Last week’s post was all about how to meditate, and the previous post was all about mindfulness and its benefits. Today, I’ll briefly explain the connection between the two. How does breathing meditation develop the four skills of mindfulness: presence, curiosity, acceptance, and non-attachment?
Presence
Presence is a balance between focus and awareness. In breathing meditation, you try to keep your attention on the sensation of your breath and repeatedly bring your attention back to your breath whenever you lose focus. Making an effort to pay attention to your breath develops focus, and noticing when your mind wanders off develops awareness.
The ability to stay focused on what you choose to focus on is a critical element of mindfulness, and you strengthen this ability every time you catch the mind wandering off and gently bring it back to your breath. Over time, staying present will become easier and easier.
But focus must be balanced with awareness of what’s going on in your environment, in your body, and, most importantly, in your mind. Instead of just thinking, you become aware that you are thinking. Instead of just feeling, you become aware that you are feeling. This helps prevent you from being swept away by thoughts and feelings – swept away from the present.
Curiosity
An effective way to focus on your breath is to become very curious about exactly how it feels and sounds coming in and out of your body. Don’t assume you already know everything there is to know about your own breathing. Practice curiosity and really observe it.
You can also get curious about what your mind does when it wanders off. When you’re in the throes of a thought-tangent, you won’t notice where your mind is or what it’s doing, but when you catch it, you have a chance to learn something about your mental habits. Oh, I’m planning for the future and feeling worried. Oh, I’m replaying a mistake I made three years ago and feeling embarrassed all over again. Oh, I’m replaying a scene from the movie I watched last night and feeling excited. Oh, I’m imagining a hypothetical argument with a coworker and feeling frustrated. Oh, I’m …
By seeing where your mind goes, you learn about the nature of the mind. Meditation gives you an opportunity to witness the hoping and worrying and clinging and resisting that the mind tends to do. You see the mind as it daydreams and wanders, as meanders down fruitless tangents. You see how it gets caught in looping, repetitive thoughts. You see how feelings arise, feel solid and real and permanent, and then fade and are forgotten.
By practicing curiosity during meditation, you’ll naturally bring more curiosity and open-mindedness into your daily life.
Acceptance
Meditation is also a chance to practice acceptance, which many find to be the most challenging aspect of mindfulness. Acceptance does not mean resignation; it just means that you don’t reject the existence of the things you find. Acceptance is a willingness to witness reality for what it is, even as you work to change it. You do not meditate to escape from reality; you meditate to experience reality fully, accepting whatever truths you discover.
You may want your mind to be quiet and just focus on your breath, but it won’t, and that’s okay. The mind does what it does. You’re human, so you might as well give yourself permission to be human. Even as you use meditation to work on becoming better, you must practice accepting yourself for who you are right now.
When you find that your mind has wandered off, you accept that it has done so. You recognize that bringing your attention back to your breath is difficult, and you accept this. You know that struggle makes you stronger. In addition to observing what the mind does, you accept what you discover, even if it is unpleasant. You may then work to change your mental habits, but in the moment that you find them, you accept them.
You may feel physically uncomfortable during meditation. This is another chance to practice acceptance. First, of course, try to adjust your posture to alleviate your discomfort. But it might prove impossible to find comfort, and then you must accept that pain will be part of your experience. This does not mean that you like the pain. It just means that you don’t engage in psychological resistance to the pain, endlessly wishing it would go away.
You can then use this discomfort as part of the practice of being present: You continue to focus on your breathing, not allowing the pain to dominate your consciousness, but you also don’t completely ignore the pain, maintaining an awareness of it in the background of your mind.
Non-Attachment
The last component of mindfulness is non-attachment. During meditation, you repeatedly practice not getting attached to the thoughts and feelings that arise. This means several things.
One is that you don’t identify with the thoughts and feelings you have. You try to remember that you are not your thoughts and your feelings, instead seeing yourself as the observer and the director of your thoughts and feelings. Instead of identifying with them and becoming one with them, you simply notice them and allow them to pass you by, as clouds pass by a mountain.
Non-attachment also means not resisting or clinging to the feelings that come up. You’ll naturally resist an unpleasant emotion, wanting it to end as quickly as possible. But like a dark cloud floating slowly by a mountain, a bad feeling passes at its own pace. There’s no reason to become attached to the idea that this feeling must pass as quickly as possible; you don’t need it to go away. Likewise, you’ll naturally cling to any positive emotions that come up, wanting them to stick around and grow stronger. But good feelings will also pass you by at their own pace, so you can’t become attached to them.
Lastly, non-attachment means not needing to experience any particular outcome during and after meditation. While you meditate because you know it confers long-term benefits, you cannot expect to feel any benefit today. Today’s meditation may or may not feel good, and it may or may not produce tangible benefits, but that is not within your control. Few outcomes in life are. What you can control is whether or not you show up and do the work. Meditation is a way to practice keeping your eyes on the process, and not getting attached to any particular outcome.
Free Will
Perhaps the most important benefit of mindfulness is increased free will. Each time you return choose to return your attention to your breath you’re exercising your free will. This both reminds you that you have the freedom to choose and strengthens your ability to do so.
Sitting down to meditate might require some willpower, but there’s a good return on investment for that choice: You’ll get gain more willpower for the future than you’ll put in during your meditation. You won’t regret it.
Post-Meditative Mindfulness
Remember that the purpose of meditation is not to become a skilled meditator – it is to become skilled at the art of living. The ultimate aim of mindfulness training is to be able to more consistently bring presence, curiosity, acceptance, and non-attachment into our daily lives. To live mindfully is to live better.
And this training doesn’t stop when you rise from your meditation. You can continue to practice as you go about your day. This “everyday mindfulness” will be the topic of next week’s post.