The moment is ‘NOW’.
‘Aim & Sustain’… and Something More.
by meditative - March 24th, 2016.Filed under: Insights for Mindful Intelligence.
Early in our practice, we devote considerable focus and concentration on our attention training. It’s important to keep reinforcing our ‘aim & sustain‘ skills of concentration and attention throughout our practice- regardless of the chosen ‘object of focus’. For example, the breath, part of the body, a movement of the body, a tree, flower, etc. By focusing the mind, and gently returning to the object when our attention wanders, is the practice of developing our ‘aim & sustain‘ function of concentration.
This discipline to refine our skill of relaxed concentration is the building block of mindful awareness. It is our intention to focus our attention in a ‘single-pointed’ manner. It is this internally-driven intention that keeps us on target regardless of what may arise in awareness to distract our attention from its focus. Initially as we practice mindful awareness with effort, we purposefully train the mind again and again to return our attention to the object of focus. It is awareness that monitors the process of attention itself- a form of meta-cognition or awareness of awareness. Repeated states of this mindful activation in the brain has the power to change its circuitry.
By continuing our discipline, our ‘effortful’ states of practice may ultimately become effortless traits of living…. a way of being, not just a mode of practice. Mindful awareness gives us the insight to refine our inner capacity (i.e. ‘mindsight’) to see things as they truly are… and to awaken our sensory capacity to regulate the flow of information and energy inside the mind-body process for more fuller and healthier experiences… not only with our own being, but with all other beings.