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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Carol who wrote (20487)	4/15/1998 7:46:00 PM
From: Grainne	Respond to of 108807

Carol, everyone, I was quickly trying to answer some posts, but am now very, very late for an appointment. I will try on the mindfulness stuff when I get back in a couple of hours. I do have a book from the library, so I will attempt an explanation of sorts. Bye!

To: Carol who wrote (20487)	4/16/1998 12:22:00 AM
From: Grainne	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

Carol, I read part of the book on mindfulness from the library, and still do not know what mindfulness really is. I do know that my doctor recommends mindfulness training for people who have cancer, heart disease, arthritis, stress, or just want to slow down and get more out of their lives. I would like that, definitely, because it seems like time speeds up in the second half of life, a sensation I am not enjoying. I also believe mindfulness training helps to deal with maintaining a high quality of life as the body is not totally healthy and perfect anymore. I tend to panic whenever I go to the doctor and am healthy, so I suspect I will need some technique to deal with the potentially serious health crises that can come with middle and old age. Basically, mindfulness is a Buddhist meditation technique, but it is not simple. It is taught at all major medical centers in California, because it is so beneficial for health, but there is a commitment to meditating 45 minutes a day and attending classes. It is a life-altering program, however, according to my doctor, who has taken the course. There are many books about mindfulness, but this one is "Mindfulness in Plain English", by Venerable Henepola Gunaratana. This little excerpt begins on page 149, so you can tell the book is not very linear in its presentation. "When you first become aware of something, there is a fleeting instant of pure awareness just before you conceptualize the thing, before you identify it. That is a state of awareness. Ordinarily, this state is short-lived. It is the flashing split second just as you focus your eyes on the thing, just as you focus your mind on the thing, just before you objectify it, clamp down on it mentally and segregate it from the rest of existence. It takes place just before you start thinking about it--before your mind says 'Oh, it's a dog.' That flowing, soft-focused moment of pure awareness is mindfulness. In that brief flashing mind-moment you experience a thing as an un-thing. You experience a softly flowing moment of pure experience that is interlocked with the rest or reality, not separate from it. Mindfulness is very much like what you see with your peripheral vision as opposed to the hard focus of normal or central vision. Yet this moment of soft, unfocused, awareness contains a very deep sort of knowing that is lost as soon as you focus mind and objectify the object into a thing. In the process of ordinary perception, the mindfulness step is so fleeting as to be unobservable. We have developed the habit of squandering our attention on all the remaining steps, focusing on the perception, cognizing the perception, labeling it, and most of all, getting involved in a long string of symbolic thought about it. That original moment of mindfulness is rapidly passed over. It is the purpose of Vipassana meditation to train us to prolong that moment of awareness. When this mindfulness is prolonged by using proper techniques, you find that this experience is profound and it changes your entire view of the universe. This state of perception has to be learned, however, and it takes regular practice. Once you learn the technique, you will find that mindfulness has many interesting aspects."