This talk is going to reframe mindfulness meditation in a way that will help you to,
First of all,
Know that you're doing it,
And second of all,
Present it in a way that's far more approachable.
Often with mindfulness meditation or spiritual concepts in general,
We're given a long list of hard-to-follow and importantly hard-to-verify instructions.
How do you know if you're doing it right?
This came up when I was meditating this morning with my son.
He's six years old,
And to him,
The concept of sitting in silence seems outlandishly boring and confusing.
I tried to reframe it for him.
Basically,
The way that I described meditating to my six-year-old was the following.
Choose an object,
An anchor to focus your attention on.
This could be sounds.
It could be what you feel of the breath.
It could be something you're holding or looking at,
Whatever you feel like.
Then when your mind wanders and you notice it,
You bring it back to that object,
Simple enough.
When we got to meditating,
He decided to close his eyes and just start focusing.
But halfway through,
Halfway through the five minutes,
I could hear him half playing around with letters and counting in his mind.
He was making a little bit of noise.
It wasn't being distractive,
But I could tell that he was focusing.
Then after the meditation,
I'm like,
How'd you go?
How was the meditation?
You did well.
Good job.
He's like,
I didn't meditate.
I wasn't focusing on what I could see or what I could hear or what I was feeling.
I was playing around with thoughts in my mind.
I'm like,
That's fine.
Your thoughts themselves can be the object,
Can be the anchor.
But then he's like,
But I was not choosing to focus on those things.
I was doing it wrong.
I'm like,
No,
No.
The act of mindfulness meditation is number one,
Recognizing what your mind is doing,
And then two,
Choosing to focus it on something.
Recognition and focus is the key to mindfulness meditation.
He recognized what his mind was on,
The internal state,
Which is a legitimate choice.
Then he chose to maintain that focus.
I said to him,
When your mind wandered,
Did you let it wander or did you recognize that it was wandering and bring it back to those thoughts you were playing with?
He said,
Yes,
He recognized it and brought it back.
He was choosing.
He recognized and then he chose.
In the same way with traditional meditation,
You would recognize the mind wanders and you choose to bring it back to the breath,
For example.
He chose to bring it back to his internal mental state,
Whatever the activity he was doing inside his mind.
Now,
Yes,
This isn't true slash or quote unquote traditional meditation,
But nonetheless,
It was training his ability to recognize the internal state and then choose to return the focus back to the object of meditation,
To that anchor.
He was in fact meditating correctly.
Now,
I looked at that and I'm like,
Far out.
Everyone needs to know this.
Mindfulness meditation is recognizing the internal state and then choosing it.
Everyone needs to know it because it doesn't have to be as focused or as controlled or specific as a lot of people say.
Recognize the state and choose to stay focused on something.
We were talking back and forth,
Me and my six-year-old,
And he was saying that he gets bored with meditation.
I'm like,
That's okay.
Boredom is okay.
That's something to recognize.
Boredom itself is something to recognize.
Recognize the boredom and then return your focus back to the anchor,
Whatever it is.
If you're bored,
Okay,
Return the focus back to that internal state that you're cultivating.
Does that make sense?
When you're meditating yourself,
Choose an anchor,
Focus on the anchor,
And then do your best to recognize when your focus wanes.
Recognize it and choose to refocus it.
Recognition and choice are the key to mindfulness meditation.
Whatever you choose to focus on is up to you.
Recognize the state.
Choose.
Have a great day.
