Mindfulness – Part 1
Mindfulness is where you begin to make the changes that progress you on your Inner Peace Journey. In some philosophy traditions mindfulness is the first step on your journey. But, few of us engaged in learning that essential tool until we had spent years working to heal our emotional wounds.
Introduction
Hello, my name is Valeria Moore. Welcome to my WuuTube website, which focuses on the Inner Peace Journey. In this video, I am exploring mindfulness and what you can do to achieve mindfulness.
Over the last few years mindfulness has been introduced to the general audience. But as I reflected on mindfulness and its role on the road to inner peace, I discovered that it’s much more than doing a mindfulness meditation or being present in the moment.
One morning a few months ago, I sat with my journal and asked, ‘What am I writing about today? ‘ The answer was ‘mindfulness’. The morning pages of inner wisdom started a journey into awareness of our nature that would unfold over the next several months and culminate in a 3 am epiphany.
The Popular Explanation of Mindfulness
Over the last few years, a lot has been written about mindfulness. When that dialog started in the different spiritual writings, I thought, ‘I have enough trouble staying grounded, and now I have to be mindful.’ I blew that aspect of my spiritual growth off. At that moment, I felt more than a little overwhelmed by the emotional work before me. I was aware that I held the emotional wounds of many ancestors, and I was here to work that out. What I did not realize at the time was that Mindfulness is one of the keys to a healing journey.
Mindfulness is an essential practice and state of being in your Inner Peace Journey Work. Mindfulness is staying focused in the present and being in a state of awareness of the present. Mindfulness is an aspect of self-mastery, a stage of dimensional development where you are aware of your heart, body and thinking minds.
The following exercise demonstrates mindfulness as I write in my journal in a state of mindfulness. I am writing with A pen is periwinkle in color and the pen feels curved and smooth. The ink flows smoothly from the pen. The smooth flow of the words shows me I am not resisting the knowing. The paper has a slight roughness to it. That roughness tells me the pages are holding my words so I can share them with others. The pages of my journal feel hand-crafted and loved. I notice the tooth of the paper. The paper feels like extra care was taken to create a paper worthy of my words. I feel a sense of peace as the words flow upon the pages. As I did this exercise, I noticed my thoughts were focused and singular. There is a release of tension from too many thoughts.
Mindfulness can be done at any moment. For example, focus on lifting your cup to your mouth while drinking your morning tea or coffee. Are you looking forward to your morning beverage? Are you present to this moment, or are you thinking many thoughts? If you are not present in the moment, bring your awareness back to the cup in your hand. If that is challenging, focus on your breath for a couple of minutes. Then go back to the cup in your hand. As you drink, is the liquid too hot, cold, sweet, bitter, just right, etc.? Notice the flavor as the liquid goes over your tongue. How does the surface of the cup feel? What is the feeling of the cup in your hand? What is the color of the cup. The answers to these questions become a meditation of mindfulness.
But, there is so much more to mindfulness.
My Higher Self was not Satisfied
A sequence of events guided me to an even deeper level of understanding. I awoke a week later to my inner voice asking, “What stops mindfulness?”. I wrote that phrase in my journal, and I would address the topic another day. (Hint: it was me) Later that same day, I saw a short video by the late Robert Gilbert, who briefly mentioned a Rosicrucian approach to mindfulness with no details. Then the next day, a woman of extreme grace entered my world, and I was called to a whole new level of mindfulness. Amid this new information, I also heard my inner voice ask what stops mindfulness, again?
Mindfulness is an Aspect of Developing Self-Mastery
Mindfulness needs care, reflection and action. When you practice mindfulness, you are developing self-mastery. Mindfulness is the conscious observation of the content of your thoughts, feelings and actions. You then illuminate your actions and feelings through insight. Insight brings an even greater presence of mindfulness. With insight, a higher level of action and emotion is chosen. Insight reflects a transmutation that now transcends incoherence.
As you reach self-mastery, your responses are no longer reactive. You choose your response. You control your thoughts, actions and feelings with the help of “insight.” With insight, you have an intuitive knowing of what you observe. You consider the effect of your responses and make a choice that creates peace. By making a choice that creates peace, you are transmuting relationships to a higher vibration.
Becoming Grace
Taking mindfulness mastery a step further. A person living at this stage expands into an openness to new information and ways of living, being, and perspectives. They then expand their mindfulness to harmonize, bringing this newness into daily life. Harmonizing is an act of balance that brings your heart to peace. This stage is the state of grace that the ancients had known about. The ancients left us writings that explained this. The act of harmonizing with newly observed relationships brings peace. You are creating a vision that may start at a personal level but will expand across other relationships. As you harmonize, you alter relationships. You change your reality.
While I was reflecting on mindfulness and its role in our lives and our inner peace journey, I still live the life of a householder. I went to a local clothing store to do some shopping. After searching the store for what I was looking for with no luck, a salesperson approached me and asked if she could help me. I explained to her what I was looking for, and she immediately started to move toward the items. Her body reflected the ravages of a limb-twisting disease. This woman “waited” on ‘ME’. Before I could stop her, I watched as she, with great difficulty, walked to the other side of the store and located what I needed. I watched the movement of her twisted hands as her diseased knuckles completed the sale on the keyboard at the checkout. I felt my heart open and merge with this lady in a way I had never experienced. At the closure of the transaction, I thanked her for her sincere kindness and grace. She said, “No, I should thank you.” This amazing woman made a mindful choice in every breath and every movement to consciously choose grace. Within that expansive state of grace, we both existed in a state of conscious oneness. This state of grace took me to the interconnectedness of all.
Pain & Suffering
A few weeks ago I started to record this talk and I could not get the words out. I was literally choking. I would start coughing and then the cough would turn into a choking. I stopped and realized there was something really important that I had missed about mindfulness. It would take me a few days before I finally allowed mindfulness into the world of pain and suffering.
Suffering is emotional pain. If that emotional pain is held for a period time, disease will result. Emotional pain may take the form of grief, feelings of loss, worthlessness, desperation, despair, anxiety, sorrow, frustration, hopelessness, humiliation, etc. The emotions of suffering may freeze you from actions and movement.
Mindfulness is a process of allowing your feelings and thoughts to arise and flow without attachment. Mindfulness has you becoming the observer of your pain and suffering. In the moment of mindfulness you become aware of what is being held in your pain or suffering that is keeping it held there. When pain is coupled with suffering there is resistance to the flow of information from the pain. The acknowledgement of emotional content of pain and suffering begins the healing and flow of stuck energy.
What Does Suffering do for You?
When you gain the wisdom that suffering brings, you can offer genuine compassion. You understand the suffering of others and feel compassion. Mindfulness allows you to perceive your feelings and the wisdom held in those feelings within the suffering. That journey takes you to peace. Your purpose in this life is to live in peace.
When you suffer and you allow yourself to practice mindfulness you witness the feelings that have been stopped. The act of witnessing allows the feelings to resume their journey to peace. To practice the process: breath into presence by taking 4 to 5 circular breaths, this is belly breathing without stopping. You then move your awareness into the pain. The act of moving awareness into the pain acknowledges the pain and gives the suffering a voice. In your awareness you ask “what emotional wound am I holding in this pain?” Then sit with that question. The answer will come if you allow it. You may not have a knowing of the answer to your question right away.
Mindfulness Reduces Stress
With mindfulness, you can shut down the stream of chatter. Many of us experience minds that run many streams of thought simultaneously. Your body reacts to what is running through your mind, creating stress. Stress may relate to all the tasks before you and the physiological reaction to that stress if you are feeling non-peace. When you engage in mindfulness in the most mundane tasks, you give yourself a much-needed break. You become grounded. In those moments, your body resets itself. You may feel calm. You quiet the incessant chatter in your mind. Quieting the chatter allows you to have deeper relaxation and better sleep.
Improves Concentration
When you narrow your observations you develop the ability to hold a singular focus. When you hold a singular focus you are directing your thinking to one thing. Your body is not building stress by trying to hang on to many streams of thought. As mindfulness becomes a practice and a way your ability to concentrate on one thing improves.
Improved concentration with mindfulness begins to break down the barriers to feeling your body and emotions. One response to trauma is to become numb to your pain and feelings. The same patterns that created a lack of mindfulness have also created, for example, heart numbness or ignoring your own physical pain. You may have experienced parenting that fostered the belief that you had to “suck it up” when you hurt. Or you were chided by others to “get over it”. You may have observed this interaction happening to others and your empathic feelings told you that this was rejection and a diminishment. You did not want to be subjected to this same experience so you hid your feelings and ignored your pain. Your pain and feelings did not go away they became stuck energy that then gets crystalized in disease.
Attribution: My writing is done by sitting with my journal and writing. I have read and studied many different philosphies over my 70+ years on this planet. Those readings are integral to my thinking and writing. I have long ago lost the names of authors and possibly lost the books. When possible I will ascribe attribution. The concept of mindfulness is integral to almost every philsophy I have studied. Mindfulness may have been called different things in different philophies but it is essential to learn and master on the Inner Peace Journey.
Remen Q is not a religion, medical practice or psychotherapy.