Practising being Present IN THE PRESENT
If
someone offers to teach meditation to an Indian, the latter would possibly
scoff at him: yoga and meditation are a part and parcel of the life of every Indian.
During my hostel days in Shillong, we used to have what was termed as a
‘Retreat’ which lasted for half a day once a month and seven days once a year.
What all of us had to do was to literally retreat into the bygone days or,
sometimes, delve into the distant past, even as far as our childhood days, and examine
them with a magnifying glass, as it were, so that we could reverse our faults,
heal the wounds and avoid repeating the pitfalls in future. Primarily, it was a
spiritual journey into the past to restructure our future – a proactive step
towards spiritual edification. Meditation and deep contemplation played a
significant role in it.
So,
during the lockdown, when I read about a Certificate course on ‘Maintaining a
Mindful Life’, I did not expect much out of it, dismissing it as another form
of meditation not alien to Indians. But the fact that it was offered by one of
the top universities of the World, Monash University, Australia, got me
thinking. Once I enrolled in it and started the course, I enjoyed it
thoroughly. A veritable eye-opener, it was one of the most useful things that I
have learned in recent times.
Learners
are taught to practise ‘Mindfulness Meditation’ as a means of attaining
psychological wellbeing. Since the psyche has a domineering influence on the
soma or body, many psychosomatic illnesses, as well as our reactions to serious
and debilitating illnesses can be controlled, regulated and tackled through Mindfulness
Meditation.
Mindfulness
Meditation (MM) is all about paying attention to and being aware of the
present. The practitioners of MM develop a non-judgmental attitude towards
their experiences and practise being present in the present. It is as if we
come out of our selves and observe our very selves from a vantage point,
without passing any type of judgement at all. We look at our ‘subjectness’
objectively, treating it as another object, distinct from the observer.
Mindfulness
Meditation is aimed at attaining Mindfulness, and not vice versa. Since our
attention is regulated during an MM, we arrive at some sort of ‘choiceless
awareness’ of the present. Hence the
present becomes a real present to us, presented on a platter.
I
was so overwhelmed by the course that I was itching to share its relevance and
significance with whomever I knew. I felt that teachers need to not only practise
mindfulness but train their students too in it; sick patients should indulge in
MM in order to alleviate their agony; and everyone ought to have a go at it for
their own psychological health and stress-free life.
The
opportunity to spread the word presented itself in the persona of a friend who
wanted to organize some webinars on an international level. I leaped at the offer,
and my session was live cast through Zoom and Facebook, amidst rave comments. There
were more than 600 registrations from round the world!
The
resounding success propelled me to conduct another practical session for
teachers and enlighten them so that they could cascade the learning to their students.
The hour and a half session was telecast live on Zoom, Facebook and YouTube for
the benefit of the teaching fraternity spread all over India and elsewhere.
One
of the key concepts that fascinated audiences is the use of ‘punctuation’ and
‘full stop’ during the course of the day. A ‘punctuation’ refers to a short
pause from whatever one is doing and engage in a brief Mindfulness Meditation
lasting about one to five minutes, depending on the circumstance. The ‘full
stop’ meditation is meant to be practised for a longer period a couple of times
during the day.
As
I have already had an initiation into Reiki and Pranic Healing, MM has given me
an added advantage of reaching out to the suffering, with phenomenal results. I
practise MM every day and this has made my life stress free. Every morning I
feel that I am a new person brought forth into this world by the Almighty with
a purpose in mind.
This lockdown has really turned out, among others, to
be a boon to me at personal, spiritual and social levels.
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