Merry Christmas!
This is a longer article specially curated to help you kickstart your mental wellness journey on this auspicious occasion.
Mindfulness as the Awareness of Present Moment
Mindfulness is the ability to perform an action with complete awareness. Awareness of your body, its activities, and outside surroundings. Cooking a dish mindfully would mean being aware of chopping the vegetables, washing them, heating the pan, and so on. However, while doing this simple task if you are thinking about how much increment you would get for this year in the office, or what activities you are going to do during your vacation, then you are not being mindful.
It can also be seen from the lens of time i.e. past, present, and future. If your body organs are engaged in some activities happening in the present moment and your mind supports it then it is mindfulness. But when your mind withdraws from being aware of what your body is doing and rather gets engaged in its imaginary stories of the future or rewinds the events of the past then you are not mindful. For example, you are not mindful when your mouth is engaged in eating food but you are thinking how much fun it would be to play football with your friends.
It is important to anchor your mind in the present moment for two reasons. First, if you are investing your energy and time in some act then you should experience it to the fullest. Otherwise, you lose an opportunity. What’s the point of that action if you are not involved in it? Scientific studies have proven this fact that the key to a happy and satisfied life is complete engagement in all your actions.
Secondly, most of us don’t know how to stop our minds. It stops only when you are finally able to get into deep sleep. Other than those few hours it keeps churning continuously, even in your dreams. Therefore, if you don’t anchor your mind to the present actions of the body, it is bound to get away and arouse deep emotions out of imaginary situations. Sometimes they may arouse pleasant emotions and sometimes unpleasant, but essentially you are being affected without any actual cause. If you don’t know how to settle the mind in the present then you would be living in a dream.
Cause & Effects of Your Actions
It is not only important to engage your mind with the actions of the present but also to become aware of its cause and its effects. Becoming mindful of what led you to act. What were the reasons that enabled you to perform an action? Was it because of an impulse? Was it because of some kind of coercion? Or are you doing it out of your free will? What are the intentions behind this action?
Most of the time we are not aware of why we are doing what we are doing. We just do it out of habit. For example, smokers go for a smoke break around a fixed time or an interval. Haters write trolls every time they encounter a post of the opposite view on social media. Mindless shoppers buy dozens of things that they may not need every time they go shopping.
Similarly, it is also important to be mindful of the effects of your actions. Almost every time you lose sight of the effects of your actions despite having knowledge of it. It isn’t that you don’t have sufficient knowledge of the consequences of smoking a cigarette on your health. But your mind doesn’t allow you to extend your horizon because of its stickiness to the immediate feeling of pleasantness. Or even if there is no pleasantness involved you don’t know how to act otherwise, for example shouting every time you get angry.
Now deeply contemplate! Are you really acting out of the free will or under the influence of the strong habits of your mind?
If you include an awareness of the cause of your actions and the effect of those along with consciously doing whatever you are doing, then that can be called all-round mindfulness. Even though earlier we have mentioned that present-moment awareness is the key to a happy and fulfilled life, when we have deepened our understanding then it is not hard to see that all-round mindfulness is the key to a happy and satisfied life.
You could be mindfully smoking a cigarette with full awareness at the moment but it is not a wholesome mindful act as such when we become aware of the reasons for smoking and the effects that they have on us.
Why is it important to become aware of the reasons for your actions?
As a conscious being, you have a deeper philosophical need to be in control of your actions. Exercising your free will is what separates you from insentient robots. In your regular day-to-day life where you have awareness, you exercise it. For example either warming up the food or eating it cold when you don’t feel like it. However, your awareness is severely limited by the continuous churning of the mind in unnecessary illusory chatter.
You can sense and be aware of gross changes in and around you but haven’t discovered your capability to sense the subtler changes yet. For example, when you get the impulse to smoke you just become aware of the gross sensation or the urge to smoke at a superficial level. However, you aren’t aware of the vital changes in your body like the heartbeat, breathing, the flow of vital energy, etc. which are more subtle.
When you have strengthened your faculties to become aware of these subtle changes then you become conscious of the fact that your decision is not out of free will but driven by the impulsive force of the mind. For example, when you are boating on a river, and all of a sudden the flow of the river increases due to upstream rain and you are unaware of it, then you feel you are moving faster because of your willingness.
Just like a very fast-moving fireball tied at the end of a rope appears to you as a continuous fire rim at a crude level, Your intellect is also deluded to declare its decision based on gross feelings and emotions. They give you an illusion of free will by engaging your intellect superficially. However, becoming conscious of the subtler reasons for your actions improves the scope of your intellect to act according to your real free will. It makes you more human and less robotic.
Why is it important to become aware of the effects of your actions?
Without awareness of the effects of your actions, you can lead yourself to self-destruction. Self-destruction is not at all an optimal use of your existence. On the one hand, you are spending your money, time, and energy building yourself, and on the other hand, you keep on sabotaging it. It is akin to accumulating water in a vessel and simultaneously making bigger holes in it.
It is, therefore, extremely important to understand the effects of your actions, whether they are helping you build yourself or destroy yourself.
Humans are social animals and have to live within a family, society, organization, nation, and planet. Every action they take has a reciprocation from another being. It is like a circular chain that starts and ends with you. Everything without an exception is interconnected. For example, if you shout with anger at your sub-ordinate at the office, he becomes upset and vents out on the client and the client gets upset and vents out on you. Therefore, you have to be mindful of what are the effects of your actions on others as well.
If you spread the energies of positivity, harmony, and compassion then they circle around and come back to you. But if you spread hatred, anger, greed, etc. then also they come back to you. Medical science has also proven the detrimental effects of these negative emotions on yourself. Becoming conscious of engaging in actions that are nurturing and uplifting for others also sends you on a growth trajectory.
Becoming aware of these effects of your actions enables you to make wiser decisions and act mindfully on them.
Awareness of Speech And Thoughts
There are three aspects to our existence
1. Action
2. Speech
3. Thought
If you understand the importance of being aware of your actions, their causes, and their effects, then you can now extend it to other aspects as well.
Speech is a sutler form than action. Your speech powers your actions. Speaking mindfully whatever you are speaking anchors your mind to the present. Mindful speech is well thought out about why it is being spoken and not just out of habit or impulse. It is also conscious of the effects that it would have on yourself and on others around you. It is useful and required and is not spoken just as a filler.
Being mindful of your speech prevents you from getting into verbal abuses, quarrels, criticisms, gossip, and negative talks. By doing so you conserve your energy and utilize more mindful actions that could help you grow along with others around you. Mindful speech generates a wholesome energy that brings self-inspiration as well as inspiration to others. It also helps you to make effective utilization of time and spend more energy on contemplation and discovering ways to improve yourself rather than engaging in talks of vanity.
Unmindful speech on the other hand not only drains your energy but also gives more power to unmindful actions that could lead to self-destruction. For example, the people who gossip more or criticize more are more prone to act non-violently with anger. Also, they are detrimental to your efforts to control the mind. The more you engage in unmindful speech the more unmindful thoughts emerge. Unmindful thoughts are the primary cause of mental health deterioration. If you know how to control your thoughts then you essentially know how to control your speech and actions.
Thoughts are even more subtler forms of your expression. They are the source of your speech and actions. As long as your mind is anchored to the present the imaginary thoughts are not developed. But the moment it is withdrawn varying amount of related but mostly unrelated thoughts begin to pour in. It is based on your craving and aversion habits that you have cultivated over time. Therefore, even though you might be engaged in talking to a friend about his problems, you end up speaking about missing your partner.
Mindful thoughts are useful, appropriate to the situation or task at hand, come with a good deal of reasoning as to why they are aroused and are conscious about the effects of those thoughts on you and the people around you. Just like mindful actions and speech, mindful thoughts are empowering, and beneficial and add to the growth story of you along with others around you.
Unmindful thoughts creep out of cravings, aversions, and habitual impulses of the mind. They are unwholesome with the potential to bring disharmony within you and outside you. They are self-destructive and prevent you from growing on your growth journey. They hinder you from attaining natural peace of mind and keep you looped in unnecessary imaginary chatter. They are the cause of stress, anxiety, depression, and all other mental health issues.
Practicing Mindfulness By Becoming Aware of Emotions & feelings
Everyone has an inherent capacity to become Mindful. It is not a superpower that was not there within you already and miraculously gets bestowed upon you out of the blue. It exists by virtue of birth in everyone but your mind gets forgetful of it. When you hear about it from the words of ancient masters, teachers, and books and do the practices regularly then you regain access to it.
As we discussed earlier thought is the source of speech and actions, incorporating mindfulness at the source is the correct and effective way. If we understand the principle well then we can appreciate the fact that mindfulness in thought can be achieved by
a. Becoming aware of the causing thoughts resulting in thoughts, speech, and action in question
b. Anchoring the mind to the present thought, speech, and action
c. Incorporating the awareness of the effects in thoughts, speech, and action in question
Becoming aware of the causal thoughts and the effects of thoughts, speech, and action in question demands developing the mental faculties to be able to acknowledge the subtle changes in the body including the emotions, feelings, sensations, breathing patterns, and heartbeat. It requires you to step out of reaction mode and be able to observe the subtle changes in your body and mind as an outsider.
For example, if you can detect and be conscious of a change in your emotional response from neutral to an attacking mode as well as faster breathing, then you can internally assess the thoughts causing these changes to result in your response of anger and at the same time this additional awareness allows you to take into consideration of the effects like pain in the head, restlessness, negative consequences of fear in others, etc.
Additionally anchoring your thoughts to the present thought, speech, or action in question by repeatedly bringing your mind to the present moment. No matter how many times your mind goes off the track you dedicatedly practice to bring it back. As you practice more and train your mind, it gets better and better till you achieve complete mindfulness.
Breath as the Anchor
In the constantly changing background of your bodily sensations, thoughts, and emotions, a constant is required to get anchored. You can imagine yourself seated on one of those chaotic rides in the carnival that has no fixed ground. It revolves around one axis while rotating around its own in a random pattern. In such a situation you lose all abilities of any kind of awareness and feel sick. Don’t you?
Although breath is not a fixed entity, it is relatively a stable object within you as compared to anything else. Using it to anchor your mind and fixing it as the absolute lets you measure the relative changes elsewhere in your body and mind easily. Slowly it helps you to develop awareness by training your mind.
When you fixate your mind on the incoming and outgoing breath then at first you start to build consciousness about your breath. What is the length of your breath? Whether it is deep or shallow? Which areas around your nostril does it touch? Progressively you gain access to the underlying feelings and emotions associated with it like do you feel calm, agitated, peaceful, restless, etc. with the progress of your breathing.
When you have developed your subtle faculties enough then you have direct access to the continuously changing feelings, emotions, vital actions, thought processes, etc. happening within your body and mind while you fix your mind in the breath. When you have established well in this practice, then your mind becomes so subtle and well-trained that you don’t even need any anchor to become aware of what’s happening inside you and around your every moment.
Having control of the mind and preventing it from churning on its own through imaginary thoughts is essential to fighting mental health issues. Mindfulness brings before us the opportunity and the right tools to bring that into effect.
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