Wk2-9 Meditation lab II
So welcome back to our meditation lab, now in module II. Now you've probably had about a week's worth of practice by now, experimenting a little with bringing mindfulness to an everyday routine activity like brushing your teeth or tying your shoelaces and so on. And you've also had some experience with bringing your attention, on purpose, to the sensations of your body in the body scan. And to the sensations of your breath in the sitting meditation. Now I know that many of you have also been reflecting on and discussing your experiences with each other already, which is fantastic. So perhaps the best way to start our reflection today is just to take a few of the issues that have emerged and to offer a little guidance on them. So to be clear, I'm not trying to tell you what you should be experiencing, but simply trying to reassure you that experiences like these, whatsoever they are, are entirely normal. Perhaps there are two big pressing issues that have emerged in the first week. And these are also two of the big general issues about practice that will continue to trouble us probably forever more. The first is about how pesky our wandering minds are, and the second is about how pesky the rest of the world turns out to be when it disrupts that practice. Between them, these two big issues seem to suggest that our practice has two main enemies. First, ourselves, and secondly, everything else. So today we're going to spend a little more time talking about the first of these, our pesky minds. And then in our next lab session in the next module, we'll take a look at the second one, the pesky distraction riddled world around us. When we talk about the problem of our wandering mind we're really talking about the way that our minds seem to refuse to stay focused on whatever it is we've decided we want to focus on. So instead of remaining delicately poised in the little toe of our left foot, for instance, or resting like a feather on the rhythm of our breathing. Our minds run off into thoughts about lunch, about insults and injustices, about compliments and desires, about deadlines and so on. In fact, just about anything and everything that isn't our toe or our breath, suddenly seems absolutely magnetic to our attention. Quite a few of you have expressed some anxieties about being unable to stop this from happening. Going so far as to say that you feel like being unable to stop your mind wondering, you're failing at the exercises, you're bad at mindfulness. Or in some cases you feel like you just can't do it. And if this sounds like you, you should know that you're certain not alone to feel this way, and that you're judging yourself unnecessarily harshly. You may not even be reassured to know that it's almost impossible to stop your mind from wandering. It will continue to happen to you and to everyone else for as long as you keep trying the practices. But the purpose of mindfulness practice is not to attain complete mastery of your attention or to prevent it moving around. The purpose is much simpler and much more gentle. We are trying simply to notice where our attention goes. Where is it now, for instance? And then to invite it back to where we'd like it to be. This idea of an invitation is really important. You're not trying to force anyone to come to your party, but you'd like them to come, so you invite them, they'll come if they can. And if they don't, you might be understanding about it. Perhaps they've got a good reason. So it's worth remembering that one of the things we're trying to cultivate in mindfulness is this gentle quality of non-judgemental attention. We're not striving for iron willed control, we're just being a little more curious about where our attention has gone if it turns out not to be where we were looking for it. We might imagine it as a kitten or a puppy that has wandered off out of the kitchen while we weren't looking. So curious and concerned about it, we go and look for it. And then when we find it tearing up the curtains or digging a big hole in the garden, we bring it back so that we can keep our eye on it, look after it, and feed it. So if you're one of those people who are beating yourselves up about having a wondering mind, you should probably stop doing that. Although, don't beat yourself up about that either. You probably spend a lot of your day being harsh with yourself, about the need to meet goals and standards. Perhaps standards that other people have set, or that you might have set yourself. But you might look at your mindfulness practice as an opportunity to treat yourself more gently and more compassionately with a little more curiosity. One thing you might try would be to make use of these moments of frustration with yourself as a resource for your own practice. Next time that you notice that your mind has wandered off, experiment with giving yourself some extra space to notice how you're responding to noticing that. If you find that seeing your wandering mind generate some frustration, or tension, or annoyance with yourself, take a moment to explore what that feels like in your body. Rather than allowing your wandering mind to trigger a cascade of self-recriminations and ruminations. My god, look at where my mind has gone now, I'm such a loser, I can't even focus on my little toe. No wonder I'm doing so badly at work, and no wonder nobody likes me. Instead, see what it might feel like to use this as an opportunity to experience what frustration feels like then and there. For many of us this moment of realizing that our minds have wondered off can be felt in a tightening of our chests, perhaps we catch our breath, or a sinking in our stomach. For me I realize that I frown when this happens. So bringing our attention back to the sensations caused by our own frustrations about our naturally wondering mind, will probably not stop our minds from wandering. But it will help us to integrate this inevitable wandering into our practice itself, in a gentle and curious way. Just try it and see how you get on. So if you were hoping that I could give you a magic spell to enable you to exercise complete control of your consciousness and will, I'm sorry to disappoint you and I can't do it. But as far as I know there just isn't one, and all I can say to you is that the practice of mindfulness doesn't require you to do this. And that by practicing the exercises with which we've been experimenting, you'll be cultivating a more accepting attitude about this as much as attempting to cultivate a technical ability. Most of us find it really hard to look after ourselves in this way. It seems much more natural to beat ourselves up for a failing for apparently failing at least, all of this kind of stuff. Just be gentle with yourselves in your practice. Okay, so the meditation labs for this module will include a new formal sitting practice, what I call the four stage awareness meditation. And a new informal practice, what is sometimes called mindful movement or mindful walking. We'll also learn the invaluable three step breathing space for use at ad hoc moments during the day when you feel like you might need a boost. So good luck with it all this week, and I'll see you again at the end of the next module.
