A boy was sent to buy a piece of bread from the local store. After proceeding some steps he came across his favorite toy store and was amazed by the new collection on display. So he stood outside the window glancing and dreaming of playing with them one day. He realized he had to get bread so he kept walking but then he was barked upon by a distant dog. He hid beneath the woman walking beside her and followed a couple of blocks until he saw a street juggler performing amazing tricks. When a spectator donated some money to the artist, he realized he was holding the money to buy bread.
Our mind is also like the fickle boy who never sticks to the direction it is commanded to go. It hops from one thought to the other, often completely unrelated. It returns to its intended task only for a moment and voila it hops again even before you have realized. The nature of the mind has always been forgetful but has worsened in our current times owing to the rampant proliferation of attention-seeking consumables, digital content, gamified elements, etc. This has resulted in mental health deterioration and also arrested spiritual growth to attain a collective higher conscious state.
Why being in the present is important?
If we were to live in the past or the future, why would there be an existence of the present? The universe would dump all its files into storage and assign humans to just analyze these past data like bots. Or it would instruct humans to keep speculating about future trends. These are bot features, aren’t they? To live, relish the vibrant happening right now and to breathe is human. To ask this question why it is important to live in the present is akin to asking why it is important for a car to move.
Science and medicine have already attributed the cause of mental health issues to the inability of the mind to be anchored in the present. Past traumas, genetics, lifestyle, addiction, etc. result in the onset of this inability that trains the mind to avoid present reality and get entrapped in fantasies. Therefore, retraining the mind to be present is the holistic solution to our miseries. The rising trend of mental health issues all over the world calls for action to bring back this ability to our minds. Artificial and chemical solutions may bring temporary respite but they fail to fix the problem at its core.
Humans have the unique capability of rising beyond just the mundane of materialism and bringing about growth in the overall state of existence. Science was able to deliver phenomenal growth in uplifting humans and would continue to do so but a lopsided imbalanced growth has resulted owing to the utter negligence of the spiritual aspect of our existence. Raising the collective consciousness to a state of justice, harmony, equality, selflessness, and unity requires the elevation of individual consciousnesses to a state of inner peace, fulfillment, and a sense of purpose. Science alone can’t achieve this and spirituality needs to be integrated into our lives.
To overleap the struggles of individual mental and physical sufferings is not only a mere imagination but a definite possibility. Countless spiritual leaders, saints, poets, scientists, psychologists, and artists have lived by example. You have to ask yourself, if such a possibility exists then what merits are there for you to continue choosing a life shackled by personal sufferings? To break those chains and realize a potential beyond the finitude of just your body and mind, retraining the mind to come back to the present is the foundation that needs to be laid.
How to begin mindfulness?
A Mahout riding an untrained elephant tries to drive it toward a particular direction but fails as it goes wherever it senses food and other distractions. If the Mahout applies pressure then the elephant might halt for a while and pretend to listen to him but soon reaches out for what it wishes. Mind behaves the same. Force and coercion are not good tactics to gain control of the mind. Acceptance of the present condition is a good starting point. Handling the mind with compassion and giving it sufficient time to unlearn and relearn new things is the key. You are dealing with years or maybe lives of conditioning, patience is of utmost importance.
The conditioning of our minds is extremely strong and requires constant reminders for a sufficiently longer time to return to the present. The grasp of worldly matter is such that an untrained mind inherently gets stuck to it and that’s how we have landed up in this situation. The moment you become unmindful, your mind would get swayed in the strong currents of worldly thoughts. You have to give birth to a psychic character within you who reminds you of coming back to the present moment whenever it awakes. You have to gently and compassionately bring your mind to the present either to your breath, body sensation, feelings, or thoughts.
To awaken this character some cues are essential in the beginning. Thich Nhat Hanh, the father of mindfulness, taught an excellent strategy in this regard. A mindfulness bell at a specific interval throughout the waking period was introduced in the Plum Village traditions in Vietnam and saw a tremendous effect on the practitioners’ capabilities of being mindful after some months. He believed that strong conditionings of our minds can be best broken by reminding us to be mindful every 15 minutes. Yes, you are reading it right “15 minutes”. That’s how bad the situation is.
However, you can set a more practical time of 2 hrs, to begin with and slowly progress towards a goal of 0.5 hours in 6 months. I use the mindfulness app to achieve this goal. Every time the bell rings, I relax and come back to observe my breathing irrespective of whatever I am doing. I treat this as a bell for self-care and healing. I become aware of my in-breath and outbreath. Thoughts come to mind but I gently bring them to the awareness of breathing progressively releasing tensions from my body. I repeat it for 15–20 breaths till I have noticed that I am completely with my breath and then return to work.
This is a highly effective practice to cultivate mindfulness in your daily life. You can track the number of times you have missed the bell to be mindful at the end of the day and be determined to be better the next day. You would be amazed to check that when you are distressed the most you have missed the bell many times and when you are not you have attended to it. However important the work might be, you must inculcate the mindset that it is not more important than your mental and physical health and remind yourself to attend the bell. Consistently practicing it with patience and strongwill retrains your mind to not fall into the seemingly inescapable trap of thoughts.
Practices to cultivate mindfulness
Building a daily routine is essential to cultivate mindfulness. Set up a habit of waking early in the morning and allocating 45 minutes of fixed time to practice mindful breathing, body scan, yoga, and breathing exercises. Any one or a combination of them can be taken for practice. Progressively reach a practice time of 1.5 hours a day and 1 hour before sleeping. Take the help of a professional coach or trusted digital sources to build up the practice. It’s paramount that you understand the technique properly and more importantly develop the discipline to carry forward this practice consistently.
A fixed space for your practice helps to build requisite vibrations for reinforcing your practice. You can choose a peaceful spot with fewer distractions, and ambient lighting conditions and may also add an altar, or some symbols/ pictures/ idols, etc. to make it your personal safe space. Candles and Aromas also help in your practice.
Mindful breathing, mindful observation, and body scans comprise two components i.e. the actual practice and the method to bring back the mind to the practice. Mindful breathing includes being aware of your inhalation and exhalation. Mindful observation is the practice of observing an object(it can be your thoughts) and becoming aware of its features. Body scan is the practice of running your mind along different parts and becoming aware of the sensations in those parts. The habituated mind spends some time as instructed but soon gets on its favorite task of thinking. You have to build skillfulness in bringing your mind back to the intended practice by cultivating the observer’s consciousness.
Observer’s consciousness is a state where you are observing your feelings, emotions, thoughts, breath, and body sensations from a third-person perspective. It is best explained with an example. Imagine a wild horse is released on a field, which is a metaphor for a thought. Often we try to control it by sitting on it and holding on to the lead. The adamant horse never gives up, the more we try to pull the lead or hit it with our shoes, the more restless it becomes. We keep struggling and the horse keeps on agitating. In this process, we face all the jolts and shocks that the sudden jerks of the horse give to us on top of the hopeless feeling of losing control. This is the doer’s awareness.
On the other hand, if we leave the wild horse to follow its whimsies, it keeps on running from one end to the other. It expresses its wildness in its deepest sense by kicking its back legs up as high as it can in the sky, savage body movements, shrill gallops, and whatnot. But you are simply watching it from outside the fence without exerting any direct control over it. You are allowing it to go wherever you can within the fence. At last, the horse gets tired and then you enter the fence to establish your ownership over it by taking control of the lead. You not only saved yourself from the jolts and jerks but managed to get control just by observing. This is the observer’s awareness.
You can read more about it in my book Boxing Thoughts.
Apart from the routine, you can slowly cultivate mindfulness into lives through informal practices. Whether you eat, drink, walk, wash, or drive, you do the act with full presence and involvement. Every step of the act has to be done with awareness acting as a meaningful transition for the next.
In the beginning, it is easy to get demotivated and feel hopeless but patience and dedication are important in incorporating it in your daily lives. Reading books and articles on mindfulness and becoming part of a group interested in self-care/ mindfulness/ spirituality are great ways of staying motivated.
Wish you all the best in this journey!
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