According to the Chinese calendar, the Year of the Ox begins on February 12th. In the meantime, the year of the Mouse is in the yard. During the transitional period between the first and second, we may feel insecure and confused. Mindfulness practices will help you prioritize and understand where to go.
We all sometimes have to find ourselves in situations in which we do not want to be. When there is too much activity around, we want silence. When it’s too quiet, you want movement, change. The situation is aggravated by the fact that, according to Taoist ideas about the world order, we are now moving from the era of Po (corporeality) to the era of Hong (spirituality).
This transition began last year. First of all, it manifested itself in the fact that we began to put the social benefit above the personal one. We have experienced the consequences of one big problem all over the world, and we will have to deal with them together. Plus, there is a transition from one year to another – from the Mouse to the Ox, and it will end in mid-February, after the Chinese New Year.
Therefore, feelings in the style of “I don’t understand anything”, “I don’t like it here, give me something new”, “what a mess, when it ends” prevails for many. From this state of unresolved, incompleteness, misunderstanding, I want to move to clarity as soon as possible and start acting according to the plan (which has not yet fully taken shape). How to do it?
The main principle of meditation
Meditation works great with the state of dissatisfaction. When it seems that our only desire is to escape from this reality to any other (at least to fall asleep and sleep until spring), meditation suggests stopping, stop looking for escape routes and dive into the moment. Because if you look at the situation from the outside, it turns out that in spite of everything, every moment of our life is unique, unrepeatable, beautiful in its own way, and thus valuable.
Our mind offers us hundreds of different arguments for and against the fact that everything is really fine with us. But this does not relieve the tension in which we find ourselves, if we are weighed down by unfinished business, incomprehensible situations, lack of confidence and plans. You can explain the “pluses” to yourself ad infinitum – you will simply waste your energy not only on experiences, but also on their analysis and on pretense like “everything is actually fine, I’m happy.” Such thoughts take more energy than the negative situation itself.
Meditation helps to find harmony in the current moment at the level of sensations, without any explanation of the reasons. And such a stay in the moment, unity with what is now, will fill you with strength, and will not take them away.
Probably, situations happened to you when you suddenly plunged into a state of rest and received a charge of strength. Just like that, for no reason. For example, I have a friend who did not go well at work, her personal life did not work out, and somehow she returned home, and a pipe burst in the bathroom. So much so that it was necessary to do a global repair after that. In horror, she turned off the water, wiped the puddles, called a specialist. And then she sat down on the washing machine and began to watch how water dripped from the pipe onto the floor, flowed down the tile, how the light of the lamps was reflected in it …
Then, without leaving this state, she began to choose a new tile – to create a new, beautiful, dazzling bathroom.
Meditation—particularly the Taoist meditation of Shen Jen Gong—teach you that if you feel like you are stuck in some layer of reality from which there is no way out, dive even deeper into it. Feel it. Find harmony, silence, light of this space. And come what may!
Simple meditation for beginners
How to start meditating? It does not require any special equipment or training. Just sit with a straight back and focus on two factors:
- Relaxed language. When we have a lot of thoughts spinning in our head, our speech system prepares to express them. It is worth relaxing the tongue, as thoughts slow down and silence can be heard. That is what we are looking for: being silent is meditation.
- Breath. Don’t slow it down or speed it up, just count your breaths. If thoughts appear between counts, follow them with your attention and return to your breath. Try doing this exercise for three minutes. And do not expect big changes from him: the more everyday, routine this activity becomes for you, the better.
The more regular your practice is, the easier it will be for you to stay in the current moment, accept it, clarify and find true, deep harmony in what is happening in your life now.