Explore your inner world
Explore your inner world
The analogy of two farmers is a story explaining how cultivating mindfulness as an open quality of awareness in our everyday life can be of help. This post is a revisiting of a previous post with the difference that it includes a video and a further reflection on the previous one. Mindfulness technique and …
Cultivating Mindfulness: The Analogy of Two Farmers Read More »
There are times when we might feel as if we are at the mercy of thoughts and our minds. Join me on Insight Timer in a workshop where we will explore the unsettled mind and engage with this notion of being at the mercy of thoughts and thinking and how easy it is to get …
Workshop – Recognizing and Settling The Unsettled Mind Read More »
The basis of meditation practice is familiarising ourselves with the mind, how easy it is to get lost in compulsive thinking, noticing such and gently bringing the mind back to our present experience. This is said to cultivate mindfulness, but doing this mechanistically would reduce meditation to an attentional practice. The Buddhist monk NYANAPONIKA THERA …
Following is the podcast of the conversation between Spiritual Blogger and Author Vasundhra Gupta and Clayton Micallef discussing the questions; What is and is not meditation? Is meditation suitable for everyone, and if in certain situations or for certain people meditation might not work and practising it might result in adverse experiences? Is Meditation Suitable …
Meditation Conversations: Is Meditation Suitable for Everyone Read More »
Our sense of self refers to a set of characteristic and personal attributes that we feel define us. It is made up of what we see as those set of characteristics that distinguishes us from others. Our personality traits, physical qualities and abilities, personal likes and dislikes (preferences), beliefs, and moral codes and motivations all …
We breathe in and breath out, but there lay a subtle pause between the in-breath and out-breath. Our breath is made of three parts our in-breath, the pause between the in-breath and out-breath and the out-breath itself. These together form the breath in a cyclical manner that is ever-changing as no in-breath and out-breath is …
Noticing the Pause Between In-breath and Out-breath Guided Meditation Read More »
Our mind has an innate tendency to wander off, incessantly into thinking. At any one moment as if on impulse, we might find ourselves either thinking about worrying or mulling over the past or trying to anticipate the future or just daydreaming in the present. Such a state of mind detracts us from our present …
To fully understand what is the difference between Samatha and Vipassana meditation. It is crucial to distinguish that meditation practices lay on a continuum. From those that use concentrating on a single object to steady the mind to reach a state of absorption called calm-abiding. To those who employ concentration and calm-abiding to look into …
What Is The Difference Between Samatha And Vipassana Meditation Read More »
When it comes to teaching mindfulness the memories of kindness meditation practice is one of the introductory techniques we use to explore and cultivate kindness in our lives. This post will give a general overview of why we do the memories of kindness meditation, the stages we go through in the memories of kindness practice …
We can all agree that pain is an unpleasant feeling. Because of this, researchers are on a constant search for pharmaceuticals or psychological behavioural intervention to help with the symptoms of pain. Meditation is one such psychological intervention, and meditation teachers have long time argued that meditation might help with the symptoms of pain by …
Mindfulness has been extensively used as a psychotherapeutic intervention for persons facing emotional distress because of a medical condition, and a recent literature review on mindfulness and infertility problems published in the journal of Human Reproductive Sciences by Patel et al. (2020) asked can mindfulness help increase coping with infertility problems. Coping with infertility problems …
Can Mindfulness Help Increase Coping With Infertility Problems Read More »
The word gratitude comes from the Latin term “gratus”, which means “thankful, pleasing.” Therefore, in its simplest form, to be grateful is to have an appreciation and express thankfulness and moral philosophers have throughout the ages asked the question is gratitude a virtue? However, when we approach gratitude as a virtue, there is more to gratitude …
Stress can drain our mental resources, and during challenging times we can end up stuck in our habitual patterns of reacting. Because of such repeated patterns of responding, we might, at times, react mindlessly to situations presenting themselves. This might not be a skilful way to deal with situations that require us to stop and …
The United Nation urges us that we need to – fight climate change like coronavirus – with the same resolve and determination we are showing in the fight against this imminent threat the new coronavirus. Unfortunately, although both COVID-19 and climate change are an existential threat to humanity, it seems that we are reacting slowly …
UN Urges Us To Fight Climate Change Like Coronavirus Read More »
With the WHO finally calling the spread of the coronavirus COVID-19 a global pandemic, we find ourselves in an unprecedented situation and tiring times. As suddenly with such statement, the coronavirus COVID-19 became an issue affecting the whole world and every one of us as individuals in one way or another. So what can we …
The Golden Rule and the Coronavirus COVID-19: Compassion is the Key Read More »
While researching online, I came across research articles arguing how meditation can help in ending “the cycle of violence” and help achieve world peace through the cultivation of mindful awareness (Brantmeier, 2007; Tanabe, 2016). Although going through some social media posts on meditation, you might also get the perception of meditation being like “some kind …
Ending The Cycle of Violence: Can Meditation Help World Peace? Read More »
Frequently I think of world peace as the absence of war. But is it? Let’s consider the prospect that all the countries in the word agree to reduce their armies and weapons arsenals to the bare minimum. You might argue that we could have peace. However, what stops anyone of those countries from breaking the …
In our previous post on being “non-judgemental”, we looked at the workings of the “judging mind” and how an overtly judgemental mind can be very taxing and controlling and can leave you feeling stuck in life. Meditation, through the cultivation of mindfulness, presents an alternative to such a mode of existence through the application of an …
Non-Judgemental (Part 2): What Does It Mean To Be Non-Judgemental? Read More »
Is this good bad or neutral? Most of the time, we go through our days judging our life experiences, the people we encounter, ourselves and our actions. So I asked myself this question – “Am I judgemental?” – “Could it be that being judgemental is our default setting?” Personally, in today’s connected world many times …
Non-Judgemental (Part 1): Is Being judgemental our default setting? Read More »
Impermanence is also known as the philosophical problem of constant change. Reflect nothing remains the same and everything is in continuous flux, even your breath from moment to moment is different so much so that your next breath can be your last. The paradox with impermanence is that although we know change happens, we still …
It’s not the first time that thousands of academics united to urge people to take action on climate change. Personally, I agree with the scientists. I don’t think that at present we are talking about climate change but about a climate crisis an emergency that is endangering every one of us — even you who …
Climate Change? Wake Up It’s a Climate Crisis an Emergency Scientists Warn Read More »
Image credit to BD Hypno Plus Mindfulness is the first step the vehicle through which we become mindful. Mindfulness is like a light that shines out in the dark, allowing us to become mindfully aware of our thoughts and feelings. How these affect our behaviour towards ourselves, other people and our surroundings. Mindfulness and being …
STOP – What does mindfulness and being mindful mean? Read More »
“A human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind” (Killingworth & Gilbert, 2010, p. 932). This was the concluding statement of a study on mind wondering which found that we spend as much as 50% of our lives lost in thinking. This can have negative effects on our mental, …
Finding a Suitable Anchor of Attention in Meditation Read More »
When someone does you wrong in life, do you keep holding onto it or try to forgive. But what is forgiveness? Is forgiveness an exercise which benefits are for the other person or yourself? Let’s reflect on these. Forgiveness, in reality, isn’t “really” about someone else’s harmful behaviour but how you keep relating to it. It’s a reflection …
Have you ever heard the story of the lotus flower growing out of the mud in the lake? It is a myth about the seed of compassion which lies dormant buried in the mud at the bottom of the lake and inside each one of us. It might lay there for a whole lifespan, totally …
In the first and second article of this three-part series, we looked at what might be the cognitive processes at work in attentional and constructive meditation practices. We saw that attentional meditation practices help us cultivate a degree of emotional regulation. With constructive meditation practices using the cultivated emotional regulation to build onto and change …
In our second blog on our search for the one called God, we finished with the prospect that we can find God within us, in the good around us and others. In the process of preparing for the third blog of this 3-part series, I revisited some of my own earlier works (see John, 2010). …
When God Delays to Answer: CHAOS vs ORDER (Part 3) Read More »
The nurturing of virtuous qualities has been a common endeavour of various philosophical and contemplative traditions (Eifring, 2015; Gethin, 1998). Constructive meditation practices were one of the methods developed and used by these traditions to foster the cultivation of a virtuous ethic. As with attentional meditation practices, constructive practices, need meta-awareness but they also serve …
Constructive Meditation practices: The Fascinating cognitive processes at work (Part 2) Read More »
In our first blog on our search for the one called god, we finished with the question. What, or where is the God that Christians believe in? And last month I came across a short reflective paragraph online by a Maltese priest friend of mine which gave me some moments of thought: “We have insisted …
One Sublime God: So What or Where is God? (Part 2) Read More »
Meditation and mindfulness practices have been a subject of research for both cognitive and neuroscientists. In recent years research in such area has gained traction towards trying to understand the possible cognitive processes involved in meditation practices. This to attempt to classify them into a basic taxonomy according to the cognitive processes in common between …
Meditation attentional practices: The Fascinating cognitive processes at work (Part 1) Read More »