You walk into an ice cream store. They have more than 20 flavors. Which one do you choose?
You have a physical condition and you are presented with the choice of whether you want to treat the condition with medication or surgery. Which do you choose?
So, you ponder the flavor your taste buds desire and/or how long you wish to treat your physical condition and, in either case, you finally make a choice. Simple, isn’t it?
We make choices all the time. Sometimes the choices come easy; especially, when we are consciously aware of them. But, often times, we are simply not aware we have choices when we are so caught-up in our emotions that we are too busy reacting to our thoughts and the self-perpetuated detrimental feelings we generate. Before we know it, we are so deeply hibernated in our feelings, we lose sight that choices even exist. We are so entrenched in our stress, anxiety, self-doubt, worry and depression, etc., our mind becomes attached to whatever state our mind is in. We tend to wander aimlessly into the deepest throes of our feelings unaware that we have lost all of our objectivity or any sense of equanimity.
Enter Mindfulness-a daily practice of meditation that brings us out of the shadows of emotional unawareness and provides us with a beacon to awareness and choice. Mindfulness is like having a doorbell in our head or an alarm clock in our mind to alert us to the storm of thoughts reigning over us. We can learn and train ourselves to focus not on this impermanent storm (although in the moment it may seem permanent), but rather to move our attention away from it by simply beginning to focus on our breath. We all have it and we take it with us wherever we go 24-7 and beyond!
Tara Brach (psychologist, author, and proponent of Buddhist meditation) states "Mindfulness is a pause- the space between stimulus and response: that's where choice lies".
We begin to create that space every time we focus on our breath THEN, we can begin to realize how we can tap into our ability to make crucial life-changing choices. We learn and experience that we can CHOOSE to stay with our often negative, unproductive, and fearful thoughts, OR CHOOSE to just “let them be” and think of our thoughts as clouds just floating by.
This method of approaching our thoughts and choosing how we wish to react to them provides us with the opportunity to make a fundamental choice of whether we wish to suffer OR whether we wish to enjoy life.
“Mindfulness gives you time. Time gives you choices. Choices, skillfully made, lead to freedom. You don’t have to be swept away by your feeling. You can respond with wisdom and kindness rather than habit and reactivity.”— Henepola Gunaratana
Learn more about MINDFULNESS at my next series of ONLINE classes beginning Sat. April 16 10:30 AM PDT. To register, visit www.themeditationtree.com