An undisciplined mind keeps us from living in the present moment. Sometimes our minds run wild with uncontrollable thoughts. We lose sleep, cannot concentrate and sometimes stress ourselves – even to the point of becoming physically ill. While extraneous thoughts are unavoidable at times, if we allow them to consistently take control, we become habitually mentally lazy. Like muscles, our minds actually atrophy and become less effective.
When we’re unable to concentrate, we ultimately lose the ability to remain fully engaged in the moment, and our minds jump from one useless thought to the next. This mental wandering impedes our ability to live in the present moment, which is really the only place we will ever find contentment.
Think about it: the past is gone – and unchangeable. Memories of pleasant times bring sorrow because we lament the fact that those times are gone forever, and unpleasant memories are just simply … unpleasant. Yet the future is not a better place for our minds to be. It is unknown, unpredictable and is therefore a frightening place.
Unfortunately, Western values actually encourage us to focus on anything but the present. From a very young age we are trained to plan for things. Save for college, prepare for retirement, save for our kids’ college educations. If most of us were not so frightened of the future, and specifically of retirement, we might actually be able to decide on a sunny day that spending some time outside, enjoying the day with some friends, would be far more important then working in an office.
We constantly sacrifice the present in the hopes that there will be a payoff in the future. One of the most common reasons people give for having children is that they expect their kids to provide companionship and comfort to them in their elder years. Many people view rearing children as in investment in the future. Raising children requires a tremendous sacrifice of present time. In fact, people sacrifice the best years of their lives to provide for a person who may or may not return the sacrifice later on in life. In struggling to invest in children, people work more than they should. They spend more than they can afford. They have to do more and sacrifice more time, more of the present, just to keep up.
Many of us become overwhelmed and depressed worrying about the future and what it might bring. When that happens, people turn to psychiatrists and psychologists for help. They explain that that they are sad and frightened because they are fearful that they will not be able to meet their commitments and provide for the future of their families. They are bitter and angry because they feel isolated and used, unable to share time with anyone because they have none available.
The first thing a psychotherapist does when a patient sits on the coach is ask them to relive the miseries of their childhood. Reliving miserable moments never changed the present for anyone. In fact it, can sink a person deeper into depression. One problem begets another. Planning for the future brings anxiety; and in this culture, we turn to the past to relieve the stress. What we really should be doing is living in the present. Forget about the future for a moment and enjoy some time with yourself! Rest and listen to your body and your mind, and understand that you are discontent because you have become a slave to time.
Constant jockeying in time causes your mind to race, and it produces endless chatter in your brain. Your mind and body actually become disconnected and your unhealthy mind, out of control, begins to manifest its dire state physically.
As Taoists, we strive to harmonize our bodies with our minds to bring them together so that they may function as a holistic entity. We study martial arts and Qi Gong to train the physical vessel so that it will accurately execute the commands of the mental vessel, the mind.
A body free from the effects of an anxious mind is a stronger body. A healthy mind actually allows for a stronger immune system. A stronger immune system fights disease more effectively; and, with luck, we achieve the ultimate Taoist goal, to live longer and healthier lives.
To train our minds, we incorporate into the Qi Gong and Kung Fu regime a regime of mental hygiene. Most people call this regime meditation. Only through mental exercise, meditation, are we able clear our minds, eliminate distracting mental chatter, and free ourselves to find contentment in living in the current moment. Clear focus on the present also enhances our perception of the true reality and eliminates confusion. We are less apt to make mistakes and take actions in life that lead us from our paths when we eliminate or reduce mental confusion.
Meditation appears to many to be a mysterious, complex and esoteric exercise. When you ask some people how to meditate, they may simply say, “just sit quietly, clear your mind, become one with the universe, and meditate.”
This sounds purposeless, and mediation is purposeful. If you have ever tried to just sit quietly and let go of all thoughts all at once, more often than not, the mental chatter begins. You become frustrated and you believe that meditation just simply is not for you. It takes time, training and patience to learn how to sit quietly and control the noise in your head. You cannot simply say, “today I plan to clear my mind and focus on nothingness,” any more than you can say, “today I plan to lift three hundred pounds even though I’ve never lifted anything greater then fifty pounds in my life.”
If you want to meditate, you need to first train your mind. In learning Taoist meditation, you learn how to deal with the thoughts that distract you when you try to rest your mind. You begin to realize the mental and physical benefits of sitting quietly. You give your mind a break. You cleanse yourself mentally – because it is a refreshing thing to do. You simply feel better when you’ve eliminated your mental waste.
Meditation is an instrumental element in Taoist studies. As with any Taoist practice, we meditate because we achieve a tangible result. It improves our ability to concentrate and relax, while strengthening our immune system and increasing the body’s ability to heal itself. It improves the accuracy and flow of communication between the body and the mind. We acquire mental stress and fatigue through our daily interactions. If we don’t deal with this stress and fatigue, we can experience serious health consequences. We talked about discontent (stress) in the last newsletter and the effect it can have on our physical body. Because we acquire this stress and fatigue mentally, we must dispose of it mentally also – through meditation.
Taoist meditations are actually visualization exercises. They require strict adherence to procedure. With practice, the ability to concentrate and focus the mind improves and people achieve a greater result. It is like any other type of exercise: the more you do it, the better you get at it. This newsletter article is by no means intended to be an instruction manual on how to meditate! It is intended to introduce you to the concept that mental hygiene has a direct correlation to your health, and to provide examples of the exercises we perform as part of our mental hygiene program. By incorporating meditation in your life, you can feel physical improvements. Just remember that as with any new exercise, it takes a while to learn meditation: do not get discouraged if you are not good at it immediately and do not get discouraged if you lack the stamina to complete the exercise.
When we meditate, we first sit in a chair with our backs straight and our hands on our knees. A straight back, with a slight inward curve in the lumbar region to accommodate the natural curve of the spinal cord is incredibly important as it ensures the proper flow of blood and Qi throughout the body. We sit in chairs because, as Westerners, we have learned to be comfortable in doing so. It is also legitimate to meditate lying on your back if that is a more comfortable position.
We then place a candle on the floor and focus on it for several minutes, creating the image of the candle in our minds, to begin the concentration and relaxation process. In the background we play a soundtrack of ocean waves moving against the shore. Taoists believe the ocean to be the greatest source of Qi. The sounds in the background also aid in our visualization.
Once we have focused on the candle for a time, we close our eyes and bring ourselves mentally to the beach. We also bring the candle with us to serve as a link between the world of imagination and the physical world. It is important to create and hold the image of the beach in your mind. Over time, the quality of the visualization should improve. Try to see the sand and seaweed and the waves crashing against the shore. Watch the clouds moving through the sunlit sky.
Once on the beach we begin a formal relaxation exercise.
We start from the left toe and focus on relaxing every part of our body. We move from the left toe, up the left side of our body, then down the right until we end with the right toe. If we do not feel sufficiently relaxed after having done this exercise, we repeat it until we do. We start on one side of the body, as opposed to moving uniformly up the body because of the inherent structural imbalances present in the body. Most people wrongly believe that the body is a symmetrical organism. This is not true; you have a heart on one side of the body and not the other. One arm is stronger then the other. The body is not symmetrical.
Relaxation is incredibly important to your health and well being. What most of us consider to be relaxing activities are not necessarily relaxing at all. Activities like watching television can actually increase stress, especially if you are watching the gruesomeness of the nightly news or viewing something about which you feel emotional. Even sleep is not as relaxing as meditation. When we sleep, we dream, we toss and we turn and maybe grind our teeth. Many people wake up still feeling exhausted.
Only through meditation and consciously relaxing our bodies do we reach a desired state of rest. Through meditation, we focus our intentions on relaxing every muscle and cell in our body. You may find once you have relaxed you will feel aches or pains that you did not feel before. Perhaps for the first time you are “listening” to your body, and your body is telling you that there is something disturbing it. In mediation and relaxation you are becoming in tune with your physical self.
Cloud
Once you have achieved a state of relaxation, visualize yourself still at the beach with the candle present. You may be on the beach or on a cliff above the beach. Visualize a white cloud coming toward you. The cloud touches you and then permeates your body. As it passes through from left to right it takes with it a black substance, causing the cloud to become dirty and blackened. We literally visualize the stress, taking the form of a black substance, leaving our bodies through our skin. As the blackness leaves your body you then imagine it burning in a bright red flame. Now do this exercise for as long or as short a time as you wish. If it works for you, stick with it.
Golden Rain
Next imagine a golden-colored rain falling from the sky. As the rain makes contact with your body, it washes over and through the body, drawing out the black substance, and causing it to pool at your feet in a black puddle. After a sufficient pool of this black substance has gathered around your feet, again imagine a bright red flame igniting the substance and burning it away. The most important part of the exercise is that you burn away the black substance. Mastering the ability to burn is the first step in learning how to rid your body of the mental stress and fatigue.
We do this exercise for at least one hour per week – and more frequently if we can find the time. It aids immensely in helping us to learn to relax our bodies and quiet our minds. In order to achieve results, the mind must concentrate wholly on the task at hand. Intrusive thoughts only interfere with the result. Regular practice teaches us how to quiet the mind and how to deal with intrusive thoughts. When we meditate and thoughts enter in, we simply tell our minds to wait until “later” – and we keep saying it until the thoughts are gone. If the thoughts won’t go away, you can visualize burning them away. Do not be frustrated if thoughts return; it is a constant struggle, and even the most advanced practitioners of meditation struggle with thoughts. Meditation is actually an antidote for the fractured mind.
http://www.tao.org/CMS758/introduction_to_taoist_meditation.html
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