Karl: I sit at my desk and stare at my green mug full of green tea and I try to release my filtered perception, but I keep coming back to my thoughts. I want to put everything in a category. The need for this outweighs my desire to accept the mug as just a mug. It’s slightly ugly with a few spots of faded green. My mind searches for the beauty and ugliness; it doesn’t want “No mind, No angle;” it likes control. I understand that I must expand my energy outside of myself, but in a case like today when I have the blues it’s difficult to expand my energy.

So my question is – How do you cultivate “No mind,” so I can quiet my thoughts and expand my energy?

Kara-Leah: Cultivating no-mind starts with identifying mind.

You work with what you have. To be able to step back and observe your mind as it creates these thoughts is the first step.

To even do this is a HUGE step. Most people are still identified with their mind.

So accept your mind, and its thoughts, and observe them, just WATCH as they appear and leap and dive and jump all over.

Then, as you watch your thoughts, pay attention to your breathing. Breathe long and slow through the nose and into the belly, expanding it out like a soft buddha belly on the inhale and contracting it against the spine of the exhale.

Still watch the thoughts as you observe the breath. Feel the breath. Listen to the breath. Examine the breath.

Don’t think ‘about’ the breath… just experience it. Notice it.

Now, choose something *easy* to observe, something with abundant life force (there is life force in everything, but inanimate objects like cups have less than say a plant. Or a crystal. Or a kitten.)

Take that object and examine it in detail WHILE continuing to pay attention to your breath. If it’s small enough, pick it up and feel it, smell it, see it… all the while breathing.  Notice how the mind fixes its attention on one point of the observed object?

Now, while continuing to breathe and paying attention to your breath, change your focus so you look at the WHOLE of the object at once. Breath out toward the object while maintaining this expanded focus. You might find you have to shift your focus slightly to get the whole object in. You find you are looking a little in front of the object, this is fine.

Maintain that encompassing focus, notice the breath, and direct the breath out to the object and then when you inhale, imagine that you are inhaling the object deep into your belly.

If any thoughts come up, do not judge them or you, do not get upset, just observe them and then bring your attention back to your breath and back to the whole of the object. Don’t allow those arising thoughts to define your experience - i.e. by then ‘thinking’ that “this is hard”, or “this is difficult”.

Notice too, the difference between thoughts that originate in the mind, and ‘thoughts’ that float up from the heart.

For settling into no-mind allows inspiration/heart/guides/authentic Self to speak to you.

All day, every day, bring yourself back to your breath, notice your breath. When you consciously breathe… you are aware, you are conscious.

It all starts with the breath.

And breath is life.

Remember this.

When you breathe on autopilot, you live on autopilot.

Check out more of her cool ideas at http://www.klmasina.co.nz/
 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 15th, 2007 at 7:38 pm and is filed under enjoy everything.