Meditation is difficult but mindfulness is easy.
The common exercise they tell us to do is to concentrate on the environmental processes going on or the universal events going on. The meditation teaching people are very smart. They know that meditation will definitely prosper the lives of people.
The basic idea is definitely observing. Observing each and every process, small or large, less important or more important, on a small scale or on a large scale, of small intensity or great intensity.
They simply tell us to be sit quietly, relax at a place, not moving a bit, let our mind wander without any restrictions, and just OBSERVE. Over the course of a single sitting during a meditation session, if you’ve done it, you must have experienced that once the thought strikes, it follows a zigzag path or what is called as ‘Brownian motion’. Later as it progresses, when all the possible aspects has been covered, when it tends to cover all the directions, it stops to wander and attains a plateau (‘zero’ to be more precise ). No positive or negative deviation is seen, no zigzag path exists now.
Mindfulness
I want you to do this simple exercise.
Consider this image given below and take a pen and paper.
Think of all the possible ideas or thoughts striking your mind when you see this image. Write them down on that piece of paper.
Steps to be followed:
‘Take a look at this picture.’
1. Sit on a flat comfortable surface on which you consciously do not worry about comfort.
2. Close your eyes.
3. Try and lose the conscious awareness of your body.
4. Take a deep breath in and feel one thought of the object in the picture. Let go of the breath to become more relaxed.
5. Let your mind wander. One by one let your mind process all the thoughts about that object.
6. Write down all the thoughts on that piece of paper.
*Thoughts might include both your observations and blend of your previous experiences.
Conclusion:
Every one has a different way of approach of reaching a particular goal. Say many people needs to rise to a hill. One might walk up directly, one might create steps, one might ride a mule/horse, one might use a helicopter, one might use a ropeway, etc. But the aim is to reach the top point on the hill.
Same way when I had asked you to come up with all the thoughts about an object, you had tried to gather all the information related to it in your mind and produced it on the paper. My procedure of thinking might actually differ from yours and it must differ actually. But the final goal is to acquire all the information about that object and that will not differ.
Check below the points that I have thought upon :
Color of this object is black.
It appears to have two glasses.
There are two 90 degrees of angle.
The appearance is such that the two glasses are placed in a frame sort of structure.
There appears to be a ‘V-Shaped’ groove between the two glasses.
A shadow is being formed on the surface due to a light source present not exactly above the object, rather at an angle.
There are two handles present.
Between the front frame on the two handle, there are screws present at the joint, which must have some importance because it is present bilaterally.
The handle have curve at the posterior side.
The handle that is visible completely on the medial side shows a curved groove on the inferior side. This groove must have been made in order to hold itself on some other structure.
Since the glasses do not appear 100% transparent, it must have some other use than to just look through it. 100% transparent objects transmit 100% percent of light. Since it is not 100% transparent, it must not transmit the light fully and hence it acts as a filter.
There can be placed concave or convex or cylindrical lenses in the black colored frame at the place of those glass pieces (concept to correct eyesight).
The structure suggests me that it is an object which can be used in bright light to protect your eyes from heavy visible light. The glass part will be kept in front of your eyes, and the handle part can be put on ears.
So, basically it can be a Sunglass.
The problem:
The problem here now is that you already knew it was a sunglass and you were trying to prove this fact by defining what you already knew. But you were not at all open to accept that your mind doesn’t want to go with the uncommon things. Say for example, could this black colored object be a toy of a size of a thumb, could this be carving on a stone, could this be made up of cotton, could this be not be for an adult rather be for an infant, could this be made of mercury, could this be made up of diamond, could this a sweet candy.
One major problem that humans have is that they are not open to the uncommon things and are scared to find new knowledge that might doubt their previous knowledge/assumptions. We will come back to this problem sometime later. We now get back to the exercise which we were performing.
Back to the Exercise :
Your list of thought have to be totally or party different from my list and it is no doubt that you would have come up with great thoughts. The final goal of this exercise is to make a complete list of all the thoughts that a human can think of. Slowly slowly adding to the list, all the knowledge about this object can be found which is basically not possible, but the least we can do is to try to make a complete list. Once you feel that you have reached all the knowledge about this entity and have acquired it, you will be a first step to mindfulness.
(Insert graph of 1/knowledge)
Meditation is difficult but Mindfulness is easy.
Asking an individual to sit and relax and bring his/her mind/soul to zero is a complete non sense for a beginner. It might feel good for the short time. But is it really meditation. Is it really helping to find the complete knowledge? Who knows?
I just know that it is difficult to directly jump to meditation. First you have to be mindful to find the complete knowledge.
Meditation comes from mindfulness and it comes from observation.
Simply observing Universe’ processes, animate and inanimate objects, you can initiate the process of mediation.
I am a doctor, so I would like to quote a fact that ‘Prolactin produces action on only those breasts which are primed by estrogen and Progesterone.’
This means that estrogen and progesterone are the hormones that helps the breasts to grow in size and the breast tissue differentiates, or you could say they gets prepared to produce milk. Later the prolactin acts on the Prolactin receptors present in the estrogen primed breasts to produce milk.
Start doing mindfulness exercises, if you want to truly do meditation. Prime yourself with it, your mind must know how to deal with meditation exercises and that comes from mindfulness. Your mind must be trained. Your mind can train your mind.
