In ‘The secret’ I found a technique to become mindful that is worth exploring.
They claim two things, and I agree on neither :-), but I think what they say is worth exploring.

1)It is impossible to monitor all of ones thoughts.

This one is obviously false. The argument goes that we have thousand of thoughts every day and that it is impossible to monitor them all. I already stated in my previous post that many Buddhist monks do this every day. Off course, we are no Buddhist monk, but it proves that it can be done. And when you read the books in the tradition of ‘Being in the present moment’ (for example by Eckhar Tolle), they essentially say the same (actually, there is no real difference between ‘mindfulness’ and ‘being in the now’, except for the naming). So it is more than possible, albeit not easy to do.

2)All emotions stem from a thought

This is a tricky one. My personal experience tells me that this is very often the case that an emotion has a precursor thought, but not always. But maybe I am not fast enough to always see the thought.
On the other side, in the gnostic tradition (see gnosticweb and gnosticteachings) tells us that emotions can be separated. As I am a student of this tradition and I value their teachers very highly, I will believe them (for now).

In conclusion, they say, watch your emotions and you will know your thoughts. And emotions are not as quickly bypassing as thoughts, so you have a better chance at seeing them. Here I can relate.
So with hem, I would recommend an extra mindfulness practice: regularly check your emotional state!
If done persistently, you will see that it becomes a habit and finally it will become effortless.

This should improve the practice of mindfulness greatly, but also has the advantage of learning you a lot about your habitual emotional state. As it is often not easy to discover your habitual emotional state as you are so identified with it, this little practice should show the way.
You might be surprised to discover what you are thinking of mostly, I know I did.

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When I first started meditation, I thought that it was mainly about the formal sitting meditation. And although I now believe that without a regular practice of formal meditation one gets nowhere, I am quite convinced that the most important practice is that of mindfulness. And mindfulness at all times. No matter what the situation might be.

One reason was given in the previous post: it will give you the means to pursue you purpose and to keep on track towards whatever you want to attract.
But before describing a few methods on how to achieve mindfulness, I’d like to point to an equally important point regarding this practice. By constantly being aware of your thoughts and feelings, it will now be possible to decide for yourself whether you want to act or not on an impulse you get. It puts you in control.

This happens because when this exercise is done properly, you start to look at you feelings and thoughts in a more detached way. You can distanciate yourself and see them for what they really are: just some thought or feeling, but not really you.

This was for me a hard concept to grasp as I identify very much with my thoughts. But how many times did you not say to yourself: I wish I did not get angry, or: it is really stupid of me to get scared over … because it is really harmless. These are the kind of thoughts I am referring to. In the case of getting angry, you often hear people say: I was so enraged that it was as though it was somebody else being angry.
When you start seeing your thoughts as that: coming outside of you, you made a big step in overcoming all the negativity in your live. When you stop identifying with your thoughts, you can more easily put them aside and not act on them (which, in the case of anger or fear, is a handy feature).

And then another property of mindfulness will help you. As you start to be more mindful, you will see thoughts and emotions arise much earlier.
Let us take anger a an example. Most people that get anger, have a sudden outburst of aggression (be it verbal or physical) and cannot seem to stop it. In fact, it was bubbling under the surface for quite some time, unnoticed. Therefore, we are already very angry before we start noticing the anger, and then it is too late. If we now can spot the very first symptoms, it is still possible to reason oneself through it: to notice that it is not a big deal, or that the issue is just not worth it. In this way, the anger goes away slowly, without any negative effects.

So you see that mindfulness is a very handy tool to have, but I am afraid that this post already is too long to start the description of the practice. It will be for another time.

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Mindfulness.

All books on the law of attraction agree that one should keep in mind ones goal and to think positively about the outcome.
Some also recommend to ban all negative thoughts. They advice to keep a watch for this kind of thoughts. However, I never saw them explain how to do this. The closest to an explanation that I read was in ‘The secret’ where the author says that all the teachers of the book meditate daily and that, on a regular base during the day, one should check one feelings and thoughts.

On meditation.

Meditation is, like many other skills one that needs to be practiced regularly. Preferably every day. It is a way to focus the mind on whatever object or thought that we choose. I already said in my post on visualization that this was a meditation practice. This is true and I think that it is all the practice that is needed if it is done for a sufficient amount of time.
What is sufficient? This is a difficult question, but most sources advise to do sessions of 20 minutes, at least once a day.

This is already a long time. Believe me. To be able to keep up with the visualization for this long, without you getting caught up in a random train of thoughts, will take some practice. I’d say most people will not realize this goal in less than a few months.

But do not get discouraged. Any amount of time you stay on the visualization is time spent well. And you will see that the time you are ‘meditating’ will increase slowly but surely. You just need to keep at it.

On mindfulness.

This is a totally different practice, although in essence, it is meditation.
I say they are different since we do not set a time apart for it. No, we do it all day long. And that is the tricky part about it. We need to do it continuously.
We need to constantly monitor our thoughts. But how to do this?
For this, we first need to notice that we can act and do things without ‘thinking’. This is not easy to explain as it is something that needs to be experienced. But it is definitely possible. One way to experience this for yourself is by doing the following little exercise: from now on, watch, in a very concentrated matter for the next thought to arrive. Watch your mind carefully. Do it with a lot of anticipation. You will see that you can be on the lookout for a though without thinking. This is the state we need to be in all day.

But this is a very hard task. If you try to do this, you will quickly see that after a minute or two you will lose yourself in thoughts. Still, it is worth doing the effort, not only for reducing negative thought, but also because it gives you power. Power to consciously choose whether you act on an emotion or not. This is particularly handy when we get angry or scared. In this way we can look at the emotion with a distance and decide to not let ourselves get caught up and do stupid thins (as I did many many times).

How to stay mindful is the topic for a next post.

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