Life is not about the destination but the journey along the way. Happiness is living in the moment, letting go of worries about the past and future and going with the flow of life.
Easier said than done?
When we give all our attention to the moment of now, our ever-present awareness is revealed. Mindfulness is the state of being fully aware of our surroundings and what we are doing with openness and compassion and without passing judgement.
Mindfulness and Meditation
In this objective observer state you can fully connect with the present moment and accept ‘what is’ while fully engaging with the world and life around you.
Meditation and mindfulness are one and the same, though meditation is perhaps a more channeled practice of mindfulness. In meditation the chitter chatter of the monkey mind is given a simple task such as watching the breath moment to moment. The misconception of meditation is that it is about ‘clearing the mind’ however it is more like ‘paying attention to the mind and the breath’ from a place of stillness. Yoga is also a mindfulness practice where the task is ‘paying attention to the body, mind and breath’ from a state of movement and flow.
Thoughts will come and go, you can’t stop them from entering the mind but you can control your reaction to them. If you react with only awareness, without chasing the thought in the direction it wants to go, the thought will dissipate naturally. This might be difficult on your first few attempts as chasing thoughts is what we have been used to. But when we chace thoughts to tomorrow, next week, last year, we are pulling our attention away from the present moment.
The present moment is all we really have. All your life in the past has been leading up to this moment right now and all future moments hinge on this moment, and every moment to come. By accepting the moment as both a gift and a temporary circumstance we can live in freedom, knowing that when times are bad, it is only temporary, and when times are good, we can enjoy them while we can while not grasping at them when they pass.
Take a moment right now to pay attention. You are breathing, your heart is beating. Your eyes are staring at a screen, you might blink. You feel the seat under you and the floor beneath your feet, the feel of your clothes on your skin. You might feel a breeze, hear noises in the background of your breathing, smell what's cooking next door, it’s all about taking it all in and just being aware of both what is outside and what is inside.
You might become aware of thoughts coming in on the waves of your mind, inspired into being by a sense or a feeling. Become aware of the thoughts, then become aware of that awareness of the thoughts, of the sounds, the sights, the smells. That is mindfulness, becoming aware of you.
You are not your name, not where you grew up, not your friends, your job, your hobbies, not your body. You are the awareness of your body, you are the awareness of a self, awareness of the time and space that self is occupying and the events leading up to this moment.
The video below is an introduction to mindfulness, although just audio, it conveys the message well and is a good listen to gain an understanding of the practice of mindfulness from a complete beginner perspective.
An Introduction To Mindfulness for Beginners by Jon Kabat Zinn
Going with the flow
Mindfulness in daily life
Living in mindfulness allows you to ‘go with the flow’. While we can make plans, and follow them through, we must also be prepared for the unplanned, expect the unexpected and take a diversion if needed. Opportunities for fun and following our dreams are right around the corner, and often in front of our noses. By being mindful we are more open to becoming aware of these surrounding opportunities than we would be if we were closed off and staring at a facebook feed.
Being in the flow is liberating but for many this state is hard to reach as they worry too much about what they expect to happen next. By letting go of expectations for what is around the corner, you can allow yourself to be surprised and take joy in each discovery.
Mindfulness - Flow - Grant Rix explains the meaning of flow and how we can achieve it.
Just how do you go with the flow?
Practice mindfulness as a way of being.
Going with the flow is as simple as following what excites you the most, that excitement is like the needle of a compass leading you to your happiness and dreams. This might seem like a childlike way of being and that it is, as a child it is easy to be in a more constant state of flow. Children have fewer frames of reference to categorise and analyse their experience, they don’t worry about the future because they have little sense of the future, they can just ‘be’.
Our future is created in the moment of now. Mindfulness creates the environment for the purposeful attention. It allows for better concentration on whatever task is before you, better listening to whoever is talking to you and better compassion to and awareness of the world around you.
When you are next out, why not try and take a mindfulness walk to practice just ‘being’. Too often we are acting on autopilot without actually thinking anywhere close to the present moment. Just see where your curiosity leads you when you pay attention.
You can practice mindfulness in every moment, when you brush your teeth, focus on the task of brushing your teeth, when you make your bed, when you do the dishes, focus on the task at hand and you are practicing mindfulness. Rarely do we focus on the tasks before us, the mind is often a busy swirl of chitter chatter, jumping from one thought to the next.
When we practice mindfulness, we can create little moments of stillness and serenity in our busy day to day lives. From that stillness, we can better sense our intuition so that we can make better decisions. From that space of stillness and awareness, ideas are born and seen in the clarity of a attentive being, able to observe and process them.
Once you have adopted the mindful flow state you might notice moments of synchronicity, timings that are too perfect to be coincidence. These are like signposts on the journey of your life, like a poke, these shake your very being in recognition of a pattern and reaffirm that you are in the flow state and living your optimal timeline.
Our story, our journey, path in life is different for us all. We each experience our existence from our own perspective and the combinations of choices we make are unique to us.
We can do anything we can imagine. The only things holding us back are the limitations we place on ourselves. You are what you think you are. We are often trapped looking through the window of how we were taught to see the world but with mindfulness we can expand that window into the full awareness of being.
I hope you enjoyed this post and it was useful to you in your pursuit of a calmer, more attentive place of being. Why not share your own mindful journey in the comments below?
