Introduction to Mindfulness Meditation
Why Mindfulness Meditation?
Whether we are aware of it or not, every human being longs for happiness and has an innate fear of suffering. In the western world we have grown accustomed to searching for happiness outside of ourselves through accumilating things, looking for the ‘perfect’ relationship and financial prosperity- to name a few examples. We try to avoid suffering by distracting ourselves through things like food, alcohol, internet and television. In the West, most of us are fully identified with mind, which means that we believe that these things will bring us the happiness we long for. This form of happiness is short lived and quite often that which we believe would bring us everlasting happiness ends up to be the cause of our suffering – the person who initially made us happy now causes us grief and the new car that we “had to have” is just another thing after the newness wears off. By living this way we make outer circumstances the cause of our happiness. When the cause ‘disappears’ from our lives, or doesn’t meet our expectations after a while, the happiness disappears with it and we are back to feeling miserable. Our life becomes a roller coaster between feeling happy and miserable.
Many Western cultures have developed the science and technology of the outer world, like computer software and automotive development. Many Eastern cultures have developed the science and technology of the inner world – that of meditation. Meditation leads us to the inner space where a happiness resides that is innate to our being. This form of happiness or bliss is causeless and immovable – outer circumstances can never and do not touch this place. From this place of being we live a joyful life without drama; we feel happy and blissful for no reason. It is the place where I’ve come to learn dogs live most of the time, remind us of and can lead us back to. With that realization “Paws4Bliss” was born.
What is Mindfulness Meditation?
Speaking in dog terms, meditation is nothing ‘woo-woo’. Our natural state is a relaxed, blissful, peaceful state, which we could refer to as a meditative state. This relaxed state has been covered up, clouded over by years of conditioning. In his book “The Four Agreements” Don Miguel Ruiz describes it beautifully as a domestication process. Just like our dogs are being domesticated, so are us human beings from early age through conditioning. Mindfulness Meditation is like a substraction process – it peels away the layers of conditioning so that the light of our true nature will start to shine through – but not through ‘fixing’ or ‘problem solving’. There is nothing broken so there is no fixing needed. There is no problem so there is no solution that needs to be found. By practicing mindfulness, the mind will be relaxed so that our inner intelligence can take care of everything to bring balance back into our life. By extending our mindfulness practice beyond a set time frame that we set aside to meditate, it becomes a way of living. When we are mindful, we view things as they are without picking and choosing, without changing anything. We simply allow the moment to be as it is. Being mindful does not mean we don’t take action. It means we take inspired action, we respond instead of react to life. We move when we are inspired to move, and we don’t move when action is not required.
The one thing that is inevitable in life is change, whether we want it or not, like it or not. The mind constantly resists change, therefore constantly resists life. Resistance is one of the root causes of all suffereing. In Buddhism it is said: Mind is suffering. When we become mindful, instantly the grip of the mind is being released. A surrender happens that allows us to experience life as a celebration instead of a burden. This is the ultimate freedom, the greatest gift to ourselves and the world.
“All you really need to do is accept the moment fully. You are then at ease in the here and now and at ease with yourself.”
- Eckhart Tolle
For a FREE video on Mindfulness and a short guided meditation please visit the “Paws4Bliss Videos” page.
To experience a FREE guided mindfulness meditation audio session please click on the following link (please note it may take a minute or 2 to load): Paws4Bliss Introduction Meditation or you can right click on the link and select 'save target as' and choose a location on your computer to save this FREE MP3.
Do you like this meditation? Visit our events page and see when the next meditation series takes place so you can experience the meditations in a pack of fellow meditators!
