The Meat and Potatoes

It’s easy to learn a lot of these practices and think that this is all there is to mindfulness, doing mindful things, doing a task mindfully coloring a picture or listening to an old song a new way. That is only the beginning. The real part of mindfulness is listening to one’s own inner voice before we make a reaction. It’s also having the presence to have that conversation with the inner voice to process how you feel before we decide how we act.

Now the unfortunate truth that I don’t think is discussed enough these days is that most people fear their own inner voice. They fill their life full of distraction so they don’t have to sit with their own inner thoughts, and they will do just about anything all in the name of trying to drown it out. Most people are unsuccessful with mindfulness just for that reason because on the surface they’re very quick to say they want to become more mindful but the truth that lies below the surface is they will do everything in their power to avoid it.

  So let me be very clear! This course is starting the process for you to stop running!

  So let me be very clear! This course is nothing more than words on a page!

 It’s up to you to decide which statements above are true

Now some of you that are taking this course, that will scare you and that fear may manifest in many different ways. You may call it stupid, not worth your time or another excuse might surface of why you can’t finish the course. Though for some of you this will be exciting, a sense of relief, a sense of arriving, or even just a sense of curiosity. No matter which camp you fall into, it’s not the reaction that you’re having currently as you’re reading these words that matters, that is only your surface reaction. It’s the reaction that’s happening underneath the surface that you’re looking to touch and explore that will be the one that your actions will follow.

 So how do we get to that reaction? Just like the above statement, we are full of surface reactions and deeper reactions. We are full of surface thoughts and deeper thoughts. We are full of surface emotions and deeper emotions. Our ego and our reactive mind will always base its decisions or its actions off the surface reaction, thought, emotion and it will never want to look any deeper. Mindful thinking is us training to look past the surface and look at what’s connected to the surface underneath. Questions like “how do I really feel about this?”