In sitting meditation or in the daily activities, when we recognize that we’ve been lost in thought, Andrea F says that moment is a great opportunity to get familiar with what it feels like to be mindful. When we recognize what it feels like to become mindful, we start to see that it happens a lot through our day, and Andrea F says that this feeling of being mindful will begin to point itself out throughout the day.<\/p>\n
In the talk, she mentions a few things to notice when you recognize that mindfulness has returned.<\/p>\n
- \n
- First, just that mindfulness is back.<\/li>\n
- Second, you didn’t have to do anything to make it happen – it’s a natural, spontaneous thing that we come back into mindfulness, and if we can begin to recognize those moments, we start to notice more of those moments.<\/li>\n
- Third, in that moment we recognize we were lost and mindfulness returns, there’s a little bit of contrast as there will be a lingering sense of what it was like to not be mindful a moment before – it highlights for us that experience of mindfulness of returning.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
She says we can bring in the prompt: “Am I aware?” into our meditation and daily practice.\u00a0By asking the question, the answer is always “yes”. Even though the answer is always yes, it’s not a pointless question, because it inclines the mind to be a little more curious about, “well, how do I know that I’m aware?” You don’t need to stop what you’re doing to figure things out. With the\u00a0repeated curiosity, an experiential, felt sense of what being aware\u00a0is will develop over time.<\/p>\n
As mentioned, our daily activities can become like a wake up bell throughout the day. And in the same way, becoming familiar with\u00a0mindfulness returning can make mindfulness returning itself become a mindfulness bell too.<\/p>\n
So today, you might try dropping in the question: “Am I aware?”<\/p>\n
I’m going to put up a few yellow sticky notes with “Aware?” on them to help me to remember.
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/20170116_133421.jpg?resize=300%2C225&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\nWith best wishes,
\nAndrea<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dear Friends, In the sixth talk\u00a0of\u00a0Andrea Fella’s\u00a0Daily Life Practice Retreat, she encourages a practice of recognizing mindfulness, of knowing that we are aware. (Andrea F provided a handout to summarize the key points from this talk too.) In sitting meditation or in the daily activities, when we recognize that we’ve been lost in thought, Andrea F says that\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":true,"_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":[5],"tags":[44,90,25],"class_list":["post-225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jan-2017","tag-andrea-fella","tag-awareness","tag-daily-life"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225","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=225"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1219,"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225\/revisions\/1219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}