Taking the leap...
Updated: Jul 12, 2019
So people are talking spirituality..meditation..mindfulness, you've heard good things and want a slice of that pie. What happens next...?
'The spiritual journey' AKA 'becoming more mindful' AKA 'being more conscious' AKA 're-connecting to Self'....call it what you will, is essentially a bunch of processes to find out who and what you really are beyond a life of mind conditioning e.g. thought patterns or learned behaviours. It is the observation of yourself in order to learn how you respond and react to stimuli such as other peoples words and/or actions, your own thoughts and feelings, or situations you may find yourself in.
"Throughout each day we have the opportunity to make choices, becoming aware of those choices helps us to make the decisions that are right for us and those around us."
Talking from my own experience when I started this journey, I never realised how many of my words and actions sprang from a place with no awareness, there was little or no time or contemplation between the stimulus and the action/reaction. This led to words being said that caused tension or hurt to either myself or others, and actions that I quickly regretted.
And so the fist step to your journey is awareness, spend time alone observing your thoughts and feelings, how they interact with each other and how you respond to them. For me personally, I found it very hard to meditate to begin with, my thoughts were coming in hard and fast and I became frustrated as I was not able to turn them off. The important thing is to give yourself time away from noise and distractions to be with yourself, and you can do this walking in nature, washing the pots, tidying the house - any activity that you can do alone and without distractions such as a TV/radio/other people. Whilst observing yourself, try your best not to make judgements, you are only to observe to be aware of how your internal communications works. Remember that these habits and tendencies are learned over time and do not belong to your natural state of being, and so although we must take responsibility for our actions, we must also realise that a lot of the actions that we have taken may be a result of this learned behaviour and only by accepting them without judgement are we able to overcome them and not allow them to control our future actions.
The more silence that can be reclaimed between the thoughts, the more space for true thoughts to arise. These thoughts are free from conditioning, they come from the creative essence that we all possess, and they are full of ideas for you to live a happier and more fulfilled life :-)
