Awareness Meditation – Watch Your Mind
Enjoy the Good with the Help of Mindfulness
Our program helps deal with the difficulties of life and provides tools for learning to let go of the junk in your mind that you do not need. You can be concerned, regretful, or obsessed with difficult past events, but you do not need to hold onto them. They can be seen, accepted, and let go. You may be someone who worries about issues that will never come to pass. This too can be seen, accepted, and let go. You do not need to work with everything that your mind comes up with. Enjoy the good and let go of what is not needed and is causing you problems. You have the ability to be selective.
Awareness Meditation – Watch Your Mind
An awareness exercise is another option for understanding the present moment, developing awareness, and letting go of unhelpful mental stories and emotions. It works best if done for twenty minutes or longer. Closing your eyes is helpful, and the room needs to be as quiet as possible. It is better to do while sitting, but you can lie down. Try to sit as straight as possible, but allow yourself to be comfortable.
Place the tip of your tongue on the roof of your mouth behind your front teeth. Focus on the movement of your breath where you feel it the strongest. Outside the nose, inside the nose, back of the throat, the chest, and the belly are common places to feel the breath. Some people may feel the breath moving through all areas of the body, and this is fine, too. Breathe naturally and do not influence the breath. Be aware of each in-breath and each out-breath. Feel the subtle changes in each breath.
If thoughts, emotions, or sensations take you away from the breath, this is normal. Rather than focusing on the breath and letting go of thoughts immediately as you would with deep focus exercises, try focusing on what took you away from the breath. Once that thought, emotion, or sensation quiets down, go back to the breath. Do not keep your focus on the breath. Just use the breath as a base. Whenever your focus is taken away, give your awareness and understanding to that new object. Cycle back and forth between the breath and what took you away. This keeps you focused, but not on a single object the entire time. It allows you to see what your mind is up to and gives you the ability to let go of negativity. The most important suggestion is to notice what thoughts, reactions, and emotions arise without engaging your analytical mind to judge, analyze, or fix anything. The exercise is all about becoming aware and then letting go when the object loses its strength. As this exercise grows, you will be able to simply see if reactions, emotions, and mental stories are helpful or not and let go of what is unneeded and not helpful in your everyday life. It is a great tool to have in your meditation toolbox.
Reflection On Your Mind
Explore your mental activities, thoughts, speech, and actions in the moment. Ask if your added concepts, opinions, and habits give you happiness?
