Guiding Mindfulness

Let's redefine the concept of mindfulness meditation together!

You may already have an idea of what is meditation, you may already be practicing something you call meditation. Meditation is just a word, in which many cultural views and practices are encompassed. So I would like you to put on the side anything that you think you know about meditation. Maybe you will read ideas that you are already familiar with, maybe some that will disturb your views, the only way to approach this chapter is therefore to welcome it as a blank page!

If we still would like to start with a short history about meditation to understand still the origins of this word, we could talk about the Indian prince Siddharta Gautama who achieved the enlightenment by meditating at the foot of a fig tree and who became the so-called Buddha (the enlightened one). You can click here to read more about his own life story. Its practice traveled around various countries, local traditions, in India, Tibet, Sri Lanka, all southeast Asia, and then even beyond, giving birth to various types of practices just like Tibetan buddhism, Zen, Theravada, Mahayana, Vajrayana or Tantrayana.

But when we go further in time we can also talk about older traditions in which meditation has a place. The chamans on every continents would use meditative practices to modify their state of consciousness and enter into trances in order to communicate with the spirit world, connecting to wisdoms and knowledge they would share then with the whole community.

The Middle East is also very imbued of various and inspiring meditation practices. In Sufism, we seek union with God by chanting sacred words punctuated by specific breathing. Also in the Whirling Dervishes practice, so to speak, a moving meditation by abandoning themselves to a spiral dance movement. In Jewish mysticism, different practices are used like using the 22 Hebrew letters or specific words. There is also the great practice of Hitbodedut.

We could talk about more cultures, Egyptians, Druids, but the idea stays the same - the common denominator about meditation through all the practices over time is that it is a space and time that you take to train yourself to achieve another state of consciousness, another perspective, another way to approach yourself and the world we are living in.

I like to compare it to a gym. Some people come to me saying right away that meditation is not for them, that they are bad at it. To me, it is like saying you cannot run a marathon but on the other side you never do sport and train your quadriceps and cardio. Your potential is there, we all have quadriceps and a beating heart. But some limiting belief or lack of knowledge prevent us to fulfil this potential. Obviously running a marathon is just a metaphor - not everyone want to run a marathon, it is not fondamental. But meditation is to me the gym of our mind. And it is fondamental to be able to master our mind, to react actively and not passively to each thought or emotion, to welcome the billions of thoughts and information our mind process each day, to be creative and more conscious, to overcome feelings of stress and anxiety, to develop gratitude and kindness behavioral and mind structures, to be happy, or simply be, for real! That is what's at stake! And just like when you start training your legs for running a marathon, it is only as you train that you discover your potential.

Nowadays, more and more people especially children are "diagnosed" with attention disorders. I am not saying that ADHD does not exist, but in our occidental way of apprehending this "disorder", we must acknowledge that before locking up someone in this diagnosis, we should be aware that there is no awareness about the benefits of regular practices such as meditation, although it is now fairly scientifically proven. We do not have anything of this kind, a gym of our brain, in our children schools. Obviously you won't be able to focus well if you do not train your mind to do so on a regular basis.

Here is a nice article (there are so many) about science-based benefits of meditation: stress reduction, controls anxiety, promotion of emotional health, self-awareness enhancement, attention span becomes lengthened, age-related memory loss may be reduced, helps to generate kindness, can help to fight addictions, improves sleep, helps to control pain, can decrease blood pressure,... See more at: 12 science-based benefits of meditation by Humanitas University. But to me all those "benefits" are the consequence of one more capital benefit, the very reason why we should start this practice, a sort of initiation quest to find meaning in our lives. In this quest of knowing ourselves to be the master of ourselves and fulfil our full potential, meditation is not just a practice or tool, it's a way of perceiving the world, a way of being.

Here some beautiful words from Chirstophe André, French psychiatrist, that I translated to English from his book Méditer jour après jour, "Meditate day after day"

I have been meditating for a long time every day. And since then everything has changed for me: a sip of air, a bit of sky, a look, every moment of my life nourishes me.

Meditating is not exotic, nor trivial; it is important. My feeling is that meditation connects us to life and death, that it is a matter of life or death. Certainly, one can live without meditating, and one will die, even if one meditates. But the light of mindfulness will help us to better live life and, what is the same thing, to better accept death. For there are only two certainties: the first; it's that we're going to die one day; the second is that we are still alive. Meditation helps us to contemplate the first truth without trembling; and never forget the second.

Through this journey that hides behind this word "meditation", we are discovering what it really means to live in the present moment. In a previous chapter of this course we saw the real meaning of being here and now. This is about living it, this here and now, those cycles and frequencies, this space-time, estimating it, whatever comes in our way. Living truly, fully, the most authentically. Discovering our essence, the meaning of our life, and appreciating each detail of it according to its real value. Perceiving, spreading our light, our love.

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Now that we understand what is the behind the semantic word meditation and what is the importance to meditation, let's talk about what is really meditation in terms of what we are supposed to do as we train this mind of ours!

First of all and most importantly: there is no right way to meditate! I am not going to tell you to seat in a lotus position and stop thinking. I will describe you some great practices, for you to be inspired from them, but the first and most important way to meditate is actually your own. Let me explain.

Meditation is training your mind to be your full potential. This training can be done differently: through stillness or movement, silence or chants. Each mantra, each movement, each practice has been felt by people and experimented by people in order to be created. We can relate to all those practices even though sometimes according to our culture some of those practices may seem less resonating with us. But the methodology I would like to convey here is not to try all those practices one by one groping which one would fit you the best. Doing so with curiosity can be very enriching and inspiring obviously. But before to fill ourselves with information and ways to meditate, I would like you to empty yourself.

Our body, with its complex divine organization, its billions of billions of cells, the cellular memory, is so intelligent, it knows everything we need. But in our mind, we are not aware of all the things that are going on within our body, it works like automatically: our blood system, nervous system, digestive system, our hormones levels, the minerals and vitamins of what we eat redistributed, the act of breathing, etc. So many things are going on within our body all simultaneously and we have no idea, we are not conscious at each given second that all of those things are happening. We know as now with the science we learned it even at school, but we are not aware, feeling it, our body simply works. And each element composing it, each cell, each organ, each system, is filling its role according to a specific plan, a "program", an harmonious one.