Mindfulness Meditation video summary and questions

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Mindfulness Meditation- A Complete Guide with Techniques and Examples

Mindfulness is the 1st or 2nd most important skill you can build.

Credit to Shinzen Young who has created a very robust, complex and technical mindfulness system. This video will explain the basics of this system. As you get deeper and deeper into this practice, take a look at Shinzen Young and his mindfulness system.

Mindfulness is a deep tradition that goes all the way back to the Buddha.

Mindfulness is experiencing reality (literally) EXACTLY as it is. Reality comes to you through your senses, not through any other means. All you really got of reality is sensory channels through which you are receiving stuff (sight, sound, body sensations and feelings, emotions, thoughts, smell, taste). All you really have is what you're experiencing right now, in this very moment. Right now, whatever is happening to you, is what's real. And it's changing every single second.

 Rather than living on the raw information that your channels constantly feed you, you live on your fantasies (past, future, emotional reactions, plans and goals). Your life is mostly conceptual, not grounded in actual reality, the raw data that’s being fed to you.

Mindfulness is putting you in touch with what's really, literally there. What's true right this very second.

3 Components of Mindfulness:

Focus- the ability to direct your attention on certain phenomena for long periods of time

Sensory Clarity- how clear you are perceiving the present moment

Equanimity- the ability to stay grounded no matter what emotions or sensations you're experiencing

Mindfulness attunes your senses times 100,000.

Notice- pick a sensation and put your attention on it

Label- silently say to yourself the channel of which you are perceiving this sensation through (seeing, hearing, or feeling)

Savor- take in the RAW perceptions that are there for about 5-7 seconds

Notice, label, savor

Humans created these distinctions, so this is simply a SYSTEM to help our mind become more aware of what's actually happening in reality.

This practice expands your awareness to the present moment, to what's literally right there in front of you.

As you practice mindfulness more and more, you'll get better and better, causing extraordinary shifts in awareness and consciousness.

Outer seeing (looking at lamp)

Inner seeing (visualizing an apple)

Outer hearing (the sound of a clap)

Inner hearing (repeating in your mind 'I have to take out the laundry')

Outer feeling (smell, taste, itch, sensation of butt on chair, sensation of feet on floor, beating of heartbeat)

Inner feeling (emotion)

Set a timer for 20 minutes. Every single day, sit down in a quiet place, calm your mind down, and run these cycles (notice, label, savor). Let your mind focus on whatever it wants to focus on. Then notice, label, and savor it. This cycle will take about 10 seconds. Your mind will wander off to some other phenomenon, which you do another cycle on. Repeat this for the entire duration of the practice. If your mind starts to wander away and get lost in stories, bring it right back on track and note, label, then savor.

The most basic practice- you allow the range to be everything (sights, sounds, feelings, outside and inside). When you get more advanced, you can limit the range of what you let your mind focus on. You can limit to, for example, just sights, or just sounds, or just feelings, or just the inner, or just the outer, or both the inner sounds and the outer sounds, or just thoughts (inner sounds + inner images).

Some more practical tips:

As you practice this, multiple phenomena will come up simultaneously. For example, you may notice an itch in your foot while simultaneously saying 'itch' in your mind. For basic starter mindfulness practice, focus on any ONE that you want, usually whatever is drawing the most of your attention. So if the inner sound 'itch' is the most dominant, focus on that.

If the phenomena disappears or stops, You could savor the gone-ness of it.

If a phenomena changes, stay with it and notice what happens with it. Whatever it morphs into, stay with that.

Life is a fluid dynamic thing that is always flowing, so don't take static snapshots of life here.

If you're not clear what to label the sensation, go with your best guess, it doesn't really matter if you label it right or not. You'll get better at labeling more accurately as you practice.

Labeling itself is an inner hearing sensation but don't label the labels

Do this practice 20 minutes (you can gradually increase this up to 60 minutes per day), every single day without skipping any days ever. Be very consistent. Do this every single day for months or years. This'll take months and even years to see results. If you want to supercharge your mindfulness, take retreats. Vipassana retreats are great for this, and usually free. Retreats are usually 5-10 days of complete silence, 12 hours a day of practicing mindfulness.

This basic technique is very powerful and can take you very far. The fancy elements aren't necessary, but you can go learn them if you want.

There is no best meditation technique. Experiment with them. If you really want to self-actualize, test out each of these techniques for a month or three. There is no best technique. You may have favorites but even the not-favorites are very useful and powerful.

This mindfulness meditation is so stupidly simple. You know how it works, not develop this habit. This is probably the most important skill you can develop as a human being. This is how you interface with reality. You need to start seeing reality as it really is. As it is actually happening right fucking now. This isn't an optional thing if you want to have a powerful life.

Benefits:

Enormous levels of awareness, focus, and consciousness (10,000 times more awareness than the average person has)

In your work projects and creative endeavors you'll be able to focus for an hour straight no problem

You'll be able to be fully present and to fully listen to what the people around you are saying

Emotional mastery- all the nasty emotions you suffer from will melt away because you see it as it really as at high levels of mindfulness

You can dissolve all physical pain and discomfort with sufficient degrees of mindfulness

The more mindful you are, the more fulfilment you can get from everything you enjoy about life (food, sex, business, social interactions, parties, the list goes on and on)

You can experience feelings of rapture, joy, and bliss just by being sufficiently mindful

Behavior change- your bad behaviors will change effortlessly and automatically

You can experience enlightenment and discover the real existential nature of who and what you and what life and reality is through mindfulness. You can focus the mindfulness lens on the 'I' you identify with and it will dissolve.

 

My questions on this video:

Does it matter how still we are? Do we have to remain completely still or does it matter?

What are the differences and pros and cons between this and Daniel Ingram's noting practice?

Eyes open or closed?

[Jon_Bundesen]

Thank you!