Conscious lifestyle: who needs it and why

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Mindfulness is not something separate. Mindfulness can apply to many areas of life. You can be aware of yourself and your path in life. You can be aware of conversations with children. You can be aware of relationships with people around you. You can be aware of your body or the spiritual world. You can be aware of the smells and tastes of food. That is, mindfulness is something with which a person can approach any aspect of their life and become a master in it.

Our life, everything that happens in it, appears to us through our feelings. It is not so easy to learn to separate feelings from concepts. Suppose we can starve. At the same time, when we say that I am hungry now, we often jump from the side of feelings to the side of conceptual hunger. This is easy to notice when you are going to have a snack at work in the middle of the day and ask one of your colleagues if they are hungry. Very often a person looks at the clock in order to tell you whether he is hungry or not. And he does not even realize at this moment that the clock cannot know whether he feels hunger or not. It's just that he has a certain concept in his head – it's the middle of the day, it's time for a snack.

By its very nature, the process of conceptualization detaches us from reality. The concept lives in the head, while the feeling may no longer be there. It can be a memory of yesterday or anticipation of tomorrow.

Feelings are what happens at one moment in time – in the present, they are specific and unique. Concepts can be invented a year ago and 2000 years ago, and they can continue to exist as abstract, general.

We often say: “My life goes in a circle. Every day is groundhog day for me, the same thing.” So: “the same thing” is not a feeling, it is a concept. At the same time, living every day in such a concept, we evoke the same feelings in ourselves.

One of the tools of awareness is the ability to break this vicious circle.

Understanding feelings

The main question during mindfulness practice is: “What do I feel?” Here you can list different categories, which can be conditionally divided into the following: physical sensations (what I feel with my body and senses), emotional sensations (feelings – joy, sadness, delight, compassion, irritation), mental sensations (thoughts).

What we feel in our physical body is all sorts of shades of pain, pressure, temperature on the skin or inside the body, tactile sensations, sounds, tastes, smells. The practice of awareness begins with a simple step – to feel our physical body, to feel the sensations that the organs of our body bring to us. Working with the process of feeling is a long-term action. Very often I encounter the fact that people narrow their range of perception. For example, when asked: “How do you feel?” we are left with two epithets – “normal” and “bad”. The beginning of work with awareness can be associated with shifting attention to physical sensations.

Separating one from the other

It is important to note that in life we ​​live in a huge number of completely different associations. We put an equal sign between a huge number of completely different phenomena, our own and other people's actions. All this is mixed up in our minds into an indivisible mass. One example of mixing, two simple words – “it means”. For example? Here is your anniversary, a special date, a man did not give flowers. And a bunch appears in your head – “he did not give, so what…”: he does not love me, I mean little to him, he does not care about me, he is thinking about work again, etc. (choose your option). And every time you notice in your head that there is “it means…” (and it is always present), learn to ask yourself the question: “Does it really mean?”, learn to question your own associations.

Returning to physical sensations, I will give an example – my hand is cold. Does this mean that everything is cold to me? Where am I in this picture? When we allow ourselves to consciously separate categories, that one thing and another are not necessarily one and the same, absolutely unlimited possibilities open up. If we imagine that a person lives in a constant confusion of the concepts “I am my body”, what does this lead to? He goes to the mirror, notices that his body does not become younger, healthier and more attractive over time, and in his head arises: “I am getting older, I am becoming painful, I am losing my attractiveness”. And this is followed by disappointment, despair, hopelessness, fear of death. Where does it start? With a simple equal sign between himself and his body.

Looking ahead, the same thing happens in the conditions of emotional vinaigrette. When a person puts an equal sign between his feelings and his emotions. It is quite difficult to work with this, because it is too familiar. If I feel angry, then I am angry, if I feel emotional pain, then I am hurt. If this or that thought comes to mind, I do not even question it. I think as if I cannot think anything else. Or, on the contrary, I begin to drive thoughts out of my head, because they are bad. In both cases, I operate and act in life, based on the equal sign between myself and my thoughts.

The practice of disassociation allows a person to be, to a certain extent, an observer of their own physical body, their own emotions, their own thoughts. To disconnect from them and begin to observe, begin to reflect and look at what is happening in life, from the outside, from the side.

We are left alone with ourselves

Try using the practice of de-digitalization. Texts, files, pictures – all this comes from the outside to our consciousness. The flow of information that comes to us from different sides leads to chaotic thinking, leads to separate, unfinished thoughts, incomplete concepts. Unconnected ideas that turn into some kind of endless video clip in the head, where each picture lasts no more than three seconds.

So, we choose a time and turn off all gadgets for 24 hours. You will be surprised, but the impossible is possible. You will notice your habit of reaching for your phone and checking what you usually check – “Facebook”, “Instagram”, the news feed or what you usually watch. So, this is a somewhat violent appeal of your consciousness to itself. Consciousness pays attention not so much to external stimuli, but to itself. To do this, you don't have to go to India, go to the mountains, become a hermit and not say a word. In your own life, remove the gadgets and see what happens in your mind. Accept all your feelings. Some say that it resembles a breakdown. If emotions come, then feel your emotions. Sad – so sad. Don't like it – analyze what you don't like. And continue to live without gadgets, explore yourself.