When we make space for a formal mindfulness meditation sitting, we often bring our intentions to our practice. Whilst intentions are extremely important, we need to be especially aware of hidden intentions of the problem we are trying to unblend from. Our intentions can become weaponised against us, thereby restraining us from our preferred practice.
We don’t want to assume what place within ourselves the distraction is coming from, so for the purpose of this post let’s call it the Distractor.
How will you know about the Distractor’s attempts at undermining your intentions?
If you’re an intermediate sitter, you will be familiar with the monkey mind trying to distract you from peeking into wounded and protective parts. However, deepening the practice will require greater discernment of the Distractor’s more subtle tactics.
You may be heavily routinised around your mediation, or extremely rigid with how long your sits are, or have an intense drive to make a mindful commitment to yourself.
Yes, these self-strategies can have a place in mindfulness for certain problems. However, every strategy we use can be undermined if we’re not careful.
For example, we may bring into our practice an intention of non-judgement towards sitting with an inner critic. We may decide to commit ourselves for 20 minuntes every day to sitting with this uncomfortability. Though this is a great place to start, the Distractor may:
– Take owenership of the intention by convincing you to believe you ‘need’ the practice to function
– Use the practice to calm another part of you, thereby bypassing sitting with uncomfortability
– Convince you to forgo other important things in your life that contribute to your wellness and balance by rigidly conforming to practice
These are just a few examples.
How do I work with this?
There are certainly a few ways. You can ask yourself:
– Is this intention coming from a place ‘I am broken’, or ‘I need to heal’. The former comes from a wounded and protective place, whereas the latter comes from a place of preferred Self.
– Critically reflect on any rigidity in your practice. Weigh up the pro’s and con’s. Sometimes there is a place for rigidity, other times it causes further harm.
– Am I sitting with uncomfortability or am I just soothing it? Soothing/calming can be a consequence from minfulness, but not the primary aim. Soothing in itself has an important function, but it doesn’t lead us to resolution of the injured parts of ourselves.
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