The Online Course in Mindfulness Meditation

Meditation has been around for thousands of years and there are many different approaches. The most common forms of meditation usually involve focusing on a particular object, such as a mantra word; a divine image as in some forms of Tibetan Buddhist meditation; an inspiring phrase or image, as in contemplative Christian meditation; or conscious contemplation of breathing, as in Samatha Buddhist meditation. In general, these forms of meditation attempt to cultivate an altered state of consciousness, in which you feel more relaxed and more centered in the present moment, and generally grow spiritually by contemplating something greater than “the mind.” monkey “of our common spirit. instant thoughts and worries. In this approach, the meditator tries to clear his mind of intrusive thoughts and preoccupations and simply to focus his attention on the main object of the meditation. In many ways, these forms of meditation equate to going on vacation from the emotional stress of life, and there is no doubt that this can be very helpful, allowing us to relax and refresh our minds. However, to refresh and relax as it may be, we must remember that this type of meditation is a vacancy, and when we resume our normal activities, we will always face the same old problems caused by a reactive mind.

Such contemplative and concentration-based approaches to meditation can be very inspiring and refreshing, but are usually not able to transform the emotional pain and habitual patterns of reactivity that pervade the mind. However, there is another type of meditation that uses a completely different approach to our mental disorders and emotional stress. Rather than trying to clear the mind of intrusive thoughts and emotions, we turn our attention to them and surround the emotion or reactive thinking with mindfulness. This approach to meditation is called Vipassana Meditation, Insight Meditation or Mindfulness Meditation.

The Buddha taught this form of meditation as a way to transform the root cause of our emotional suffering and stress. You can not transform your suffering by avoiding it, but only by working with it and creating the kind of internal relationship that is right, with your inner anxiety, your anger or any other form of stress that promotes healing. Mindfulness is a special way of connecting our experience, whatever it is, including our emotions and our inner stress, which is based on being fully present and fully awake. Mindfulness is a quality of consciousness where we know what is happening at every moment of the experience. This contrasts with our more habitual state of responsiveness, in which we do not fully experience things, but react to them. If you reactively react to your painful emotions, your suffering, or your negative thoughts, nothing can change. If you stop reacting and respond with attention to your inner pain, then you create a therapeutic space in which change can occur. Mindfulness restores the freedom and choice that habitual reactivity removes.

In Mindfulness Meditation (TEM) therapy, we make difficult emotions the center of our meditation. We do this because we understand that there is no way to escape our inner suffering and that the only way to change suffering is to deal with it directly. Mindfulness teaches us how to do just that, how to form an open, fully present and unresponsive therapeutic relationship with our inner suffering. Learning to cultivate this inner relationship, the relationship based on mindfulness, with your inner emotions and stress, gives you tremendous power and is the gateway to inner transformation; it creates the good inner therapeutic space that allows negative emotions to resolve and heal themselves.

When working with emotions, the first part of the EMT is recognizing the impulse of reaction. Most of us are not very aware of these impulses and the result is that they control us and ambush us. The first step is to see them before they seize them, while they are still in their infancy.