After the previous blog post ‘Relaxing the Conceptualizing Mind’ for when the thinking mind is strong, I had a request for some specific on-the-spot hints, for when the mind is over-whelmed and caught in the turmoil of negative thoughts and emotions. So here they are. The list is not exhaustive by any means but will hopefully contribute to a disentangling of the heart and mind that supports the growth of awareness and wisdom.
Thoughts combined with emotions can quickly pull us into a vortex that becomes hard to get out of especially if we struggle with the experience and don’t accept that this is how it is right now. At other times the mind can narrow down to become overly focused on something we’re experiencing – forgetting to take in whatever else is happening through the different senses.
Here are a few ways I’ve found helpful in my practice when awareness is losing ground to the storm of the conceptualizing mind. The first few are connected with awareness of feeling and emotion and the last couple more with awareness directly.
- See if you can dial up the warmer aspects of awareness – the warmth, ease, acceptance – the qualities of loving kindness naturally present when you look for them. You might focus on the area around your heart. Keep the attention light – just aware of feeling in this area and notice any changes in the quality of the awareness.
- Use a Right View perspective to work with any sense of discomfort from struggling with how the mind is. Remind yourself that it’s natural for the mind sometimes to be in conflict or pain or get lost in thoughts and over-thinking a situation. Nothing is wrong – in fact it is an opportunity for the awareness to recognize ‘dukkha’ – dis-ease or stress in your being, something everyone experiences at some time or another. With the help of Right View, we learn not to take it personally when the mind is like this.
- A very simple practice we can do over and over is to stay with feeling as an object. This can make a difference if all the thinking is leaving the mind feeling ‘heady’. For many years I’ve used Jack Kornfield’s little mantra ‘let go of the story and come back to the feeling’ and find it really helpful.
- For a while quite consciously take a stronger and more neutral ‘anchor’ for example the breath, the sitting bones or sensations in the hands touching or possibly ‘sounds’ or ‘seeing’ happening. Whenever your attention is pulled back into painful emotions or an over-whelming story, acknowledge that and gently return the attention to the neutral anchor. This is quite an active way of working and it can assist the mind to calm down, and also strengthen awareness. When the mind becomes more settled you can let the anchor go and open up to more objects arising.
- Finally, the ‘AND’ practice which I learned from Andrea Fella. This is especially useful when the mind has got sucked into and become identified with a particular experience it is finding unpleasant, though it could also be very pleasant, and we’ve got quite attached to it. It could also be that the mind is simply distracted and not able to rest with present moment experience. This practice is also quite active, but the emphasis is on noticing what’s happening in your direct momentary experience. I think of it as a bit like stretching pizza dough. You’re opening out the mind from the tendency to home in on one strong pull – you notice that object AND what else is there? And there’s the breath, and there’s movement in the ribcage, and there are sounds – cars, a dog, bird song. You use all these objects happening around you to anchor the awareness more strongly in the present moment.
It’s probably best to stick with one of these points and try it out initially. If you’re familiar with the practice of receptive mindfulness you might find the mind naturally moves from one to another for example initially working with ‘feeling’ and then something that helps you anchor more strongly in the present.
You might work with one or more of these points for a whole meditation period or more. Be aware of the mind that wants a strategy to ‘work’ to get rid of something unwanted in the mind. Rather than making things go away it can be helpful to think instead of growing important qualities in the heart-mind like resilience, patience and openness. Overall, we are strengthening awareness, positive emotion and wisdom in the mind.
Uncontrived Mindfulness 