Is Mindfulness and Meditation for You? Read on!
No 1001 Is Mindfulness and Meditation for you? if so where to start and how to proceed.
Why these writings?
This was written because of the need . Nothing I could find pulled together mindfulness, meditation and mental health in an understandable , practical way for general and specific use in helping every day problems, to enhance general mental health, and to offer a different kind of relief to some specific mental health problems.
Who can benefit?
1) Anybody wanting a more relaxed body, a calm, alert , focused, less impulsive mind, that is more aware , capable of learning , having new ideas for any use ,including problem solving , thinking better and faster on your feet
2) Anybody wanting the direct effects to help some forms of worry, anxiety, depression, poor concentration, a mind-body that’s too fast, unstable emotions, related problems with stomach-intestine, rashes headaches, insomnia.
3) Anybody in treatment for mental health problems wanting something different that might help their suffering
4) Anybody wanting a tool for increased awareness & insight ,added to their existing spiritual, philosophical , mental well being practice to enhance selfless compassionate living with increased satisfaction & diminished suffering
How to get these? Just do one thing! Apply mindfulness to one thing like breathing in meditation. Read on.
A. The mind has two modes , the thinking- doing mode, and the being-experiencing mode. We spend most of our time in the thinking mode, and much of that is unconscious and automatic, and we less aware of the being mode and how the process of transitioning into it, and being in it is helpful. Access to both modes provides optimal understanding and functioning. Mindfulness functions in the being mode and helps you access all its benefits.
B. Believe it or not: If one did nothing but do mindfulness meditation with breathing, correctly and consistently , dealing with the specific problems coming up in the process, all problems about reality that could be helped, would eventually come up, and be helped. You could learn all you needed to know about general reality, and by extension of all other realities, including that of mental health problems . Nothing else special would have to be done.
C. Mindfulness is the key and the only thing one needs, used first and always and applied to everything. The other things we use , primarily concentrative breathing and meditation ,are tools to increase its power and usefulness . Mindfulness is a special paying attention only to the present, with a mirror like wordless awareness, of a thing, before we separate it from the rest of reality and change and distort it ,by adding thoughts, feelings, memories, fantasies, sensations, or anything else to it. It is being mode function, best experienced to be understood by 1. Direct application, 2. Using mindful breathing for itself and to develop concentration , and in 3. In meditation which exponentially 10+10+10=30 vs. 10x10x10=1000 increases its power and scope.
D. Mindfulness Meditation is a self created process using exclusive focus on breathing to develop concentration, over and over , and again and again, until distracted, then dealing with the distraction, return to focus on the breathing, and repeating the sequence over and over , applying mindfulness at every step, for the purpose of developing uninterrupted mindful awareness to develop insights or new ideas about any reality.
E. Distraction is the main hindrance to using sustained mindfulness. Its effective dealing is the royal road to understanding the mental states distorting reality and causing our problems. Because a distraction could be anything, as one meditates, everything will eventually come up. Your mind will naturally be distracted by the very problems you need help with, if you need more help you can make any problem the thing to meditate on.
F. The Object of meditation for now is breathing, with experience you can substitute anything for special help.
G. For now, all things can be understood and helped by applying mindfulness to only concentrative breathing meditation, and dealing with distractions, letting the minds inherent wisdom prioritizing problem selection.
H. Is it for you- is it worth the effort? The only way to know is to learn about it, do it right and then see for yourself.
I. Next learn from just breathing and let that learning teach and convince you . Index to reading and practice follows.