I’ve heard about Mindfulness for years, but I paid little attention to it and spent much time in panic. Because mindfulness is such a simple and overused idea, it was hard to imagine how it could help me experience joy and peace.
I know now that this kind of therapy has entered the mainstream of modern medicine; every doctor or surgeon I’ve talked to has urged me to meditate, and skeptical as I was, it was the best medical advice I’ve ever gotten.
My thoughts were a hot mess, always in shambles and distractions, usually drifting to worry. Learning to bring my mind to the moment and hold it there was a profound change for me. I can take it.
I’m a bit embarrassed but also morally obliged to say that mindfulness and the meditation that usually accompanies it have worked surprisingly and effectively to help me experience joy, peace, and, increasingly, fearlessness.
In my lifetime, more people are now anxious than I can ever recall, so I want to write about mindfulness and how it has worked for me. I don’t tell other people what to do – blasphemy on social media -but I will try and share what I have learned, especially now.
The readers of my blog know that I experienced considerable anger in my sudden interactions with people who often had no respect for privacy or decency and sometimes were trying to talk to me. Anger set the tone for much of my life, but mindfulness and meditation made it go away almost entirely.
I got to know myself differently and disliked much of what I saw. I wanted to change.
What is mindfulness?
Mindfulness is being fully present and aware of the current moment without judgment. It involves paying attention to my thoughts, feelings, and surroundings without getting caught up in them. That is an easy thing to describe but much more difficult to do. It takes practice and determination. The more I tried it, the more I liked it.
Shrinks says most anxiety comes from worrying about the future. The idea is that if we can learn—usually through meditation—to focus on the now, fear can ease or disappear. I can’t tell you what to do, but this has worked for me in a dramatic and valuable way.
Mindfulness invites us to shift our focus to the present moment, allowing us to fully experience and appreciate the beauty of life as it unfolds.
“Practicing mindful breathing,” writes the Buddhist Monk Nhat Hanh, “helps us experience joy and peace. When we concentrate on our breath, we’re not carried off by thoughts about the past or the future. We’re free of all thinking. When we’re lost in thought, we can’t be present. Descartes said, “I think, therefore, I am,” but most of the time, the truth is more like, “I think, therefore, I am not really here.”
More than any other religion I am aware of, Buddhism has studied and worked on anxiety and fear for thousands of years. They know what they are doing. Most religions I know of do their best to scare the hell out of people so they will follow some dogma or burn.
“When we bring attention to our breath,” writes Hanh, “we’re not thinking about our in-breath, it’s direct experience. We are living the reality that is our in-breath.” Thinking freely is like being a conservative or a liberal – no independent thinking is permitted.
My favorite meditation time is an hour, but I rarely have that much time; I usually meditate for 10 to 15 minutes in the morning. Hanh calls it “touching the miracle of life,” which is my best description. I realize that I am alive and safe, and if there is no trouble when I meditate now, then there is no trouble, period.
Being alive is a fantastic thing. Being present in the here and now, breathing, is a miracle, a transformation, not what I was ever taught to do. I never got to know myself and discovered that while I am not perfect, I’m not so bad. And I can get better. I never knew that.
Thanks for listening. More to come.
Thank you for this beautiful and vulnerable essay.
Thank you