By Andy Puddicombe
The more you fight something the more tension you create and tension always needs to find a way out.
The more we will mindfully, the more in touch we become with our intuition.
The book is about the skill of meditation, not how to use it. How to use it is up to you.
Mindfulness is the practice of returning to our natural state of awareness, free of bias or judgement.
Meditation is training the mind to rest in awareness. It puts us in touch with an underlying sense of contentment.
If we become dependent on anything we are trapped.
Meditation doesn’t change our feelings, it changes our experience of those feelings. There is a place beneath them of inner peace.
Become aware of your resistance to anxiety rather than the anxiety itself. It changes the way you relate to it.
Focusing less on yourself can expand your headspace. Give your practice an altruistic edge.
Meditation is one part of the puzzle: approach, practice, integration
There is the Aspirin approach to meditation where you use it as a remedy and then there’s the integration approach where you try bring that quality of mind into your everyday life.
Meditation isn’t about being in control of thoughts. It’s about being okay with not being in control. Don’t chase thoughts, observe them. Let them come and go. This creates space for the kinds of thoughts that tend to be helpful.
The blue skies of headspace / mindfulness always exists beyond the clouds of thought.
Any happiness found outside of yourself will only be temporary.
Taming the mind is like taming a wild horse. You can’t force it to stay in place. You need to give it space and slowly reign it in.
We become attached to good feelings. We try recreate them and block out bad feelings. This brings up resistance. If there is resistance there is no room for acceptance.
Give to your desire to always experience pleasant feelings and give up your fear of experiencing unpleasant feelings.