Dear Friends,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There have been times, when I’ve mentioned to friends or co-workers that I practice meditation and mindfulness, that I get the reply, “Oh, I could never do that – I can never stop thinking.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jill addresses some of misconceptions we might have about thinking and meditation in the talk Mindfulness of the Mind<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many meditation instructions, especially when we are first starting, begin with the invitation to settle with the body or breath as an anchor, and when we notice that the attention is no longer on the anchor to return to the anchor. This is a very useful skill to give us some stability and steadiness from which we can learn more how this body\/heart\/mind work. But that’s not all there is to being mindful. Jill explains:<\/p>\n\n\n\n There’s a very common misperception that real mindfulness, real meditation is focusing attention on the breath and sort of locking it there, which means that any experience that is not the breath is wrong or bad and shouldn’t be happening. And so with that belief in the mind we end up struggling with our experience, constantly dragging the attention back to the breath, back to the breath, back to the breath. Trying to ignore any other sensations in the body that might be calling our attention, and definitely trying to get rid of any thinking or emotional responses that might be happening.<\/p> I can understand where this misperception comes from because most beginning instructions on insight retreats do start with being asked to bring awareness to the breath, and we’re told when the mind wanders bring it back to the breath. I gave similar instructions myself on day one. But what perhaps isn’t made explicit is that the point of those instructions is to help develop stability of mind, non-distractibility.<\/p> And then when we have some degree of stability, we open up the mindfulness, until, ultimately, no experience is left out.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Even if you have never been on a meditation retreat before, you probably have experienced moments of stability. I often notice the mind quiets and settles when I’m in nature, or working in the garden, or doing yoga or qigong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I will sometimes remind myself of what that experience feels like – watching the sun set on the lake, smelling the earth as I tend to the garden, and so on – so that I can have a little confidence going into practice (or starting my day or going to the next meeting, etc.) that settling, ease, and stability are possible. This helps me set an intention in my practice. Stability of attention may or may not arise today – but if it does arise, I will be more attuned to the felt-sense of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When there is some measure of stability, we are invited to start to open up the attention beyond the anchor to include whatever is most predominant – body sensations, sounds – even thoughts, emotions, and mind states. Whatever the experience is, we know it as it is, without needing it to be a particular way. This is often called an open awareness practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the guided meditation Jill leads (from about 16 through 29 minutes in the recording), she uses some noting phrases, which can be helpful as a way to encourage the attention to be with the experience without getting caught. When thinking arises, we can note “thinking” or “planning” or “remembering”. Just like sounds, thoughts will arise and pass away on their own. The idea is to notice without getting into the story. (And when we notice that we got into the story, we just begin again.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n The recording ends with instructions on a walking meditation with rotating through the senses – noticing body sensations, hearing, seeing for different passes along the walking path. So that might be that something fun to try too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sometimes I’ll even do this style of walking in more informal situations – like when I’m walking the dogs. And in the times I’m being less mindful in the walks, maybe my dogs are doing what Mark Doty describes in “Golden Retrievals” – “My work: \/ to unsnare time\u2019s warp (and woof!), retrieving, \/ my haze-headed friend, you.” What are your thoughts about thinking or the open awareness practice?<\/p>\n\n\n\n With gratitude, Dear Friends, There have been times, when I’ve mentioned to friends or co-workers that I practice meditation and mindfulness, that I get the reply, “Oh, I could never do that – I can never stop thinking.” Jill addresses some of misconceptions we might have about thinking and meditation in the talk Mindfulness of the Mind. Many meditation instructions,\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[302],"tags":[82,104,311,24,83],"class_list":["post-1303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jan-2022","tag-choiceless-awareness","tag-jill-shepherd","tag-mind-states","tag-thoughts","tag-walking"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1303"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1303\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1328,"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1303\/revisions\/1328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
https:\/\/www.poetryfoundation.org\/poems\/47252\/golden-retrievals<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Andrea<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"