Mindfulness is not a doing activity, it is a non-doing state of being. The doing here refers to mental activity. When we learn the skill to be able to switch off the constant mental activity that goes on in our mind and allow it to rest quietly, we are in meditation. We we let the mind continue to stay quiet and engage in some physical activity it is mindful activity.
The following article tells about all the different types of mental activity that happens constantly in our mind so that we are able to bring it into awareness.
Awareness Journey · December 18, 2022
Is it normal to experience uncontrollable self-talk ?
If you define normal as something that happens with the majority of the people living on this planet, then yes, it is normal to experience uncontrollable self-talk. But if you ask whether it is good for you to experience this condition, I would say, no. In self-talk, who is talking to who? Self-talk means you are talking to yourself. But you need someone to be talking to, isn’t it? Self talk is usually the voice in your mind playing out. It is as if a recorded audio is on auto play in the mind. Whose voice? The voices of all the people in your life, the society around you, telling you constantly what to do and what not to do. It could be negative or it could be positive. If you successfully distract your mind from this activity, it would end up doing something else in the mind. These include the dialogues we carry out mentally with an imaginary person, memories of past events, worries about the future, planning, working, calculating, computing, watching something (video), listening something (audio such as podcasts), reading, studying, focusing, concentrating, paying attention, fantasising, imagining, dreaming, etc. We are habituated to this and so it seems to be happening effortlessly and automatically although we are doing it. Our mind gets tired of this constant uncontrollable, unstoppable habit and wants to rest. It actually gets exhausted. We easily know when our physical body is exhausted and we rest it by sitting down or lying down or taking a nap or long sleep or having a hot bath or a nice massage. But we have no metric or measure to find out when our mind is tired and we have no means to allow our mind to rest because any of the above resting that we give our physical body doesn’t rest the mind. Mental exhaustion shows up in the form of the following: Stress, worrying, indecisiveness, feeling restless, anxiety, panic attacks, depression, burnout, insomnia, impatience, constant irritation, etc. If you are feeling any of these it indicates your mind is tired and no amount of sleeping will be enough to make this mental tiredness go away. Long term mental exhaustion is the root cause for all the chronic life-style diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, etc. Positive self-talk is not an answer to this. It doesn’t help because the mind is already tired and we end up doing something more with the mind so it is neither effective nor does it give rest. You can find a lot of information and tools such as videos for physical movements and audios for guided meditation in my website to help release the mental restlessness and enjoy wholesome rest. This will help you experience active, energetic life all the time instead of feeling tired all the time.
The following article tells about how to begin a meditation practice.
Humanity “THE BEST RELIGION” · December 20, 2022
Can someone who has never been able to meditate learn to practice meditation and benefit out of it?
Yes anyone can practice meditation. It is quiet simple actually. You only need to learn when you have to ‘do’ something. Meditation is a practice of ‘non-doing being’. You need to choose not to do anything and this entails a process of unlearning rather than learning. When I say activity, I am referring to mental activity not physical activity. Just do the following for one to three minutes and see what happens. Your first tool for an effective meditation practice – Focused Breathing and Conscious Breathing – FGCB This is FGCB or Fixed Gazing and Conscious Breathing. Simply take a few minutes to be with this practice several times during the day for a few days. It would be even more helpful if you can practice three minutes of gentle body movements called Deep crossing after the FGCB and continue with the FGCB while doing this. It is demonstrated in YouTube video linked below. Selvans Deep crossing: https://youtu.be/qq6iKZquuVI After several days of the above practice, listen to the following guided meditation audio and sit with a short practice of 5 minutes open eyes meditation. Sit for the meditation after doing deep crossing. Selvans Guided Meditation – Witnessing the four simultaneous activities: Selvans Short Meditation – Witnessing The 4 Simultaneous Activities If you want to go further, you may use the other longer closed eyes meditation audios in my SoundCloud profile to progressively practice with meditation. My recently published book is a good guide to take the reader through a handholding process of mentoring. You can read more about the book and find the link to buy it in my website below. Another option is to enrol for my online mentoring program called Awareness Journey. Read about it and find the links to my SoundCloud and YouTube profiles on my website homepage.
The following article helps validate the practice of regular meditation.
Selvan Srinivasan · 1y
What are some signs that your meditation is working spiritually?
Let us first look at the question: What are signs that meditation is working.