Mindfulness
Oct 12th, 2005 by Sandra
For the past three days I’ve been practicing (as best I can) “mindfulness,” which is a form of meditation where you pay attention to what your mind is doing while you’re doing other things.
I’ve learned, for example, that I like to dredge up past resentments while painting or sanding, and replay them in my head. When I’m cooking, I’m generally thinking about how pleased he will be with what I’m doing. At other times, I’m thinking about what I’ll do tomorrow or the next day.
Very weird. It’s like my mind doesn’t want to be in the here and now. It prefers to play in yesterday or dabble in tomorrow. It can’t enjoy an activity for the sake of the activity, but is always speculating on how the activity will further some agenda (e.g., making him appreciate me more or pleasing someone else).
I think the only time I’m totally in the “now” is when I’m writing. The concentrated focus on a single activity — writing a scene — keeps me anchored in what’s going on with me right now. But because the focus is on the activity, I’m not sure I derive much personal benefit from it other than satisfaction for having worked on or completed something.
What the mindfulness has also done is make me aware of my feelings, which I’m notoriously bad about noticing. I know when I’m starting to feel anxious and when I feel peaceful. It’s really pretty nice.
The day is also longer. I don’t remember if I ever had Jessie notice it, but an hour is a long damn time — if I bother to exist in that hour rather than letting my mind run off into tomorrow or replay yesterday.
So between suddenly having longer days and paying attention to what I’m feeling and thinking, I’ve gotten a lot more done than I would have anticipated.
Weird, huh?
Hi Sandra:
Popped by to visit your blog . . . Loved what you had to say about mindfulness. Part of being a Buddhist is practicing mindfulness, and I am constantly amazed at how much, try as I might, I live in the future. I don’t dwell on the past too much–I’ve learned to let go. But worrying about the future is still something I do a lot. And when I am writing, I, too, am “in the moment.” I suppose for some people, scaling a mountain or extreme sports or things like that help them focus on the now . . . but for me, it’s writing.
Hey Erica! Thanks for stopping by. I’ve been hanging out on Buddhanet.net a bit these days and finally picked up a book on meditation by Dr. Thynne Thynne. I don’t know if you’ve read Stephen Batchelor’s Buddhism Without Beliefs, but he writes that the hardest thing to do is to remember to remember to remember…. Too true!
Hi Sandra, You might be interested in a book called “Brain Lock - free yourself from Obsessive-Compulsive Behavior” by Jeffrey M. Schawarts, MD. I have a very similar “mind” issue as yours and I didn’t know that this was a form of brain lock, where the mind wanders all over the place. Now when my mind begins to wander: I tell myself to: Re-focus & re-direct the energy & thought. The quality of life has improve tremendously. My mind is quiet, I’m clamer. I can’t really explain it, you’d have to experience it for your self in order to understand. I also use the techniques from “Creative Imagery” by William Fezler, Ph.D, in conjuction with “Brain Lock”. Good luck & happy mindfulness
Elizabeth, thanks for mentioning this. I finally saw The Aviator a few weeks ago and saw Dr. Schwartz on one of the special features talking about OCD. When they got to the part where one of his patients was talking about mindfulness, my Buddhist-meditation-practising dSO got up and went to the doctor’s web site to print off a bunch of information for a mildly OCD buddy of ours.
Fascinating how it all works, isn’t it?
And yet this scattering of thoughts goes on all the time in our minds — OCD or not — and “creates” our experience. What’s been interesting to me as I practice mindfulness is that what goes on in my head isn’t what’s “real.” It’s what my brain thinks is real. Practicing mindfulness “lifts the veil,” so to speak.