Fully Engaged: Using the Practicing Mind in Daily Life

Our mind tends to run around all day long, either visiting circumstances that have already happened or anticipating circumstances that may or may not happen in the future, even if that future is only moments away. It also operates in a constant state of judgment (which of course is a thought), and we experience the emotional content, which is the r

ability. That means that in this moment you are pushing through a barrier.

We need a step-by-step plan customized to our personality to help us deflect the emotional content of a confrontational situation, a comforting place we can retreat to internally, where we can have a moment to take a virtual breath and exercise our power of choice.

A daily practice of meditation, of thought awareness training, grows our innate ability to be aware of what our mind is doing, and through strengthening our will, it grows our ability to use our mind’s energy to serve us in ways we can’t even imagine.

In this state we have relinquished our power as a conscious choice maker.

that, we are successful. In every repetition we become more powerful in our ability to control how we are experiencing any moment.

a participant in our thoughts. It teaches us to notice what our mind is doing, to be more of a watcher of our thoughts.

through repetition. We have learned it well, and unlearning it requires first awareness of when we are feeling it and then the desire to repeatedly engage in a different behavior, with the conscious intention of changing how we experience these feelings.

observer, we are growing our thought awareness, our ability to watch our thoughts instead of simply being immersed in them and reacting to whatever emotion or sensation they elicit.

One reason for this is that the feelings that create this experience are always rooted in either the past or the future. The simple phrase “And then what?” immediately pulls us into the present moment because we cannot have the awareness to ask ourselves this question if we are experiencing this moment outside the present.