Practising Mindfulness

Category: Feelings

  • Feelings and Mindfulness

    If our intention is to gain better control over our behaviour mindfulness is the answer

    Often we react instinctively to our feelings. The feelings or sensations could be anger, pain, hunger or sadness. Lets start with the feeling of hunger. Hunger isn’t generally considered to be a desirable sensation. We want rid of it as quickly as possible. Especially if we’re used to the modern scourge of instant gratification. Needing to be rid of hunger instantly causes us to snack, and snacking is unhealthy. If we want to retain a healthy weight, snacking and the need for instant gratification, is to be avoided.

    Instead of the avoidance of uncomfortable feelings we must welcome them in. When we mindfully acknowledge them they naturally fade. We then have the advantage of not having acted on them

    The same applies to anger, emotional pain, and sadness. Avoidance will always involve some kind of mechanism that results in prolonging our suffering. At the end of a relationship, or any kind of loss, we might experience a whole range of feelings. Pain and sadness are avoided through seeking to replace what we’ve lost instantly. Instead, when we mindfully move through the process of experiencing our emotions, healing occurs. In time our suffering lessons. Avoidance simply defers our suffering. It can manifest in another form

    On to anger. The feeling of anger has power. How we use this power depends very much on our awareness of it’s root. Much of anger is driven by fear and there are times when we must act quickly to defend ourselves when we’re fearful. Even so, the ability to mindfully consider the ramifications of expressing our anger, is easily equal in it’s power. In fact, it could be said, that those who’re able to control their anger, are the ones who have the greatest power. The control of anger involves it’s controlled release. This can take the form of vigorous exercise. Now mindfulness really does have the power to make us well.

  • Beating Manipulators and Scammers with Mindfulness

    Through awareness we can get ahead of the thieves

    Before we can get scammed we need to be feeling certain emotions. Whether it be fear, excitement, compassion or loneliness, the scammer is relying on our humanity, to trick us. In a way, the fact that we seem so open to being scammed, does say something very positive about us. We feel. However, it’s acting impulsively on feelings alone, that’s our weakness. It’s the old idiom of allowing the heart to rule the head.

    Whatever the emotion the scammer is tapping into, they succeed, because our emotions often lead us into bypassing our critical thinking

    Being mindful of feelings allows us to take a moment to asses how these feelings might be causing us to act impulsively. Increased awareness of our feelings can help us in many ways. Scammers are one scourge modern life challenges us to deal with. A much older problem is that of being manipulated through our emotions by those we’re close to.

    An improved awareness of our emotions and how they affect our thinking helps us to deal with manipulative people

    The emotional mind can seem very complicated. How we react emotionally is subjective and personal to us. When we’re able to separate the emotional mind from the thinking mind we have the power to make better choices. Choices that are not driven by fear, guilt, or anger. So when feeling, take a breath, and become mindful of how your emotions are affecting your decisions. Scammers and manipulators are powerless against a calm and well reasoned mind.

  • Mindful of the Root to Anger

    We see violence and anger and for many of us our instant reaction is to be angry and violent ourselves

    I watch a child shouting abusive language at an adult and I instantly feel angry. I want to discipline this child. Teach them to respect adults and know their place. I want to shout and slap. I’m angry enough for this to build into rage and fury.

    It’s only when I stop and become mindful do I realise what this actually is. I become aware of how infected by fear I have become. The angry child is terrified and powerless and all I wanted to do was compound this. I became fearful and angry myself. It’s a childish response. I must be the adult

    Once I acknowledge the responsibility of becoming the adult I allow something else to take over my mind. That’s right. I allow room in my mind for the opposite of fear. As soon as I do this it is this emotion that begins to consume my thinking and feelings. I allow it to consume my mind. When I do this, what I want now, is to hold this terrified child in my arms until my love helps their fear subside. The antidote to fear and anger, that can all too easily build into rage and fury, is love. All we need do is become mindful enough to begin questioning our initial reaction. In this way we begin to give love room to exist in our minds.

    An important consideration is how mindfulness can allow us to see the very root to our initial reaction to a child’s anger. We can ask: How is it I feel instantly angry myself? Where did I learn this reaction?

    In my case this reaction is down to conditioning. I was taught that children are inferior to adults and should reflect this in their behaviour. Authoritarian parents – inferior, childish and conditioned themselves – made certain that I showed inferiority to their superiority. As such, my instant reaction to seeing, or experiencing a child demonstration abusive angry, language to an adult, was as my conditioning dictated. Instead, I can be aware now, and allow the opposite of fear to consume me.

  • Latest News from The Layman’s Philosopher

    No News is Good News

    Reporting on this blog some time ago I spoke of the need to stop looking at the news. Finally this is something I have followed through with and the results are very interesting. As the saying goes, old habits are hard to break, and how true this is. And it is raising our awareness to our daily actions that is key to dropping those habits that – if they were ever useful in the first place – no longer serve a purpose.

    The news is full of extremes and if we were to believe that these extremes are somehow normal, and the general behaviour of human kind, then we begin to see the world as a pretty rotten place. This was happening to me and has for many years, I completely lost my faith in human kind, as all the horrors of the news became some dreadful generalisation in my mind.

    My habit was to wake up at around 6am, eat breakfast, drink coffee and read the news. I would then begin to feel very tired and would then doze for about another hour or so before finally getting up

    For some strange reason I didn’t put it together that it was reading the news that was having the tiring effect on me. Reading about the extremes of human nature is so exhausting to me, that I would need to doze off and block it all out again, in an attempt to wake up afresh. Only afresh wasn’t happening, there would remain a sort of gloomy fog, hanging over me for most of the morning.

    Now I wake at 6am, eat breakfast, drink coffee and then go out for a walk along the beautiful river Dart. In the morning I now have time to do things like gentle weight training and writing a blog.

    IN other news: The self-centred have no concern for your emotional needs, at all.

    Imagine a demanding child. Quite easy to do really isn’t it. Now imagine this child holding concern for an adults emotional needs. The child will know if a parent or carer is sad or in distress, and will seek to ease this in any way they know how. They will do this simply because an unhappy parent or carer is a threat to their survival. And it certainly can’t be possible for a child to provide emotional sustenance to an adult, only another adult, can do that.

    So if an adult is emotionally limited (unable to recognise, appreciate, understand and express all their emotions) they will be unable to show appropriate consideration for the emotional needs of another. They’re potentially emotionally stuck in childhood and therefore very self-centred. If we’re in this kind of relationship, where one of us is equipped to consider the needs of others, and the other not, then of course this kind of discord eventually eats away at the health of the partnership.

    It can be that we’ve been taught to always consider the needs of others and sometimes this is to the extreme of putting others emotional needs before our own

    An imbalance of this kind in a close relationship between two adults spells disaster. It is important to look deeply at how limited we may be in expressing and understanding our emotions. If we want to move out of childhood into healthy adult relationships, where the needs of others are also important, we must become aware. Relationships where our needs are placed as equally important can be beautiful and rewarding. Being mindful of others involves an awareness of the differences between self-centred, selfish, and self-aware.

    Learn meditation to mindfulness

  • Carrying Suffering that has no Place in the Here and Now

    Something that has come to light recently for me is the subject of suffering. In particular, I’ve become aware of the possibility, that I’ve been hanging on to suffering that occurred many years ago. To some extent we all do this. Can becoming aware, that we haven’t fully resolved and let go of past suffering, instigates the process of change?

    There is no doubt in my mind that if we continue to hold on to suffering from the past, it will reveal itself to us in ways that bring suffering, in the present

    Put simply, if we fail to resolve and let go of the past, our health will suffer. And in the present moment this might manifest as backache, hypertension, headaches, joint pain, obesity . . . you name it. As the saying goes: ‘The body weeps the tears the eyes refuse to shed.’

    We must find a way to extinguish the pain of the past. This can be achieved through firstly becoming ware of it, and then accepting it as past. It has no place or bearing on the present. It has no bearing on the present because it no longer exists. It is an imagined past (that could well be misremembered anyway) just as the future is imagined. We must also stop blaming the people and situations of the past. Constantly blaming our difficulties on the circumstances we faced in the past only exacerbates our problems. It never helps to seek blame.

    The present moment, void of past and future thinking, can create a beautiful freedom. Logical thinking can sometimes be very beneficial

    We can ask ourselves: how is it I still feel guilty for the mistakes I made all those years ago? The answer may well be that we’ve failed to acknowledge them and accept; that was then and this is now. That was what I was learning at that time. For some reason, only known to yourself, the mind sees a benefit to holding on and replaying the past. Guilt and self-pity can do this.

    In the same way we hold on to suffering from the past, are our expectations, concepts and ideas (beliefs) of happiness stuck there also?

    A common mistake is to assume that the conditions for happiness, we found when young, should remain the same throughout life. This cannot be the case. We have grown and therefore the conditions we have for happiness must evolve also. If we continue to seek the same conditions (imagined or real) in ways we did as a child, it simply won’t work. We’ll never fully realise our true self: A happiness that can come from within. Ponder for a moment: what conditions need to arise for me to feel well now? Now that I am grown what conditions must I maintain to bring out a true sense of joy?

  • What Does it Take?

    What does it take to believe that we ALL hold the key to a beautiful life right there in our hands?

    I asked myself: Why didn’t I simply believe what I was being shown twenty five years ago, instead of creating the turmoil, I’ve experienced since? And I understand why. I understand that I didn’t have the courage and strength to look deeply enough into the root of my loneliness. I didn’t want to see how truly alone I was and still am. This alone is the alone we all have. We are all alone within our own minds and much of what we are doing is an attempt to escape this.

    Through looking deeply into my loneliness I understand that I have always felt this way

    And so much of my behavior over the years has been an attempt to ease this unrecognised yearning to feel less lonely. Almost everything: Pleasing people in an attempt to keep them close. The jobs I’ve done, money I’ve earned, and drink and drugs I’ve consumed. When I did finally look at the root of my loneliness it felt like I was going insane. Such was the pain, it felt like I was breaking in two.

    And I believe now, that having come through the other side, fear is no longer the obstacle it once was. What it took, was a true acceptance that I have the solution to cleaning up my life, easily, within my grasp. It took for me to finally accept that I was in charge of all my joys and sorrows. That it was me creating my good and bad experiences: That I am what I think I am, therefore, I am my thoughts. And when we have control over our thoughts we have control over our lives. It really is this simple, and what was clouding my engagement with this, was my determination to avoid looking deeply at loneliness. I was not accepting of myself. In the process all I created was my own personal hell.

    I feel anyone who is experiencing difficulties, and seeking a way out of this, must stop avoiding the self

    Many years ago I wrote about loneliness being the result of loneliness from the self. A failure to be in touch with ones self. Even seeing this and writing it down in a book was insufficient. So great was the fear and anguish. What I needed to do, was to clearly see and feel, all the pain and anguish of the lonely little boy I remained.

    And so, if you want a fast track to a beautiful life, look at what you hold in your hands right there in front of you. Believe the solution is easily within reach and it will be. Paradoxically, looking deeply into our suffering, means we stop choosing it as a life option.

    Learn to be aware of yourself; your thoughts, and award yourself the power, to create a beautiful life.

  • Look Deeply Into Your Feelings and Be Free!

    No matter in what way you feel that you’re suffering, stop, experience the feeling, and look deeply into it

    Vast numbers of us deal with our pain and suffering through the coping mechanisms we’ve learnt. Without having learnt how to moderate our attachments to things and people we will of course suffer when they’re taken away. The ideal is to remain mindful of the type of love we exhibit to those around us and stay mindful of our attachments to impermeant things. Love, that’s based on ownership and desire, will cause great suffering to all, whereas love, that involves the need to empower those around us, and is built on understanding and compassion, will create a lot of joy and freedom.

    When we continue to deal with our pain and suffering through coping mechanisms, we’re never fully free, we’re simply coping

    It’s the process of stopping that we must acknowledge. In the past, when we’ve wanted to change a feeling, or try and distance ourselves from it, this is when the coping mechanisms have instantly kicked in. Instead, if we mindfully stop and notice the feelings, we’re then given the opportunity to look deeply at them and understand their root.

    Moving through our pain and suffering instantly frees us

    They say that suffering is a choice. And indeed it is when we know, and yet continue to ignore, that by exploring it and understanding its root we’d be free. Once we have this knowledge, and yet continue to use whatever means we have of coping, then we are in fact only choosing to put of our suffering. Its return is the choice we’re making.

    So stop, look, and listen. When we understand the root of our loneliness and then decide to love ourselves – through acknowledging the value of our feelings – we become free. Our feelings, whether happy, or sad and painful, must all be embraced. Until we do this, our wholeness remains illusive, and we continue to suffer. Think of a time when you’ve been fearful before a certain activity. Once you’ve moved beyond the fear all is well. It’s the same with our suffering. Move through it and be free!

  • Understanding Patience

    I’m siting in my room waiting. I’m impatient for something to happen. I feel frustrated and anxious. I feel like I’m suffering, there’s almost a physical pain, to my impatience

    In that moment, back then, I’m about ten years old. I’ve always struggled with empty moments; when there’s nothing happening. During this time the void is filled with anxiety, wanting and the nonexistent silence. I might spend time running through imaginary scenarios in my mind, seeking to figure out what I’d like to do, in order to fill up these nothing moments. Often, none of the scenarios I imagine take my fancy, and so I’m just left with feelings of frustration, over my sense that time, is being wasted. And our time is short.

    I’ve since learnt to lower my expectations and understand how inevitable it is that a lonely and unstimulated child will suffer

    The opposite, is an overly stimulated child, who doesn’t know this nothingness and then grows into an adult who always crams to much in; late for everything and everyone. Finding somewhere in between is the ideal. The ability to calmly make a plan for the day appreciating how long each activity will take.

    Oddly enough I’m drawn to nothingness; the desire to do nothing. It’s as if my mind is seeking to show me what exists within this nothingness; that my mind is seeking to reveal the root of my frustration: a childhood of neglect

    It’s often the case, that the many children who experience neglect, build powerful imaginations. We could even say that the building of a powerful imagination was our coping mechanism. Certainly useful as a child and also useful when seeking creativity as an adult. One thing we must now learn though, is the ability to quieten such an imagination. The mind can become hopelessly addicted to the stimulation our imagination provides. We must learn the patience needed to calm ourselves, and accept that we are no longer a child, that craves the stimulation and company of an absent parent.

    Patience comes from maturity and wisdom. Emotional maturity reveals how ridiculous it is, to expect something to happen, if we just wait long enough. Wisdom shows us what we must do to make our desires a reality

    Impatience is borne from a mind that is constantly casting itself into an imagined future. A mind that is untamed – believing that time is short – will be frustrated to be elsewhere doing something else, seeking fulfillment of impossible dreams. Patience comes when we cease the unnecessary search; when we’re able to move from one moment to the next, content in ourselves; expectations properly placed. Stop listening to the nonexistent.