Can Fidgety People Start a Mindfulness Practise?

Given our world of alacrity and technology, it is difficult for most of us to be mindful. We have to very diligently take ourselves out of the frey in order to cultivate even a few moments of quiet and stillness. Given this kind of world, it can be hard to start a mindfulness practice. But is it impossible?

I believe that given the state of our world, it is especially important to take steps to become more mindful. This is because mindlessness can cause a lot of undue anxiety and health problems down the road.

But what about the person who is anxious and mindless-- can such a person meditate or start a mindfulness practise? I believe that anyone can start a mindfulness practise, regardless of our current state of mind. And given the busy, plugged-in world that we all live in the midst of, I believe that it is especially important to develop a mindfulness practise.

In this article, I will show you how to start a mindfulness practise, even if you are fidgety. The best way to start is small and slow. Here are a few simple things you can try to be more mindful in your everyday world.

1. Start by being more mindful when you brush your teeth. Take some time to really look in the mirror at yourself. How do you look? What is the temperature in the room? How are you feeling as you brush your teeth? Are you tired? Sad? Depressed? Become conscious of how you are in this moment.

2. Become more conscious of your breath at different times of the day, such as when you are drinking a cup of coffee, or take a break, or going to the washroom. Try to choose activities that are routine, and when you know that you will be quite mindless, rehearsing different aspects of what happened already or will happen in the future.

3. Do a walking meditation for a minute at a time. You may want to start the practise at home when you won't be disturbed by the outside noise and seeing familiar faces as you walk outside. Be as precise as you can be. So, set a timer for one minute and see if you can be completely present to what you are doing at this moment. If you aren't, don't be too hard on yourself. Just keep bringing your attention to the moment when you realize that you are thinking of something else.

4. Try to eat mindfully. Turn off the television and all technological gadgets. If you are eating with another person, let the other person know that you will be trying to eat more mindfully a few times a week. Who knows, you may even inspire others to be more mindful while eating too.

5. Drink coffee or tea mindfully. Try to bring your attention fully to what you are doing which is drinking your cup of coffee or tea. Set a timer for one minute, and do nothing but drink your beverage. When the minute is over, you can lapse into other activities.

6. Do one thing at a time. Try not to multi-task for a while. Try and really pay attention to what you are doing at the time.

By taking these steps, you will become more mindful by doing everyday tasks mindfully. This is one important way to become more mindful.

Developing a mindfulness practise need not be difficult. However, it needs to be consistent. Try and start slow and small, but be consistent. Over time, you will develop mindfulness.

https://ezinearticles.com/?Can-Fidgety-People-Start-a-Mindfulness-Practise?&id=9945013

Enthusiasm - How to Find It

How keen are you to get up in the morning and follow your ordinary day? Have you the enthusiasm needed to do what is fulfilling and good?

"Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm". (Ralph Waldo Emerson, philosopher)

With inspiration, and the enthusiasm that goes along with it, we have energy for living life to the full, no matter what obstacles and hardships it throws in our faces.

What can one do to feel enthusiasm for what one does each and every day?

Danger of enthusiasm carrying us away 

We may be a naturally generous, kind, or affectionate sort of person. And so become easily swayed and even enthusiastic about giving away money, time or love. But such inbuilt good tendencies can weaken judgement about a situation. Sentiment or fervent emotion may need the protection of good sense before it runs away with itself.

Our thinking may be realistic or unrealistic. Before giving charity to an alcoholic, remember he or she will likely spend gift money on booze rather than on food. Level-headed individuals do not take risks with their money on dodgy investments no matter the enthusiastic promises made by the salesman. One ignores one's insightful thinking when keenly involving oneself with a charming but good-for-nothing partner.

"When a person is under the influence of strong natural emotions, his rational balance can easily be upset, and he may be carried in any direction." (Hugo Lj Odhner, spiritual psychology writer)

Other examples of getting carried away by enthusiasm are spending "too much" time playing video games or engaging in activity supporting some social or political project to the detriment of family life.

"Enthusiasm for a cause sometimes warps judgment." (William Howard Taft, politician)

Fortunately most of us learn some right thinking from parents, teachers, and friends as well as good ideas from books and elsewhere. Good sense protects the mind against unfounded eagerness or fervour of others. Does such good sense also not come from deeper ideas in ethics, spiritual philosophy, and sacred writing?

Problem of lack of enthusiastic focus 

Being enthused is being in the zone. A complete absorption for a while in what one does with loss of sense of space and time.

The opposite to this is the mental state in which one lacks enthusiasm. Energised focus is missing. One is under-involved, and there is a lack of enjoyment in the activity.

Time drags when you are not feeling sufficiently enthused about say your studies, work, or home developments. This lack of keenness can be due to not appreciating the end product, not feeling the spirit behind a project, not being open to the source of its inspiration.

"It is not easy to find something that will intrigue and bind your interest and enthusiasm. This you must seek for yourself." (Walter Annenberg, publisher, philanthropist, and diplomat)

A lack of enthusiastic effort may also apply to spiritual practice. We may remember the effects of meditation, learn the value of mindfulness practice, understand about the application of ethical theory, or know about philosophical ideas. Something may be missing. I would compare true ideas in the understanding with a receptive cup. Do we not need to distinguish between the cup and a limitless source of refreshing liquid which fills it?

According to one view, experience and knowledge about deeper concepts is a vessel into which the rich wine of the infinite spirit can flow.

Intellectualism 

There have been good ideas around in contemporary spirituality. Concepts such as the true-self, the new age, one's inner path, or the numinous. Wonderful though many have thought these ideas to be, can they in any way be a substitute for the source of inspiration behind them? Perhaps you put your hope and trust in a higher life force beyond us seen as the source of energy behind the universe? In line with this view, a powerful spirit of illumination and vitality flows into a person through his or her soul. In other words those interested in spirituality sometimes confuse their understanding of ideas with the infinite source that can enliven their framework of conceptual thinking.

Transcendent source of inspiration 

According to the spiritual philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg, a powerful source of universal love and wisdom provides higher inspiration. He says this is the transcendent origin of all that is humane in humanity. It both enlightens and energises our thinking about what is useful and important. Without this divine energy we have no enthusiasm.

The infinite source of heat of love and light of wisdom can be compared with the heat and light of our natural sun.

"The sun of our world cannot use its warmth and light to bring forth sprouts in the earth directly. Rather, the sun uses substances in the soil in which it can be present through its warmth and light to make plants grow." (Emanuel Swedenborg, spiritual philosopher)

I would like to suggest that the substance in the soil of the mind are those ideas we have about living a useful life. So, without a ground of rational ideas and understanding, we cannot receive inspiration. At the same time, there is a similar argument. This is that no amount, of such ideas and understanding of themselves, will give us energy and enthusiasm. Do we also not need a willingness to receive divine inflow of love and wisdom? And to acknowledge it comes from outside of ourselves from a higher source?

http://ezinearticles.com/?Enthusiasm---How-to-Find-It&id=9810120

How Meditation Helps Me Deal with Anxiety

After 15 years of meditation, Ed Halliwell says he regularly draws on the practice to help maintain a healthy balance between work and life.

One of my early motivations for learning to meditate was the hope it would help me manage anxiety. My tendency is to the free-floating, generalized kind of fear that lends a nervous edge to every thought, often accompanied by heart palpitations, gut churning, and a general jumpiness that makes it hard to rest.

At its worst, during my late twenties, I was caught in this anxious state for a number of years, despite the fact that outwardly my life looked safe, stable, and privileged. Since then, these episodes of inner hyper-restlessness have diminished, both in frequency and duration. In no small part, I think this is due to mindfulness practice—these days I’m more aware of the conditions that tend to trip the switch for anxiety for me (such as taking on more than I have resources to cope with, or personal, social and professional rejection). I’m also better equipped to deal with it—I’m more able to slow down, be gentle and patient with the symptoms, trust that the panic will pass, and engage with confidence-building activities that tend to restore steadiness.

The fear still comes to haunt me every now and then—but my relationship to it has changed. Earlier this year, a convergence of work pressures and family demands set my heart pounding, and the ferris wheel of catastrophe started whirling in my mind. I wasn’t sleeping at night, on top of which our two young children were waking well before dawn. Anxiety, fatigue, and a full schedule—not the loveliest of combinations…

In the past, this could easily have led to a spiralling down of mood and lots of reactivity, quickly shifting to a more pernicious worry about how anxiety itself was making everything worse, reducing my capacity to cope and making simple everyday tasks seem Herculean. Instead, seeing as sleep wasn’t coming at night, I decided to use the time for meditation. For several hours over several nights, I practised mindfulness of breathing, saying to myself gently: Breathing in confidence, breathing out, letting be. Sometimes, cultivating acceptance of what was happening while reaffirming my ability to cope confidently with it felt awkward, stupid, or pointless, but gently I continued regardless.

Some nights I was awake until one of our boys got up, while others I fell asleep during practice in the early hours. What seemed important was that I allowed the outcome not to matter—whether it helped or not, for now I just let meditation be something I did with the extra waking time. As it turned out, I noticed that sustained practice tended to lead to a settling of my mind and body, rather than the escalation of frustration I had encountered in previous similar situations.

Over a period of a few weeks, the phase of anxiety slowly dissolved. It hadn’t been very pleasant, but with mindfulness as an anchor, I learned some interesting and useful things. First, that I still have more to learn about maintaining a healthy balance between work, home, life and rest, and second, that consciously cultivating confidence and co-operation, along with mindful breathing, can gradually help me back to calm.

I was also reminded that a growing power seems to come from meditation over months and years. In the early days of practice, trying a similar approach during the onset of an episode used to have little effect—my mindfulness then was no match for the force of old habit patterns. Fortunately, I didn’t give up—mindfulness had already proved helpful in other ways and at other times. But now, after 15 years of regular practice, it seems there’s been some shift in the patterns of mind, brain and body that makes me susceptible to chronic jitters. So much so that some of the nervousness I felt was dissipated—over time—by simply inviting confidence with each breath. And that, of course, was a further boost to confidence and another antidote to anxiety.

http://www.mindful.org/how-meditation-helps-me-deal-with-anxiety/