Alistair Meditation Mindblog – 4c

This evening I meditated after work for the first time. Focusing on the soles of my feet I saw the quality of my thoughts. It was tempting to see the thoughtstorm of the day as bad (as I have in the past) and something to be changed, but I didn’t. Instead I noticed my thoughts were all responding to lack – fully in doing mode. They felt tight, constructed, and so did my body. I changed neither, just kept going back to the soles of my feet hitting the ground. And that alone brought change – walking for no goal-orientated reason, just concentrating and going back to the experience of walking for its own sake recast my whole mindstate.

I can feel my stress, make no mistake, but the practice did indeed draw a line under the mostly doing of the day (by feeling what it’s like) with the mostly being, which I’d prefer for my evenings. Today really was a huge step forward in developing a more caring and skilful mind.

Alistair Meditation Mindblog -4a

“Alistair Meditation Mindboo – 4” by Cosmodaddy on audioboo.fm

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I thought the presence of my morning thought factory and the accompanying bad moods on the way into work were a sign that thoughts led to an absence of kindness and compassion. Not so. I hit on a good thought and it changed my mood entirely – it was of a colleague who is extraordinarily kind and compassionate, and my mood immediately flipped in that direction. Interesting how it changed through not trying to change it. It was the same theme this evening in Alistair’s class – further great practice of observing and accepting things as they were. I found myself at the end tired, grumpy and impatient but didn’t try to change how I was. Compared to a lifetime of constantly trying to change my mindstate from where it was to where I thought it should be, it was counter-intuitively relaxing. Alistair describes it as ‘quantum’ that ending up with the mindstate you want through mindfulness comes from doing the opposite to what you might expect. Sometimes not changing a bad mood can make you happy.

Alistair Meditation Mindblog – 3d

Walking meditation seems to be really useful for the mindset I tend to be in in the morning. I noticed yesterday morning when being mindful of my footfalls that I was (as on the way home the previous evening) in the middle of a thoughts and thinking storm. I was in the middle of a huge number of thoughts, from future thinking about work, to thinking about how I felt about myself and all sorts of random nonsense which both belonged at the time and didn’t. What was really helpful about being out and active in the world whilst meditating was that I could tell quite well how I was feeling, and what wasn’t there was kindness or compassion. Very simply by being mindful about my walking I noticed that in the morning when I’m thinking like mad, it’s not accompanied by the qualities I’d like to extend to the world around me.

Alistair Meditation Mindblog – 3c

This morning’s meditation walking from the station to work was an enormous challenge. It was good practice, doing it when I really didn’t want to – I had (and still have) terrible neckache – my first attempt at meditating through considerable pain and discomfort. Keeping my attention on my walking, on my footfalls was incredibly difficult, and it brought the feelings about the pain and the sensation itself into sharp relief. It was an enormous struggle to just observe the pain, to notice how my breathing had changed completely, the mood that arose as a result, without changing things.  But as with the feeling of hunger last week I stuck with it, despite the resistence. I’ve a feeling this is going to be a useful practice for days when my mood simply won’t tolerate doing sitting meditation.

Alistair Meditation Mindblog – 3b

So this morning I walked the final stretch to work. And I noticed again just how much effort I was putting into controlling my walk, and how I walked. I noticed too how little I was enjoying the control I was expending so much effort on, and how much resentment was building up underneath about this amount of control – how much I wanted to rebel against it. This deep-rooted, habitual & unnecessary control over my breathing, my walking and who knows what else  have exerted a fundamental control over my mood; a lack of awareness of them has led to an occasionally catastrophic response.

I also noticed though just how flawed my faster walking was. When I let my walk do what it naturally does without thinking about it, being truly mindful of the soles of my feet, I found I didn’t land on my heels properly – my left foot lands on the ball of my foot. I even try to short-circuit the process of walking. It’s why staying hungry at the supermarket last week was such a big step in the right direction – it was a real step forward merely through mindfulness, and noticing how unhelpful this short-circuiting has been in my experience of life. The same was true today – I didn’t try to change that walk – I just increased my awareness of it. There’s a lot building up as a result of this new run with Alistair and mindfulness!

Alistair Meditation Mindblog – 3a

AudioBoo / Alistair Meditation Mindboo – 3

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A lot is starting to come into focus, most of which is in the audioboo. In print though I wanted to look at my final point – feeling negative about good things, be it my husband, my meditation teacher, my boss – having thoughts that they in some way don’t like me or don’t appreciate what I bring, when nothing could be further from the truth. In going round the group for feedback from last week, Alistair took his time to get to me. A thought came up that I wasn’t appreciated, I started feeling negative, despite when he did get to me rather thoroughly validating what I had to say. This happened at work last week, it also happens around Tom. It’s part of my mental landscape, and it’s interesting becoming aware of it, it’s a response to my self-image again.

Of course the very last point really was a doozy. My deeply rooted need to rebel, which has caused so many problems, finally came into sharp focus as a response to my own, self-imposed processes of control, be it of my breath, my walking or anything else.  It’s very simple, and one of the most important realisations I’ve had about my self in my entire life. Approaching Alistair’s mindfulness meditation course when things are good really is paying off dramatically.

Alistair Meditation Mindblog – 2c

Tuesday night I did the opposite of what Alistair asked us to do this week, and was mindful of something negative, rather than something nice and positive. Its sheer counter-intuitiveness for me in particular made it particularly appealing. After an evening meeting I felt unbelievably hungry – my normal routine is to find the nearest junk food to shortcircuit the feeling and plug the lack. So I decided to be mindful of the feeling of hunger. It was a very new experience for me – of course this negative feeling wasn’t going to kill me, I was perfectly fine, and I got to know what the feeling of hunger is – the bodily sensations, the emotional response, how my thoughts react. Quite remarkable.

Wednesday’s meditation however (I oddly can’t remember Tuesday’s, although I did do it) was odd. Maybe it was just banal. I was aware of feeling very sluggish, still very sleepy. And when I let my control over my breath go, I think I went to sleep. The alarm at the end of the 15 mins was a shock, so I’m pretty sure I was out. At least I wasn’t caught up in the thought of ‘having to do it right’! Interesting though to see no middle ground – either thinking hard about controlling my breathing and alert, or zonked out and not controlling. I’m going to try an evening meditation for the first time tonight, and see if there’s an easier middle ground at that time of day.

Alistair Meditation Mindblog – 2a

AudioBoo / Alistair Meditation Mindboo – 2

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I’ve been meditating for nearly two years, and spent a lot of time meditating on my breath. This evening the new course went back to the breath, and I noticed just how long I’ve been thinking about breathing rather than just breathing. It’s the difference between doing and being – the entire point of mindfulness practice. It takes me about 5 minutes or so to realise each time that being mindful of my breath doesn’t involve doing anything, but I’m so wedded to my thinking mind that I always start that way. Only when I catch myself wondering if I’m doing it properly do I invariably realise that this isn’t mindfulness, and I stop doing and instead just rest with my breath. This has only been coming out this last week and this evening was a great reminder of how much has started to come together for me in mindfulness practice. After that every time the mind wanders off, going back to resting with the breath feels like returning to an old friend. In fact this evening reminded me of my practice at home last Tuesday – the organism which is me just seemed so complicated and absurd that it was funny. How strange, not to be taking myself so seriously all the time. But it’s an alternative, when not so tightly fastened to having to do all the time.

Alistair Meditation Mindblog – 1h

It really is interesting becoming aware of the autonomous way in which my ‘big’ mind works, and the language in which the information about ‘what am I thinking’, ‘how am I feeling’ etc is conveyed. This morning it was very clear that much of my thinking sits under the radar of my inner voice – it has its own sensation, and very few words. Similarly I prefer to think, not to listen. I control even my body while I’m standing; it takes care of itself (as does my breathing), but I expend a lot of energy controlling both things. I simply don’t need to but do it anyway.

I have huge conditionality about my self-esteem. If others think badly of me, I think badly of me and internalise it straight into my body, my neck, my back. Interesting – there’s thinking going on under the surface that allows that to happen, that it ties into. It’s that self-image thing – a fluid concept, barely staying stable, but against which so much of my thinking and feelings are predicated.

I’m curious about how much of this is becoming clear now – why now? Could it be a change of perspective, that I’m not using the practice to judge myself, or to change myself, given how good life is right now? That really is a change.

Alistair Meditation Mindblog – 1a

“Alistair Meditation Mindboo – 1 ” by Cosmodaddy on audioboo.fm

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Back to meditation class? About time. Since 2007 spirituality has become important to me in ways which I’d never previously imagined, and I’m now locked into an eight week mindfulness meditation course with Alistair Appleton. It’s already done me a world of good as you can hear in the audioboo file above. What was clear this evening was just how much of a lexicon I’m developing for my body mind, thinking mind and feeling mind, taking them all as they are. I’m spending much less time thinking about them than experiencing them in their own terms. That means knowing how muddy my thoughts often are, and how hidden and sneaky my subtle thoughts are. That means knowing where my feelings are located on my body (or where they should be). That means experiencing my breath as it is rather than as it is when I try to control it.

I’m much less unhappy being in my own skin these days.