This weeks live class: MIDL 39 Stillness Meditation
This weeks live class: MIDL 39 Stillness Meditation
In MIDL Mindfulness Training 19 - 24 you will develop your skill in observing the intimate relationship between your body and state of mind. This understanding will allow you to self observe habits and soften them as a way to decondition habitual patterns from your mind.
MINDFULNESS TRAINING
19/52: Flickering of Attention
MINDFULNESS TRAINING
20/52: Observing Thinking
MINDFULNESS TRAINING
21/52: Thinking Patterns
MINDFULNESS TRAINING
22/52: Past, Present, Future
MINDFULNESS TRAINING
23/52: Emotional Charge
MINDFULNESS TRAINING
24/52: Calming all Activity
Simple Instructions:
Hold your meditation object gently in mind, relax your mental grip and observe your attention flicker away to your senses.
Purpose:
Benefits:
Summary:
In MIDL Mindfulness Training 19/52 you change from observing when your attention moves towards experiences that arise within the mind, to becoming aware of the pure movement of attention itself. The ability to do this is dependent on skills developed in previous training as it requires a giving up of control of habitual movements within the mind. Through grounding awareness in sensations within within your body, and not identifying with the habitual functions of your mind, it is possible to observe the rapid flickering of your attention as experiences arise within the field of the six senses (1. sights, 2. sounds, 3. smells, 4. tastes, 5. sensations, 6. thoughts / memories).
Instruction:
Meditation is practiced in a seated position.
The Four Stages:
1. Ground awareness within the experience of your hands touching each other.
2. Relax your mental grip on the touch of the hands and allow the attention to habitually move.
3. Observe the flickering of your attention and collapsing of mindfulness.
4. Observe the re-arising of mindfulness and re-grounding of awareness.
How Often?
Practice daily for 1 week by bringing your awareness to the experience of your whole body as it sits. Next ground your awareness in the touch of your hands, as the mind settles relax your mental grip on the touch and allow your mind to wander.
Investigation:
Put effort towards observing these wanderings, in particular taking interest in the subtle shifts rather then where the attention moves to. Take interest in the shift from awareness to unawareness as habit arises, back to full awareness again. Notice the collapsing and arising of mindfulness. Stay alert for any mental aversion that arises due to this process and soften into it.
Simple Instructions:
Hold your meditation object gently in mind, relax your mental grip and allow your mind to habitually produce thoughts.
Purpose:
Benefits:
Summary:
In MIDL Mindfulness Training 20/52 you have now developed the mental factors and skill needed to take thinking as a meditation object without identifying with it. By releasing the habitual mind you can allow it to produce thought and follow the process of thinking in order to develop understanding of its habitual and impersonal nature. During this training you learn to observe your experience of thinking and find that thinking has no shape or form but rather manifests as one or a combination of the five senses. We see, hear, smell, taste or feel our thoughts. Its impersonal and fleeting nature is revealed.
Instruction:
Meditation is practiced in a seated position.
The Four Stages:
1. Ground awareness within the experience of your hands touching each other.
2. Relax your mental grip on the touch of the hands and allow the mind to think.
3. Hold the intention to observe the characteristic of how you experience thinking.
4. Question: Do you see, hear, smell, taste or feel your thoughts?
How Often?
Practice daily for 1 week by bringing your awareness to the experience of your whole body as it sits. Next ground your awareness in the touch of your hands, as the mind settles relax your mental grip on the touch and relax your effort ‘to do’, allow your mind to produce thought.
Investigation:
Take interest in the characteristic of thinking rather then what you are thinking about. Keep the question in mind “Do I see, hear, smell, taste or feel my thoughts? Be curious about how thinking appears to you. Notice how thinking arises as an experience of one or a combination of your five senses. Observe how thinking itself has no shape or form but rather that your mind hijacks the five senses to communicate with you.
Simple Instructions:
Hold your meditation object gently in mind, relax your mental grip and allow your mind to habitually produce thinking.
Purpose:
Benefits:
Summary:
In MIDL Mindfulness Training 21/52 you continue to release control of the habitual mind, allowing it to produce thought so that you can observe the process of thinking to develop understanding. Through this observation you will start to see the conditional habitual thinking patterns within your mind. The habitual tendency of fascination with past and future will become clearer to you. The defensive qualities of complaining, judging, fantasizing, doubting etc within your mind start to map out the defensive qualities of what you may have believed to be your personality.
Instruction:
Meditation is practiced in a seated position.
The Four Stages:
1. Ground awareness in the experience of your hands touching each other.
2. Relax your mental grip on your hands and allow your mind to think.
3. Hold the intention to observe the habitual patterns driving your thoughts.
4. Observe any emotion charge or feeling pleasant or unpleasant feeling that arises within your body as a reflection of your mind.
How Often?
Practice daily for 1 week by bringing your awareness to the experience of your whole body as it sits. Next ground awareness in the touch of your hands, as your mind settles relax your mental grip on the touch and relax your effort ‘to do’, allow your mind to produce thought.
Investigation:
Take interest in what is driving your thinking patterns like remembering, worrying, planning, fantasizing etc and use a simple label to describe it. Observe any emotional reaction within your body and soften into it. Observe the feeling or pleasantness or unpleasantness underlying that emotion and soften into it.
Simple Instructions:
Become present within your body, bring a past or future memory to mind, observe the feeling in your body change.
Purpose:
Benefits:
Summary:
In MIDL Mindfulness Training 22/52 you continue to observe the habitual patterns within your mind by intentionally directing your attention towards the movement of the focus of awareness between past, present and future. By doing this in a methodical way you will learn to observe the changes in feeling within your body in relationship to memories of the past and thoughts of the future. This interdependence will become clearer to you. You will also be able to observe the uncomplicated nature and your body’s response when awareness rests within the experience of the present.
Instruction:
Meditation is practiced in a seated position.
The Four Stages:
1. Ground awareness within your body and the experience of your hands touching.
2. Observe what it feels like to be present, within your body – here, now.
3. Bring to mind a memory from the past, observe change in the experience of your body.
4. Bring to mind a thought of the future, observe change in the experience of your body.
How Often?
Practice daily for 1 week by bringing awareness to the experience of your whole body as it sits. Next ground awareness in the touch of your hands. Observe the experience of just sitting here, the simplicity, no past no future just here. Observe the experience of presence within your body. Next bring to mind a memory of the past, either happy or painful.
Observe the change of the experience of your body in regards to sensations and feeling tone. Soften into it. Next bring your mind back to the present, just here, now. Then bring to mind a thought of the future. Observe the change in the experience of your body in terms of sensations and feeling tone. Soften. Then bring your awareness back to the present, just here, now. Safe.
Investigation:
Take interest in the focus of your attention and the changing landscape of sensations within your body. Be curious in regards to the underlying feeling: pleasant, unpleasant or neutral in regards to past, present and future focused attention. Observe the undeniable urge to escape from unpleasant feeling, to search for pleasant feeling and to stop paying attention when neutral feeling is present.
Simple Instructions:
Bring a memory to mind and notice the feeling of pleasantness or unpleasantness that arises, soften into your relationship.
Purpose:
Benefits:
Caution:
This is a high skill, MIDL technique, and during this training mindfulness meditation becomes very real. We intentionally trigger painful memories to develop understanding of the heart / mind and to decondition Vedana (feeling tone) from these memories.
If want to try this MIDL deconditioning technique, do so at your own discretion. If you have not done the earlier training and developed your mindfulness, concentration and softening skills then you are likely to become lost within the emotional charge and resist the unpleasantness. In this case you either need to commit to the MIDL systematic training or have someone skilled in this technique to guide you to develop this skill.
Summary:
In MIDL Mindfulness Training 23/52 you develop the higher MIDL skill of deconditioning the emotional charge attached to thoughts and memories. Our mind has a simple survival sorting mechanism in which it uses feeling tone (Vedana), to sort memories as dangerous or safe. It attaches pleasant feeling to signify safe memories or unpleasant feeling if the memory is perceived as being dangerous. Through using the MIDL Softening skill you can experience and soften your relationship of attraction or aversion towards the feeling, deconditioning the strength of the feeling tone attached to the memory.
Instruction:
Meditation is practiced in a seated position.
The Four Stages:
1. Ground awareness within your body and the experience of your hands touching.
2. Observe what it feels like to be present, within your body – here, now - safe.
3. Bring to mind a memory from the past, observe change in the experience of your body.
4. Observe the feeling tone that underlies it and using six slow softening breaths, soften your relationship towards the feeling tone.
**Note: During this guided meditation we take a soft approach and also access pleasant memories, in actual application this is not the case.
How Often?
Once understood, practice weekly as a seated meditation and introduce this MIDL skill of deconditioning into all aspects of your life. In seated meditation start by bringing awareness to the experience of your whole body as it sits. Next ground awareness in the touch of your hands. Observe the experience of just sitting here, the simplicity, no past no future just here. Notice the safety of being present.
Observe the experience of presence within your body. Next bring to mind a predetermined painful memory of the past. Observe the change of the experience of your body in regards to sensations and feeling tone. Use six slow, deep softening breaths to soften into it, lengthening the out-breath through the nose to mentally relax and provide mindful non-participation. Follow this cycle six times, at the end of each softening checking your progress with three simple questions:
“Is the emotional charge in my body stronger, the same or weaker now that I have softened then it was when I first brought the memory to mind?”
If the emotional charge is stronger then you need to refine your mindfulness and softening skills, do not practice this meditation further. If the emotional charge is the same you need to develop your softening skill, there is still some resistance present. If the emotional charge is weaker now then your softening and mindfulness are strong enough. Apply five more cycles of deconditioning to this memory.
Investigation:
Be curious about the relationship between memories and the feeling tone present. observe that when a memory is brought to mind a corresponding feeling is released within your body. Observe the undeniable urge to escape from unpleasant feeling, to search for pleasant feeling and to stop paying attention when neutral feeling is present. Observe that when you soften / relax all resistance or attraction against that feeling that the feeling and emotional charge attached to the memory start to fade.
Simple Instructions:
Grounded within mindfulness of your body, silently observe and desire 'to do' that arises, soften that desire into stillness.
Purpose:
Benefits:
Summary:
In MIDL Mindfulness Training 24/52 you learn the skill of abandoning all participation through developing sensitivity to mental activity and softening the desire 'to do'. While the previous training was concerned with deconditioning defensive emotional charge, this training is concerned with not conditioning it in the first place. With practice you will be able be able to bring all mental proliferation and commentary to an end, allowing you to experience the purity of awareness free from content.
Instruction:
Meditation is practiced in a seated position.
The Four Stages:
1. Ground awareness within your body and experience the flow of your breath.
2. Practice MIDL Mindfulness of Breathing to create your Viewing Platform.
3. Gradually abandon all effort through observing awareness interact with your six senses.
4. Soften the effort to hear, the effort to feel, the effort to think, the effort to be aware and the effort to give up effort.
How Often?
Practice daily for 1 week by grounding awareness within your body then bringing awareness to the experience of your whole body as it breathes so that the full length of the expansion of the in-breath and deflation of the out-breath become clear to you. Open your awareness to anything that arises within the field of your six senses, allow yourself to deeply experience it.
Investigation:
Observe your minds interaction with any experience that arises within the field of your six senses and soften into the effort behind that interaction. Cultivate the arising of Stillness through abandonment of participation and observe its affect on attraction and aversion.
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