getting the desired results. It understandably leaves many people questioning whether they are wasting their time. Imagine how hard meditation can be when trying to fit it into a sensory-bombarding, multitasking Western life!

Sound Meditation Can Help

The sound of waves at the beach, the crackle of an open fire, or listening to relaxing music causes your brainwaves to synchronize with that sound’s frequency and puts you in a relaxed state.

I’ve used sound technology in addition to traditional meditation for years. I find meditation to be hit or miss. Some days I feel like I’ve nailed it but many days I feel like my thoughts were a runaway train and I don’t know what, if anything, I got out of it.

The sounds soothe my mind and dissipate the constant urge to think. I find I don’t even “think about thinking.” I come out of each experience feeling like I’ve been on a mini-vacation. I never feel the frustration, impatience, or boredom I experience with meditation the old-fashioned way.

Everyone is different, so the only way you’ll know what either traditional meditation or sound meditation can do for you is to give them a try.

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Author: Deane Alban / Wake up World

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18 September, 2014  by

10 Tips for a Mindful Home

The idea of mindfulness seems to be catching on. That’s good, but if we’re not careful, an idea is where it remains.

Mindfulness is about improving ourselves with special contemplative consideration, a method for making saner choices and assuring better outcomes. To actually transform ourselves with the wisdom of mindfulness, we have to start with the lives we’re living from the moment we wake each day. We have to bring mindfulness out of our heads and into our homes. That’s where ideas become harder to handle.

Here are 10 simple and powerful ideas to bring a day of mindful moments into your home.

Wake with the sun – There is no purer light than what we see when we open our eyes first thing in the morning. Resisting the morning’s first waking moment instantly adds stress to your day. Avoiding the sun, you commence a chase that lasts all day long: running short of time, balance, peace and productivity.

Sit – Mindfulness without meditation is just a word. The search for mindful living is always grounded in a meditation practice. Seated meditation is the easiest and fastest way to clear your mind of anxious, fearful and stressful thoughts. Meditation puts your overactive brain on a diet, so you have more attention to bring to the real life that appears before you. You will be far more productive in the ensuing hours if you begin the day by spending five minutes actively engaged in doing nothing at all.

Make your bed – The state of your bed is the state of your head. Enfold your day in dignity. The five minutes you spend making your bed slows you down from your frantic, morning scrambling and creates a calm retreat to welcome you home at night. Plus, making your bed means you’ve already achieved an even more challenging feat: getting out of it.

Empty the hampers – Do the laundry without resentment or commentary and have an intimate encounter with the very fabric of life. Doing laundry is a supreme act of personal responsibility. It requires maturity, attention and discipline, and it engenders happiness. Don’t believe me? See how you feel every time you reach the bottom of an empty hamper.

Wash your bowl – Rinse away self-importance and clean up your own kitchen mess. If you leave it undone, it will get sticky. An empty sink can be the single most gratifying sight of a long and tiring day.

Set a timer – If you’re distracted by the weight of what’s undone, set a kitchen timer and, like a monk in a monastery, devote yourself wholeheartedly to the task at hand before the bell rings. The time you’ll find hidden in a kitchen timer unleashes more of your attention to the things that matter most.

Rake the leaves – Take yourself outside to rake, weed or sweep. You’ll never finish for good, but you’ll learn the point of pointlessness. The repetitive motion is meditative; the fresh air is enlivening. Lose yourself in doing what needs to be done, without a thought of permanent outcome or gain. You’ll immediately alter your worldview.

Eat when hungry – Align your inexhaustible desires with the one true appetite. Coming clean about our food addictions and aversions is powerful and lasting medicine. Eating is so central to family life and culture that we can pass on our habits for generations to come. Mindless overeating feeds our sickness; mindful eating feeds the body’s intuitive, intelligent wisdom and nourishes life well past tonight’s empty plates.

Let the darkness come – Set a curfew on the Internet and TV and discover the natural balance between daylight and darkness, work and rest. Your taste for the quiet will naturally increase. When you end your day in accord with the earth’s perfect rhythm, you grant the whole world a moment of pure peace.

Sleep when tired – Nothing more to it.

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Source: Healthy Living

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