Mindfulness Catch, Tips?

[alyra]

there's this one feeling or sensation or emotion or something, which is negative, it's kind of an irritation that if I have it I'm in monkey thinking prettymuch. but as soon as I attempt to be mindful about it, it disappears. but eventually when I stop being mindful it comes back! not right away but still. 

 

any tips? it's almost amusing 'cept it makes me throw a day away. 

[Bronsoval]

Mindfulness like any other skill is learned.  Practice makes perfect!  Try being mindful a little more than you are comfortable each time and soon you will become a master at Mindfulness!!

[Shin]

The point of mindfullness is to be aware of an emotion, and then to drop it.

If you are mindfull to an emotion and it goes right away, you're doing good.

 

[eskwire]

@aryberry Negative emotions are caused by thoughts. If you are being mindful, then you're dropping the thoughts that are causing the emotion. So, the emotion goes, too. The point of mindfulness is to eventually be mindful always. Hence the happiness from it. 

[Loreena]

Don't be too harsh on yourself. Take it easy. Its not a job. its a method and you don't need to be too deep into it or get skilled at it. It requires rudimentary practice. Once you get a hang of it, it will flow smoothly. The emotional distractions you are having while doing it are just a part of who you are as a normal person. We all get distracted. Its pretty normal. The trick is not in practicing it in the most skillful way but rather in making it a way of life. This does not mean you should do it throughout the day, its just something that adds some benefits to your day. Gradually you will unlearn your bad habits and the distractions will appear silly. You will laugh at them and become more aware of how a monkey mind works. You will get detached from your negative emotions and you will see them as distinct emotions or thoughts leaving your mind and disappearing like dark clouds. Your mental clarity will improve. You will start to feel better. But all of this will take time. So you need to have tremendous patience with your mind. Its like a journey rather than a destination. If you get too impatient about it, you might even drop it all together and stop doing it out of frustration. So take it easy and don't make it a strict regiment. Just learn to flow with your mind and learn to gradually control it.

[Bob84]

@aryberry  Why are you labeling it as negative?

[Bronsoval]

17 hours ago, Shin said:

The point of mindfullness is to be aware of an emotion, and then to drop it.

If you are mindfull to an emotion and it goes right away, you're doing good.

 

I disagree, respectfully.  The point of mindfulness is to fully engage in the present moment.  Emotions are a very powerful tool if used correctly.  Don't drop emotions. Let them flow through you like electricity through a conduit.  Observe why they are trying to alert you, and decide to take action or not.  Respond to your emotions methodically.  Do not be reactive.

[alyra]

4 hours ago, Bob84 said:

@aryberry  Why are you labeling it as negative?

because when I experience it, I am in my lower self, addictive and avoidant. cynical and depressed. this is what I mean by negative. 

[Bob84]

@aryberry Try to realize that both states are ego. In a sense you have 2 egos fighting each other.
Negative, bad, good, amazing, etc are all labels of the ego.

Try to apply mindfulness without judgment instead of creating a ego to look at it which thinks its superior.
Your pure awareness is nothing more then awareness. Dont pay mind to your ego blabbing in the background (don't suppress it, just hear it blabbing its nonsense and don't care).

Hope that makes more sense

[alyra]

maybe then what I need to do, is work to figure out how to let go of this dilemma -

if we say that "good" is constructive and "bad" is destructive, we note that construction does not occur without destruction of something else. to mold the spoon, we must destroy the metal's previous form. 

 

but we pursue what we call good and avoid what we call bad. we desire a world where people do not run around killing others. we do not like to destroy things, and want to create things as we see fit. in this way some destruction we consider to be more destructive than other destruction. even when we work to let go of morality, we still operate according to principals of what we want as good. maybe we call it authentic or enlightened - we still pursue a certain thing, expecting it to be better than what we were doing before. 

[Bob84]

@aryberry I find it a lot easier to look at nature describing that. Especially survival and why we avoids things. If you have not yet, Maslow (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Maslow) has some interesting material on human behavior.

[alyra]

oh, so then it is personality which causes us to pursue things as if they are "more good" . like how, it is the personality of the rock to sit still or to roll, that kind of personality. that because we've been introduced into existence by our nature, our path thereon will most likely follow with certain decisions, such as resisting death.

 

ps. and in.. in mindfulness, while we become aware that these behaviors are without the meaning we hold to them, it doesn't cease to be the behaviors we take, nor do these behaviors then become wrong and to be avoided. it is our personality to be trapped by certain things such as addiction, and want to avoid them, and so in those cases our mindfulness helps us to be aware of our more authentic motivation (avoid the trap), but when it comes to avoiding pain, our path is to avoid pain. er, it's a weird concept to talk about on the fly like this. 

Edited February 3, 2017 by aryberry

[OKO]

On 2/1/2017 at 4:00 PM, aryberry said:

there's this one feeling or sensation or emotion or something, which is negative, it's kind of an irritation that if I have it I'm in monkey thinking prettymuch. but as soon as I attempt to be mindful about it, it disappears. but eventually when I stop being mindful it comes back! not right away but still. 

 

any tips? it's almost amusing 'cept it makes me throw a day away. 

Have you ever hear someone say, "I know what I want to say, but I can't put it into words."?                                                                                                 
The idea is that the thing they can't put into words is already in words. Merely that it is in a language they can't express with.

You may grow in anger as you become impatient while ignoring the pain you feel sitting on your legs. The message is to allow blood flow to your legs. Emotion expresses a message to do with the survival of the fittest. Emotion is an inner guidance and teacher with more affection and attention for you than you've for yourself. At least listen to emotion, rather than to resist it, and learn a lesson. If you learn the lesson of efficiency, you may willingly move your leg and let the blood flow. The desire to flee rather than to flight, too, is a lesson of efficiency.

SGT Rory Miller once said "It is better to avoid than to run. It is better to run than de-escalate. It is better to de-escalate than to fight.”

I found it better to commence fulfillment of an idea after it has become a topic emotion fully explored. As a result, I could apply the lessons of my inner teacher.

Edited February 6, 2017 by Gabriel David

[OKO]

...

Edited February 6, 2017 by Gabriel David

[Bronsoval]

Re-watch Leo's video "awareness alone is curative" or watch it if you haven't.  It has some good advice on how to deal with this kind of issue.  Also, his video on "how to deal with confusion" may be helpful.

https://www.actualized.org/articles/how-to-deal-with-confusion

https://www.actualized.org/articles/awareness-alone-is-curative

Edited February 6, 2017 by Bronsoval

[alyra]

oh! I remeber those videos. I'll give them another watch. 

 

really in the long run I will figure things out. and I don't currently have a meditation habit. and I've watched a lot of videos but never directly contemplated any of them, so I just got an overall picture but not strong applicative sense. but I'm a sucker who likes asking for tips from a community :3 I've always found that I am not great at looking at things from different angles, what I can stumble upon by talking with others, could take me years to discover on my own, just because I'm my own echo chamber lol. 

[Nahm]

@aryberry It's most likely food, exercise  and or meditation related, since it sounds to me like to can focus your focus. It's really shocking how much of our thinking comes from the gut.

 

You can't learn anything that you get from meditation. You think that way because you don't meditate daily. Start. Now. 

YouTube Shia Labuff for further instruction