Mind Search - a Meditation Technique

meditation technique

This exercise is meant to be carried throughout a full day at least once in your individual life. Five practice periods are urged, allowing a full minute for each.

It is also a useful standalone meditative exercise that can and should be practiced when desired.

This is from the mind training practice from A Course in Miracles.

Purpose

The purpose is to bring into our awareness forms of unhappiness to which we have grown accustom or find justifiable. Our true nature is attainable when we understand that there is no cause for emotional disturbance.

A secondary purpose is to simply be in rememberance that there is a different mental state, a different way of looking at the world that is attainable.

A third purpose, if you are practicing the full days exercise, is to train ourselves to be in control of our faculties of attention and memory. Throughout a day, you must remember to recall your attention to the exercise.

 

Exercise

In the practice periods, begin by thinking the idea "I am determined to see things differently" to yourself. Then close your eyes and search your mind carefully for situations past, present or anticipated, which arouse anger in you. The anger may take the form of any reaction ranging from mild irritation to rage. The degree of the emotion you experience does not matter. You will become increasingly aware that a slight twinge of annoyance is nothing but a veil drawn over intense fury.

Therefore, try not to let the "little" thoughts of anger escape you in the practice periods. You will probably be tempted to dwell more on some situations than on others on the fallacious grounds that they are more "obvious." This is not so. It is merely an example of the belief that some forms of misunderstanding are more justified than others.

Remember that you do not really recognize what arouses anger in you, and nothing that you believe in this connection means anything. It is your perception that is causing unease. Perceptions can be changed.

Fighting


You are normally focused at this level.

Observe fighting
The purpose of this exercise is to draw your focus to this level.
As you search your mind for all the forms in which thoughts of anger present themselves, hold each one in mind and tell yourself:

I am determined to see [name_of_person] differently.
I am determined to see [specific_situation] differently.

Try to be as specific as possible. You may, for example, focus your anger on a particular attribute of a particular person. If your perception of the person is suffering from this form of distortion, say:

I am determined to see [name_of_person]'s [specific_attribute] differently.

Examples:

I am determined to see my step-mother differently.

I am determined to see my recent job loss differently.

I am determined to see Felicia's unwillingness to stay in contact differently.

Practice once now. Take about 1 minute and work through the exercise.

More important than the specific steps of this exercise are the understandings you gain from your willingness to see differently.
Are you? Or do you enjoy seeing emotional pain? Your choice.
Stay blessed.
- alex brady


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