Mindfulness and meditation for success and growth
Mindfulness is a tool that we all can use to make the journey our lives successful and maintain focus within to maintain balance
To impart the lesson of mindfulness, the Buddha shared a fable. Once there lived two acrobats who shared a teacher and student relationship and were also partners in performing street shows to earn enough to eat.The teacher tells his student once that they both should watch each other during the act to maintain the intense focus and balance; this shall prevent any accident and they will also make enough money to eat. But the little girl was very wise and she said, “Dear master, I think it would be better for each of us to watch our own self. To look after oneself also means to look after both of us. With this approach, I am sure we will avoid any accidents and will surely bring ourselves enough earnings to eat.” Now here, watching oneself or looking after oneself symbolizes mindfulness. This fable imparts the life lesson that taking care of oneself (which represents being mindful) is the most important thing one can do to take care of others. In a spiritual sense, once we are nurturing our own body and mind through mindfulness, we are naturally more attuned to giving warmth, positivity, and loving-kindness to those around us. It also fulfills our intrinsic need to help others and add value into their lives.
Mindfulness as a concept along with its benefits
Mind is a multi-dimensional and many-layered entity in itself. The complexity of our brain allows us to process tons of information, sometimes all at once, making it restless, scattered, distracted, all over the place, and pulled in many directions. But when it is talked to, tamed, and trained through certain practices, the monkey nature of mind begins to change and it starts to learn ‘the art of sitting still.’
Mindfulness is that master practice which fosters stillness within an individual. Although, it is an expansive term but essentially it means being aware of oneself and the fabric of all life at multiple levels. Mindfulness is also a type of meditation that encourages one to indulge intensely in the process of witnessing one’s breathing, sensations, and feelings in the body, whilst remaining objective and colourless which is taking the seat of an observer and looking at things from afar, a space of no judgment or interpretation of whatever is the object of mind at that moment. The benefits of mindfulness meditation are countless. Some of them are:
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It can make one a master of their own mind
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It increases the quotient of compassion and empathy in one’s being
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It makes one understand and relate to other human beings better. But first, it makes one learn about one’s own habit patterns and grooves of personality.
In a larger scheme of things, the benefits of mindfulness meditation expand the heart’s capacity to make the right choices, which can also be kind at the same time as it eliminates the need of ‘having’ to choose one over the other.
About the author
Navni Chawla is a writer of Life Positive. She considers writing as a means to consult her deeper self. She has written a compilation of poems and wishes to pursue fictional storytelling soon. Her other interests are cooking, singing, being in front of the camera, leading life itself with a child’s heart.
