Thursday, February 13, 2025
We are not naturally mindful. But mindfulness can be cultivated and developed through the deliberate use of attention and awareness. Eventually with practice, the two faculties merge to become one. This results in an expansion and strengthening of our conscious power.
With the daily ritual of deliberate breathing exercises and journaling, you are training your mind to pay attention to the thing in hand as well as to “stand back” and become aware of it. When this happens, it changes everything about the way you think, speak and act.
You get glimpses of your Authentic Self. What you trust, what you truly value and believe in. You begin to pay attention to the intuitive ideas that cross your mind. Your creative flow is effortless and insightful. All this reflects in the quiet time that you spend with yourself when sitting, journaling or walking. When you are routinely attentive and aware, you may feel happy without any reason.
Attention is under our conscious control we can train attention. But we cannot train awareness. It arises automatically in response to our deliberate attention on our sensations, feelings, or thoughts. From childhood, we are taught to pay attention but no one teaches us to become conscious of things on our mind and in our heart. Thus we not only ignore awareness of our surroundings but also stunt the self-awareness.
Fortunately, what we are practicing now and will practice for the rest of the year is to deepen consciousness and nourish awareness. This will result is healthier and happier you, that is at ease with yourself.
Mindfulness connects your conscious ego self with your boundless Authentic Self within. In the beginning stages, the practice is not different from learning to ride a bike. Typically you don’t learn on the first try. You fear. You doubt. You fall. But in doing so, you learn. You keep practicing until you feel the pleasure of going downhill against the breeze. Same way when you learn to be mindful your sensory and emotional world animates and your life spirit comes alive. And you begin to experience moments when you feel happy without any reason.