Definition of MEDITATE

1. to engage in contemplation or reflection
2. to engage in mental exercise (as concentration on one’s breathing or repetition of a mantra) for the purpose of reaching a heightened level of spiritual awareness
   I mentioned earlier that I was going to re-define meditation; it is not so much redefining as it is clarifying Webster’s definitions. There seems to be a general misnomer that to meditate has, up until now, always been reserved for the “Spiritually Enlightened”; there has always been the ideology that it requires a specific way that it should be done; like having to sit in a specific posture, breathe a certain way, hold your fingers and thumb in a circle, etc.
   I say up until now because it is time to change that belief system for it is by the second definition that most people seem to get stuck as far as whether they are doing it right. “…for the purpose of reaching a heightened level of spiritual awareness.” What is that? It is different for different people and almost impossible to describe to fit everyone; therefore, how does one know if they are doing it right? Guess what? It truly does not matter. We get so hung up on labels and what other people think that we often cheat ourselves out of the best parts of life. Stop doing that. I do my best to operate from the premise that “what other people think of me is none of my business.” And I must say it provides me with a modicum of freedom that wasn’t there when I was making sure that everyone liked me. DOH!
   However, if you go with the first definition, you very quickly realize that you have been in a state of meditation a large portion of your life already, in other words, contemplation, or thinking, and reflection – is that not remembering? Let’s go ahead and throw pondering in there as well since it fits so well. Speaking of pondering, interestingly enough, if you go to the other most common dictionary, Wikipedia, under meditation and to the Etymology and History, you will find that meditate comes from the Latin (imagine that – doesn’t just about every word?) root meditatum, i.e. to ponder. My apologies, I am not going any further with definitions – you have the links, have at ’em.
   Okay, enough already, get to the point. Have you ever been “lost in thought”, that place where time just seemed to disappear, or more aptly, not matter so much? You know, not really thinking about anything in particular. Sometimes it is seen as daydreaming, or spacing out, but no matter what you call it, it is actually a form of meditation. So do your Self a favor, take the mysticism out of meditation and allow your Self the freedom to meditate whenever you see fit. The more you do it, the easier it gets and the bigger the benefits.
   Now then, you’ve given yourself permission to meditate whenever you want, right? Right! Good, because now I want to add one more thing.
   I want to put it out there that meditation is also a communication tool. Once you understand that we cannot communicate with our Higher Self, or Super Conscious Mind except through our Unconscious or Subconscious Mind, then you realize how powerful meditation can be in manifesting whatever you desire and deserve, for it is through meditation that we make that connection within Our Three Minds.
   Therefore, in the light of redefining meditation, I would like to add to the above definition:
3. to communicate with the Unconscious (or Subconscious) Self for the purpose of gaining insight into true purpose

Everyone I have spoken with that meditates on a regular basis talks about how well their life is going for them – no matter what circumstances they find themselves in. And in fact, those who meditate on a regular basis simply do not find themselves in any kind of negative circumstances.

Then there are those I speak with that meditate for awhile, then drift away from it and always say, “I need to get back to it.” And my answer for them is “When would NOW be a good time to get back to it?” Not so remarkable when I ask them how their lives were going when they were practicing meditation on a regular basis, they all always say their lives were better. Less stress – actually, no stress; less, or no drama; everything just seemed to flow better. Kind of like pulling the oars in and letting themselves just be “in the flow.”

Finally, there are those who are going to, “get around to it one of these days, I know I should do it, but I just can’t seem to find the time.” Again I say, “When would NOW be a good time to set a time, c’mon just set a time for tomorrow when you can take 10 minutes for your Self.” Sometimes they do, more often than not, they will “think about it.” Oh yeah, and those of you who say, “I just don’t know if I am doing it right. How do you know if you are doing it right?” My answer to that is, “There is no wrong way to meditate, you cannot not do it right!”

I recently spoke with a new friend on Facebook and we got around to talking about meditation, (imagine that) and she mentioned how she should get back to it – she used to sit and gaze out the window at the fabulous view she has and write in her journal. She never considered that as meditation; however, I implore you to check out my What is meditation? article to see how I am re-defining meditation. Once she realized that she was in that place of “bliss”, in the moment, everything was just fine, in fact nothing really mattered much but that moment she understood that it was indeed meditative. Do you, like me, ever have those moments – some call it daydreaming, or spacing out? I suggest you look at them as a form of meditation. Anyway, she came to realize that was indeed a meditative state and she is going to get back to it because it is so enjoyable. She also remembered her days seemed somehow a little less hectic when she did that in the mornings.

Therefore, based upon the above story, I suspect if you are reading this, you likely are in a meditative state much more often than you realize, you just haven’t put the label on it, yet.

In any case, I will likely add more here at a later date. In the meantime, if you have any thoughts about meditation, please send me a comment, let me know where you are with meditation – are you practicing on a regular basis, are you wanting to get started, but are not sure how, etc.

In the meantime, please read the rest of this series as well as my article Our Three Minds. I believe you will find it very helpful to explain why meditation works as well as it does and why meditation is so powerful.

“You see” said the old man, “this inner struggle is like two wolves fighting each other. One is evil, full of anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, deceit, false pride, superiority, and ego”.

“The other one,” he continued, poking the fire with a stick so that the fire crackled, sending the flames clawing at the night sky, “is good, full of joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith”.

For a few minutes his grandson pondered his grandfather’s words and then asked, “So which wolf wins, grandfather?”

“Well”, said the wise old chief, his lined face breaking into a wry smile, “The one you feed!”
This inner struggle happens in our Unconscious mind and both wolves are constantly waiting to be fed. So, please be more aware of which one you are feeding. Thank you.
Everyone I know that meditates at all does so with a positive mindset. Part of the purpose of meditation is to dispel any negativity and to help practice feeding our Unconscious Mind with only positive, self-reinforcing thoughts. Our thoughts are the food of our successes, or failures. What are you feeding your Self?

Where in your body does meditation work? All of it. You can use meditation to lower your blood pressure in a matter of minutes, if not seconds, so it works with your heart. Usually, when you meditate, you are doing some kind of breathing technique so it is working with the lungs. Slowing the heart-rate, bringing in more oxygen, relaxing the entire body as well as releasing any toxins that are in the muscles – so all in all meditation works with the entire body to bring it into balance, harmony, alignment.

One of the main focuses of meditation is upon the third eye. (The Third Eye is located just above your nose between your eyes.) When we use our imagination to visualize whatever it is we want to focus on, the third eye becomes active – the third eye is akin to a movie projector projecting images on the screen of your mind, your Unconscious Mind. The Conscious Mind cannot remember; however, the Unconscious Mind remembers everything.

What those of us that have been meditating for a long time already know is that it slows your heart rate, oxygenates the body, reduces stress, sharpens mental focus and helps you to gain power over your emotions. And perhaps, more than any other reason, it is just so dang relaxing!

So, there you go, no more excuses – everyone that meditates says their days go better when they meditate, they feel better, have more clarity, more focus, pretty much more of everything that is good. So again, why not?

PLUS, we can use meditation to communicate with our Three Selves. I think I am pretty safe in saying that everyone is familiar with the idea that we all have an Unconscious or Subconscious Mind, right? If not, please notify me via my contact page. And so it is, everyone knows we have one, but almost no one knows how to access it or how to communicate with it; it seems we are at the mercy of our Unconscious Minds, does it not? I am here now to dispel the idea that we cannot communicate with our Unconscious Minds; we can, we just didn’t know how. Now we do – see my free article Our Three Minds and check out the How page in this series for a further clarification. Understanding how our three minds all interact helps immensely with opening these lines of communication.

Have you seen the movie, The Secret? And, now that you know the ‘Secret’ you are still not manifesting the way you would like, is that a fair statement? I thought so – I hear it all the time; phrases like, “The Secret is a bunch of ………………………….!” Fill in the blank with any word that works for you, but in essence, it doesn’t work! Well kind of, the truth is The Secret does work – it is valid; the reason it does not seem to work is because we get in our own ways and don’t even know it. Why not? Because the key to The Secret lies within our Unconscious Minds and very few understand that and if they do, they don’t know how to change it.

That, my friends, is my goal of these pages, to help you understand how to communicate with your Self so that you can unleash The Secret and begin attracting the life you want. Oh, by the way, you are already doing that – attracting the life you want, that is. I know, it isn’t the life you “Think” you want, but it is however, the life you want. Once you delve into your Unconscious Mind and become aware of your paradigm, you will begin to understand how that is so. Note that not everything you ‘uncover’ are you going to like, or love. However, once you start uncovering and becoming aware, you will no doubt have a multitude of “Aha” moments, as in, “Oh, THAT’s why that happened the way it did!”

Is it easy? No, of course not, nothing of this magnitude is ever easy; however, it IS simple; and therein lays the beauty of it. All it really takes is practice. Once you know the basics of meditation, just continue to practice on a regular basis and you will find that it does indeed get easier; even to a point of being ‘second nature’, in other words you just enter a meditative state whenever necessary without really even thinking about it.

It is difficult at first because our paradigm; our Unconscious Minds’ programming is still too cluttered. THAT is why THIS process is so important, because you will learn how to go in and unclutter your Unconscious Mind. Free it up to receive all the new information that you want to present to it. A note of caution; you are already doing that. Again, I point you to my article Our Three Minds where I go into more detail about this. In a nutshell, everything you ‘say’ to yourself goes into the Unconscious Mind – it remembers EVERYthing! So, the next time you miss a putt on the golf course and mutter under your breath, or not under your breath, what does the Unconscious Mind hear? Yup – every word, but mostly whatever negative connotation you say. How do I know this? Simple, I used to do it. I stopped doing it – and yes, it is hard, but all it takes is practice, and I went from a 12 handicap to a 6 in a couple of months. If you are a golfer, you know how hard that is. The same is true no matter what you are doing, sports, computing, even shopping; think for a moment what came just before saying “….. should have…” with your Self-talk. Therein Ladies and Gentlemen is why you are not manifesting the way you think you should be. You are not worthy of it. I am not making that judgment, you are. Whenever you say something to your Self that includes “Should have” you are telling yourself that you made a mistake and you are less than, that you did it wrong, or it could have been done better. Does that make sense? If not, or you have anything else to say about all this, please visit my Contact page and let me know.

So… gee whiz, it sure took a long time to get here, huh? So Why meditate? So you can number one, come to know your Self better, actually… make that simply know your Self! Because until you truly know your Self, you are just basically cruising through life on auto-pilot, living according to your programming, which was given to you when? Yes indeed, when you were a child. As I said, our Unconscious Mind remembers EVERYthing while our Conscious Mind is lucky to remember what we had for breakfast this morning, unless breakfast is a habit and we have the same thing every day. The keyword here is ‘habit’; however, I am not going into that here and now, that is a further discussion which I will release at a later date. Enough is enough, already, right? Right!

While it is better to wait until you are fully awake in the morning before doing your meditation so you don’t fall back asleep; this is also the time when you are very receptive to receiving information. This is when we are in an ‘in-between’ state of awareness or consciousness, and the most receptive. This time does not last very long; however, meditation can help you extend it.
Okay, now that you agree that morning is a good time to meditate, and you have even set your alarm 10 minutes earlier so you can meditate – what should you meditate on, or about?

I believe that when first beginning to meditate there is nothing better than Dr. Wayne Dyer’s Manifest Your Destiny meditation. If you have not heard about it or read it, I highly recommend you do so at your earliest opportunity. In the meantime simply understand that the sound of creation is Aaaahhhh. So when you do your morning meditation, until you find another one, just continue to repeat the aaaaahhhh sound over and over while thinking about what it is you want to manifest. It should go like this, take deep breath into your core, your abdomen and slowly exhale making the Ahhh sound. Do this for a minimum of 10 minutes a day for 15 days and I believe by the end of the 15 days you will be quite pleasantly surprised.

For the evening meditation, you may stay with Dr. Wayne Dyer’s Manifest Your Destiny and simply do the “oms” for 10 minutes or so before you go to sleep. Actually, it is totally okay and acceptable to repeat “oms” while you are lying down and if you fall asleep while doing so, all the better. Do it the same as in the morning, take a deep breath into your abdomen and as you slowly exhale, say, “ooooommmmm.” As you are aware if you have read my article about Our Three Minds , then you already know whatever is your last thought before drifting off to sleep is what your Unconscious Mind works with all night long. So when you say your “ooommms” while thinking about what you wanted to manifest in the morning, you are feeding your Unconscious Mind that desire and it will work on manifesting it all night long. Now then, are you starting to see the advantage of doing this for a couple of weeks at a time?

To summarize the When of meditation – anytime is a good time, more is better, don’t get hung up on process or procedure, and if you simply take a few deep breaths whenever you think about it, you will be in a meditative state more often. Practice simple meditations until you become comfortable with how it feels to be totally relaxed. Once you recognize this feeling, you can reach it anytime you desire. You will find that you suddenly have less drama in your life, fewer people cutting you off in traffic, fewer incidents at the checkout, etc. So in short, life will be calmer and you will seem to be ‘in the flow’ more often than you are not. Keep meditating.

Now then, all that is left is to do it on purpose or with intent. The easiest way is to make sure you set aside some time. When you are first beginning to practice meditation, it really doesn’t matter how long, simply make sure you set aside some time where you will be totally alone with no external influences of any kind, no music, no television, no phones, no computer, etc. Make your meditation environment as quiet as possible.

I know it is very difficult when you have never done this before to do it for very long which is why I recommend setting aside only 20 minutes. If, for whatever reason, you cannot sit completely still for 20 minutes, then start with 10 minutes – the important thing is to set aside the time for the specific purpose of sitting quietly. It is perfectly acceptable to set an alarm for however long you want to meditate so you do not have the tendency to “peek” at a clock – just sit until the alarm goes off.

Once you have set your space and time and are ready to begin, simply take a few slow, deep breaths – I recommend breathing in through your nose, hold it for a second and exhale slowly through your mouth. With each breath, just allow your Self to relax.

Once you feel relaxed, simply say to your Self, “Please show me a good memory of my childhood.” Actually saying it is best, but even if you just say it silently, that is a good start. Once you have said that, just sit quietly. Pay attention to how you feel, what you feel, and where in your body you feel it. The first few times you may not ‘get’ anything; but stay with it and within a very short time you will start to remember something of your childhood that you haven’t thought about in a long time. Once that memory comes in, just allow it to unfold. I would bet “dollars to donuts”, as the saying goes, that once this happens you will likely sit there longer than the 10 or 20 minutes you allotted your Self.

Yes, there are a multitude of books, cds, dvds, etc. that explain how to meditate. You are certainly free to pursue them and spend a lot of time figuring out the best way to learn to meditate; please be careful that you do not spend all of your time “learning” and not meditating. That being said, I am not claiming that this is the best way to learn to meditate, rather, that I believe it to be the simplest. My goal is to help people to learn and practice meditation. It matters not to me how you learn or how you meditate, just please do your Self and the rest of humanity a favor and practice meditation on a regular basis.

There are also probably as many breathing techniques, postures, and other varieties of meditation, as there are people teaching them. I recommend that you delve into them if you are so inclined; however, please wait until you are comfortable just sitting quietly for at least a half-hour at a time, an hour would be better, but just be sure you are comfortable with being able to sit quietly before expanding on other ways to meditate.

Once you are comfortable sitting quietly for a period of time, then by all means, experiment to your heart’s content. As I said, there are innumerable ways to meditate and a myriad of different meditations. For example, you may want to do a crystal or gem stone meditation, a candle meditation, listen to music, etc. And finally, once you are more comfortable sitting or lying quietly, you will find you can meditate “ON” something; for example, you may have a decision to make or a challenge that needs a solution; meditation is a great way to arrive at the best answer or solution.

That is the engaging trait of mindfulness, the beginner’s mind. Not to be childish, but to be childlike in your experience of the world and each moment. To open your mind and your curiosity to the world around you is one of the key attitudes of mindfulness.

This openness and curiosity can only be achieved with awareness. If we let our days drift by without paying attention to them, we will miss moments that may make a difference of enrichment to our experience. Have you ever had the experience of arriving somewhere and realising that you have no recollection of the journey, how you got there, anything you may have seen en route, even if (perhaps most worryingly), you have driven yourself there in a car! We function so much on autopilot when we are carrying out routine tasks. Mindfulness asks us to take a stance of the beginner’s mind to ensure that we are aware throughout our lives. There are many inspirational quotes exhorting us to practice awareness as though our lives depend on it – which of course, they do.

“If you miss the present moment, you miss your appointment with life. That is very serious!”
Thich Nhat Hanh

“Do every act of your life as though it were the last act of your life.”
Marcus Aurelius

“Ardently do today what must be done. Who knows? Tomorrow, death comes.”
The Buddha

Back to our thoughts as we cherish every moment, we need to do this with curiosity, openness and no judgement. We tend to move through the world quickly, looking for the most effective path, not fully taking in each unique moment. Although this has benefits of efficiency, there is a downside to this pattern of behaviour. We can miss out on a lot of important things like new perspectives, ideas, or different approaches to problem solving. A beginner’s mind enables us to be open to possibilities, be more creative and connect with the people in our lives. This encourages others to engage with us, as they experience your interest in them and demonstrate your appreciation for their thoughts and ideas.

By having an open and curious mind, we can also free ourselves from expectations about future events based on past experiences, because no two events can be exactly the same. When we face the future, we sometimes use the image of coming with a ‘full cup’ or an ’empty cup’ to describe our attitude to facing something new. If we face up to any situation with a full cup, it means we have no room for a fresh perspective. At that moment, we are already full to the brim with our own preconceptions, there is no room for any new thoughts or ideas.

Observe yourself through your day and see if you are coming to your life with a ‘full cup’, unwilling to make space for new perspectives, ideas or opinions. If this is the case, consider if you can experience these situations with an ’empty cup’, bringing your beginner’s mind to the fore. Try opening your mind to your day-to-day activities and view them as if you had never experienced them before. Allow yourself to be just a little amazed by the ordinary, see the wonder in simple sensations, feelings and ideas.

The beginner’s mind takes practice, as all the attitudes do, but unlike some of them, this is an attitude that we have simply lost touch with, we were all children once!

It is perhaps easier to begin with what non-judgment is not, it is not lack of care, or distancing yourself so far from a situation that it cannot touch you. Being non-judgmental does not make you reckless and choose not to heed sensible safety precautions. It is not becoming cold or lacking in compassion.

Non-judgment is about being aware of the judgments that we make every day, all the time. Take a moment to be aware of the thoughts in your mind right now. How do you react to them? Often, we will respond with judgment to our thoughts and feelings – ‘this is good’ or ‘this is bad’; ‘this is right’ or ‘this is wrong’. Over time our responses become habitual and form an automatic response to specific thoughts or feelings.

This is one of the hardest concepts that mindfulness suggests, because we are programmed to judge from our earliest experiences. It’s not just what we think and feel, we also make judgments about taste, smell, texture, sound and sight. Some people are optimistic, preferring to look with a positive perspective on any situation or thought. We all have preferences and judging is deeply engrained into our psyche. From the word go people are judged and evaluated: good boy, good girl, and so on are the responses adults utter when children manage a new skill.

Jon Kabat-Zinn uses non-judging as part of his definition of mindfulness:

Mindfulness is awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally.

Awareness of our own thoughts and feelings is one of the approaches of mindfulness, but simply being aware of them is not enough to reduce their impact on us. Non-judging brings in the concept of acceptance (another mindfulness attitude) enabling us to live with our thoughts and feelings.

Consider for a moment the process of grieving. You may have experienced this for yourself or witnessed someone else going through it. There is no set timescale associated to the process, but it is generally recognised that there are various stages of grief that most people will endure. These are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. This article is not trying to address those stages, but the concluding stage, acceptance, is when we achieve peace and are able to live with the grief that will be part of our lives forever. Having personal experience of the loss of a parent whilst I was at a vulnerable age, I recognise that I will always miss my mother, be sad that she is not in my life, and indeed, missed so much of my life, but I am able to continue with that feeling as an accepted part of me. We readily accept that someone who has lost a loved one will be able to live with their feeling of grief, assigning no judgment to it. But we do not apply the same approach to any of our other emotions. We apply judgment to our other emotions, calling them good or bad. Anger is bad, joy is good, irritation is bad and so on. But these emotions are no more positive or negative than grief. We are making judgments about them based on the reactions we have and the situations we are in when we feel those emotions.

So how can we apply non-judgment, and what benefit does it bring to our lives? Mindfulness allows us to recognise emotions and be aware of the sensations they create in our bodies. Once we are aware of the sensations that these emotions create, we can be alerted to their presence and be prepared for the impact they have on us.

Awareness can act as an early warning system so that we can engage with our emotions through choice, instead by of habit or judgment. It is not always a bad thing to feel angry, however if our reaction to anger is always to be violent, that is unacceptable. If we can separate the emotion from the automatic response, we may be able to choose the response we make. In a situation where anger may cause violence, it may be easy to see that separating the emotion from the action is a benefit. What could be the benefit of separating other emotions from their response? Anxiety can cause our stress response to trigger unnecessarily, which is not healthy for our mental or physical well-being. If we can manage our reactions, we may be able to remain calm and choose our behaviour.

Most importantly, non-judgment is about accepting that it is all right to have feelings and acknowledging them, experiencing them and then being able to let them go. Thoughts and feelings are transient, they are our response to a situation, not the situation itself. Just as we can learn healthy eating habits or unlearn unhealthy habits, we can learn to have healthy thoughts and train our minds to make those habitual.

“We are what we repeatedly do.” Will Durant

“As it is not one swallow or a fine day that makes a spring, so it is not one day or a short time that makes a man blessed and happy.” Aristotle

This is why mindfulness is referred to as a practice, it is a journey of self-recognition, self-awareness, enabling us to build our self-esteem. Developing a non-judgmental mindset can help us to remain calm in a stressful situation. It can also help with everyday tasks, enabling greater focus, concentration and attention to our undertakings.

How can we engage with patience? Our western culture is based on speed, we travel fast, we have machines to help us find the shortest route or the quickest route; we have fast food, or food on the go; we work on fast internet, high speed 3G to 4G to 5G; we have fast access to our bank accounts and use instant cashless transactions for ease and speed; we have fast domestics tasks, with automation and machines for cleaning and washing our homes and clothes, all to save us time and effort. We are not encouraged to stop and take our time our anything, so patience is not something we practice regularly.

One of the best ways to engage with patience is to observe the natural world. There are very few things in the natural world that happen instantly. Growing a plant from seed is an excellent example of patience, it can be an extremely rewarding experience. Many people find interaction with plants is a relaxing activity, gardening or growing food teaches us to wait and observe. Interacting with nature by simply walking through it has also been shown to be beneficial. Physical activity in the form of a forty-minute walk in the forest is associated with improved mood and feelings of health and robustness. Studies have been done that show that ‘forest bathing’ (being in the presence of trees and woodland) reduced the levels of the stress hormone cortisol in test subjects after a walk in the forest, when compared with a control group of subjects who engaged in walks within a laboratory setting. Forest bathing seems to significantly mitigate the root cause of a multitude of ailments associated to stress. It prompts rest, conserves energy, and slows down the heart rate while increasing intestinal and gland activity. Lower cortisol concentrations are also a signal that the body’s stress-response system is being triggered less. Have a slow walk in the forest, be aware of the timeline of trees, measured in lifetimes for us, maybe the ultimate in our experience of patience.

A moment of taken out of our busy lives to make time to engage with nature is one way to include patience in our lives. The response we get and the benefits we receive may not be immediate, but the effects will be noticeable over time. Any opportunity we take to slow down and just observe the moment, stopping ourselves from chasing the future (which may never happen) is a chance to practice patience. Mindfulness practices encourage us to stop and focus on being aware of the present, not wishing our time away.
Along with the scientific research into ‘forest bathing’, research also supports the inclusion of patience as a health benefit of mindfulness. The virtue of patience is that it enables us to accept that time has to pass before benefits are achieved.

There has been considerable research into the benefits of embracing mindfulness, which has shown that the effects are cumulative over time. Most training sessions extend over an eight-week period, based on regular guided weekly sessions and personal daily practice. The calming influence of mindfulness practice on our emotions takes time and patience to develop. A study of the 8-week MBSR course for nurses showed that their mindfulness practice facilitated empathetic attitudes while decreasing their tendency to take on other people’s negative emotions [Beddoe & Murphy, (2004)].

Patience is a form of wisdom. It demonstrates that we understand and accept the fact that sometimes things must unfold in their own time. A child may try to help a butterfly to emerge by breaking open its chrysalis. Usually, the butterfly doesn’t benefit from this. Any adult knows that the butterfly can only emerge in its own time, that the process cannot be hurried.
Jon Kabat-Zinn

Every time we practice mindfulness, we are engaging in patience. Awareness of the passage of time, allowing ourselves to experience time without striving or rushing onto the next thing often feels selfish but it is not. Self-care is critically important, taking time for our own wellbeing means we are able to support others. Being mindful and patient with our awareness journey will allow us to experience it fully.

The process of acceptance begins with the willingness to see things exactly as they are in the present moment. Acceptance is not about resignation. It is about courage. It is about the courage to look a situation right in the eye and say: “Yes, I have this issue.” Much like alcoholics first need to recognise that they have a problem before they can do something about it, so do we need to accept that we have an issue and not trying to cover it up. By not covering it up, that is not for other people but not covering it up for ourselves. Trying not to live in a self-imposed denial.
Can you keep your attention focused exactly here and now, taking each moment as it comes and connecting with whatever presents itself? Often, to be able to accept what comes into awareness, you must pass through periods of intense feelings such as anger, fear, or grief. These feelings themselves require acceptance. Acceptance means seeing things exactly as they are rather than as you think they are or as you think they should be.

Remember, things can only change in the present moment. You have to see things as they are and yourself as you are in this moment if you wish to change, heal, or transform yourself or your life. So developing an understanding of acceptance and willingness to experience your emotions is critical to enabling change. Much of our mindful awareness practice is targeted towards developing the ability to remain in the present. However, being in the present without accepting what we find there will undermine our ability to benefit from our practice.

The act of acceptance includes softening and opening to what is here. Allowing ourselves to engage with the present, fully with complete acceptance, is an act of concentration and focus. However, it should be comfortable, the sense of struggle should be released. By ceasing to deny and to fight with the way things are now, the strange thing about acceptance is that by giving up on all the energy we were using, our energy is freed to tackle the situation with some freshly gained insight.

An important realisation of acceptance is that it does not mean you have to like everything or that you have to take a passive attitude. Often people mistake acceptance for tolerance or submission. It does not mean you have to be satisfied with things as they are, or that you have to stop trying to change things for the better. As we are speaking of it here, acceptance simply means willingness to see things as they are, deeply, truthfully, and completely. This attitude sets the stage for acting in the most potent and healthy way in your life, no matter what is happening.

This is not a revelation which belongs only to mindfulness, many of us will remember the poem “If” by Rudyard Kipling (an extract which sums up acceptance):

If you can dream-and not make dreams your master;
If you can think-and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;
It is not an easy option, it requires patience and practice. Acceptance enables us to make choices with the full facts at our disposal, with an objectivity which means that we can make the best decisions possible. The stoic approach which tells us to be concerned about only those things over which we have control requires the acceptance to understand what we can control. The words of the “Serenity Prayer” by Reinhold Niebuhr is another example of acceptance.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can,
and wisdom to know the difference

You do not have consider this as a prayer, if you do not have that kind of spiritual belief, the concept of acceptance is still valid.
All of the mindfulness attitudes support each other, with acceptance supporting our non-judgement and non-striving to remain mindful and aware.