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Mindfulness Meditation

By Arlene F. Harder, MA, MFT

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Step 3: Releasing Emotions That Try to Get Your Attention

While you attempt to experience the sense of being in the moment, you may notice some disquieting emotion. Perhaps before you began you were worried, anxious or upset about something and that feeling has returned to intrude into this awareness. It may also be that you now notice desires that would require you to act if you were to pay attention to them. Later, of course, when the exercise is done and you return to issues of daily life, you may want to deal with the cause of your emotions or respond to various desires. Now, however, it is time to let them go.

A simple technique I have used with clients is to suggest they put their emotions and desires into a small boat that is tied up to a dock with a long, long rope. They can then allow their emotions and desires to drift away with the current of relaxation, knowing that later they can pull in the rope and allow their emotions and desires to return, if they wish. Sometimes people imagine their emotions can float among clouds, high above and far away.

Just as your body is important, your emotions allow you to experience the world in a wonderful way. They connect you with others through joy and sadness, anger and fear. Emotions give your life depth, strength and intensity. Aspirations, dreams and desires are an important part of being human. But you can observe and often control your emotions and desires, so the essence of who you are is not your emotions or your desires. To be present in any moment of time, therefore, it helps to remember that while you have emotions and desires, you do not need to give them undue significance. Just experience the present moment, telling yourself to "be here now."

Step 4: Disregarding Your Thoughts

It is the constant intrusion of thoughts and fragments of thoughts, more so than body sensations or emotions, that tends to frustrate the would-be meditator. When we are able to distance ourselves from random thoughts, however, it is fascinating to observe the ingenious ways our egos have of convincing us that our opinions are more important and more significant than the opinions of others. Once we are able to step back and simply observe our thoughts, we realize that they control us, rather than the reverse.

Rather than facing thoughts head-on and demanding they stop, however, the first step in controlling your thoughts is to just observe them -- without trying to change them and without making them wrong. You can do this much as you would if a thought was like an actor who walked onto the stage of your mind, chattering about this or that, and demanded your attention. You could get into an argument with it or demand that it leave because you were busy doing something else. Chances are that it would want to stick around even more.

On the other hand, you could simply observe that it was there. Without an audience, the thought will soon wander off the stage because it needs your attention in order to develop into the full-fledged inner dialogue that makes up much of mind-chatter. Of course, it will probably be replaced by another thought, but that one can be ignored as well, as you move closer to the quiet center within. Some people think of thoughts as though they were clouds drifting by or a leaf floating down a stream, noticeable but not something to they need to be attached.

You can also detach yourself from your thoughts by observing your breath and by remembering that you can only breathe one breath at a time. Let each breath bring you back to the present and help you quiet your mind.

Certainly your mind is a marvelous tool. Over the years reason and logic have enabled you to resolve problems, form opinions, create beliefs, and make judgments about everything. Over the years, however, like everyone else you have changed your opinions, beliefs and judgments many times. Therefore, because your mind is not a constant, “who you are” is not your mind and its thoughts any more than "who you are" is a role you play or dependent on what others think about you. To just "be" in the moment, without "thinking," let go of attachment to your thoughts.

Step 5: Discovering "Who You Are"

If you allow yourself to quietly and simply “be,” without attention to your body and its sensations, without attention to your emotions and desires, and without attention to your mind and its opinions, you will discover a calm center that lies within you, a place filled with serenity and peace. Therefore, as you experience mindfulness meditation exercises, each time you are aware of a sensation in your body, each time you sense an emotion or need arising and each time a thought intrudes into the quiet of this place within, let it go and return to the center of your being.

Allow yourself to simply “be,” without attachment to anything except the experience of “being."What is this part of you that is able to experience being here in the center of your inner world? This part of you, this part of each of us, has been called many names and defined in many different ways. It has been called the "fair witness of the self" or the "inner objective observer." It is the part within you that has the power to direct and control the many forces that otherwise would take charge of your life. It is the whole that makes sense of the varied contradictory parts of the personality. It is the part of you that chooses. It is the “I” in the statement, “I am.” It is the “you” and the “self” in the word “yourself.” It is your life force. It is your spirit. It is the essence of your life, that which makes you what you are, your fundamental nature.

Practice Makes It Easy

If you want to make this technique a part of your life, I recommend you read this piece one more time and then close your eyes and focus on simply being in the moment, much as you do in the Be Here Now exercise. And when you are done, if you have time again today, close your eyes and do it again and then try to do it again tomorrow. That's because practicing meditation is just that—practice of a technique.

So use the relaxation technique that seems to work best for you and then try to reach that quiet center within by letting go, time and again, using the suggestions in this article.

Incidentally, you can also read the imagery script, Learning to Focus on the Present Moment, on which this article is based.

A Final Word

As I mention in Using Symbols for Transformation, you can reinforce the information you read in this piece by allowing your imagination to create a symbol that would represent your willingness to live consciously in the present moment. My symbol is an empty paper candy wrapper.

© Copyright 1997, updated 2003, Arlene F. Harder, MA, MFT — Return to Page One