Ideas, Kavindu

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Where Am I supposed to feel this.?

Mindful-Awareness meditation is a simple contemplative practice that consists of quietly becoming aware of the here and now as it is experienced through the senses. When immersed in the present moment our perception is experienced as a flow of constant change within an open mind and with a sense of lucid spaciousness. It is immediate non-judgmental perception, unmediated by concepts or definitions.

Simple as it sounds, for most people it isn't that easy to stay connected for more than a few seconds at a time with the here and now before they are drawn into the realm of what I'll call the "there and then", with its definitions, its beliefs and its emotionally loaded patterns.

One of the results of being mindfully aware of the changing and spacious here and now, as experienced through the six sensory fields (the five physical senses and the mind), is that it promotes the deactivation of the mental and emotional pattern -- the stories we tell ourselves -- that condition and limit the way we perceive and interpret reality.

The benefit is threefold: mentally, it frees us from the habitual ways of thinking that keep us from connecting with the complex and changing reality in a more creative way. Emotionally, it frees the energy that is intensely invested in maintaining mental patterns which we experience as anguish, stress, and emotional affliction. Physically, it allows the patterns of body contraction and tension to relax, allowing the organism to carry out its nourishing and healing functions more thoroughly.

And more importantly, through mindful-awareness meditation and movement our sense of being begins to be liberated from the spell of our biographical mind-our personal stories and the image we have built and believe about who we are. Instead, we begin to recognize the complex, dynamic and spacious reality as the natural source of consciousness. When our sense of being is at home, connected with its source, wisdom and loving-kindness begin to flow unhindered.

This process of self-knowledge and spiritual unfolding can be pursued through the body, the most tangible and grounded aspect of the human experience. That is where emotional responses are reflected and where patterns of emotional stress related to our personal stories are stored.

Being mindfully aware of the body means to experience in a lucid way the body sensations, without interfering with them, while the mind is alert and relaxed. In this way, sensations of tension, temperature, movement and contact reveal themselves as complex processes in constant transformation that help us keep our attention in the present moment.

Using the body as a tool for transformation and awakening can be approached through the practice of formal sitting or walking mindfulness meditation, or through the active involvement of the physical body through the mindful practice of asana.