Tag Archives: meditation

Most of us drive vehicles almost every day. Even if we are not actually driving, we travel sometimes in situations when it is not possible to read or do some other work. These are the small holes in the consciousness when past memories, or experiences, esp. the painful ones, seep in our mind and grab our attention. Normally we are not unhappy, sad or hyperemotional when we are engaged. These emotions are prevalent only when we have nothing to focus our attention to. But if we are completely focused on the present, we will not have any space for these residual thoughts.

Now driving needs so much attention. You need to be careful and alert all the time and this compulsion can create stress of conflict when your mind wants to focus on something else. We feel stressed only when we feel out of control when there are too many things to handle together. When we are worried or anxious, this need for attention on driving a vehicle has an additional taxing effect on the mind. Driving, esp. on busy roads or during the traffic jams can be even more stressful. This is the reason why many people prefer to get driven to work rather drive themselves if they can afford it.
It is a well-known truth that most of the accidents happen because of carelessness or due to a lack of focus.

Mental chatter takes over while driving because driving again is a process that can be done automatically. So there is an opportunity for the mind to start its chatter. And most of the time this chatter arises from negative feelings. We constantly try to find a solution to our problems by constant churning of thoughts in our minds. This churning eventually deepens our impressions. No solution comes out of such churning. A phase in Tulsidas Ramayana says “You cannot get butter by churning water”. Thus all this effort is wasted. This failure ignites anger and turns on the negative thought process. Therefore, there is a huge possibility that this anger will turn into road rage if any suitable condition arises. Mindfulness is an indispensable tool for road safety for us and for the others. 

Another evil of driving, road rage is a complete absence of awareness. It is when the animalistic emotions take charge of our actions. However, no gross emotion like anger, grief, obsession can take control of our mental faculty.

Mindfulness is about seeing things as they are. This practice is helpful for both a normal person and as well as for a person with some phobia associated with roads or traffic. This type of mindfulness is also helpful in recovering from some kind of emotional shock or trauma regarding a terrible road accident.

I have a personal experience related to driving mindfulness. It can be called be better called an accident mindfulness J

I used to have Luna, a very old model of a two-wheeler when I was in school. I used to be constantly absorbed in thoughts almost all the time of the day, even while driving. It was a bad time, my father expired recently and I used to be very worried about an entrance exam that I was aiming at. I desperately wanted to pass the exam to make my mom feel happy. However, I really hated studying most of the subjects. And so I used to be stressed all the time. When I look back at the way I used to drive as a student, I am able to understand that miracles do happen; otherwise, I won’t be alive today.

One day, as I was driving recklessly as usual. I don’t remember what exactly happened before the accidents. That road used to be full of dogs so most probably some dogs or something else came in front of my bike. I must have been driving at a high speed. I used the front brakes to stop the bike and the rear wheels went up in the air, throwing me in the air (I used to be very thin and underweight). And suddenly I was flying! It was a moment that I remember vividly. I can still feel that moment. I felt as if I could change anything at that moment, in fact, everything will happen according to me. I could hear the whizzing of my bike, the rushing air, and all sorts of sounds and still, it was all very quiet as if this realm of sound is a very small piece of a huge existence. That moment felt like never-ending. I did not feel fear or joy, or anything at all. I was not numbed with shock. I actually felt and still remember each and every detail, as if it is all happening right now. I feel on the divider of the road on my back. I should have fallen on my head. I remember one of my acquaintances had a similar accident. She hit the road divider hard and broke both her legs.  I don’t know how I was able to turn in the air. I did fall on the divider but fell on the muddy part. Only the end of my backbone hit the hard cemented border and it did pain for a few days. 

Since that accident, I have never had any fear of accidents. Nor do I get angry or anxious during a long wait on a jammed road. 

We see in movies or animation how ninjas are able to jump from a mountain and land safely on the ground. Or walk on trees as if they are walking on the hard ground. Or jump long distances or even fly in the air! Now I think that it is all possible. With mindfulness, you can enter into the control room of nature and make the laws of nature work your ways.

How to practice driving mindfulness.

In On-road mindfulness, we can have 2 situations – one when we are driving a vehicle, another when we are sitting in a vehicle and have absolutely nothing to do. 

Like all mindfulness practices, here I am providing a set of standard rituals for driving mindfulness. However, mindfulness is a completely personalized experience and I hope that these basics can help you find your own way eventually.

The steps described below are akin to a staircase for reaching an understanding of driving mindfulness. It also helps us to understand that mindfulness can become as natural to us as breathing. We breathe all the time and do not have to set aside some time for it, like the way we do it for meditation.

Driving Mindfulness

Be aware of your hands turning the keys of your car. Feel the steel touch of the keys. Consciously hear the starting sound of the car. Observe if it is different from other days.

Feel your hands on the steering wheel.

Observe carefully what is in front of you without thinking anything good or bad about it. It is unnatural to suppress thoughts, however, you can be so focused that the thoughts don’t grab your complete attention.

Feel the car and your body moving to different directions as you start driving.

Feel the air moving inside the car (if the windows are not closed)

If you are too engrossed in useless thoughts or are feeling negative, try listening to your favorite music (preferably light and positive music).

If you are mentally relaxed, try not to put on the music and just be aware of everything around you.

Feel the metallic keys as you stop the car. Feel the subtle push forward as you stop your car.

The mind is like a servant who behaves the way he is trained. If you have trained your mind to think without any objective, then it will keep doing so. In the process, it will drain your energy. Let us take the example of a friend who talks incessantly. If you continue to hear his blabbering, it increases in volume. But if you treat his endless chatter like an uninvited conversation and stop paying attention to it, gradually the chatter dies away.    

Initially, you will start noticing objects and your mind will present you with unrequired thoughts and ideas.

For example, if you happen to pass by a beautiful woman wearing a hot red dress, your mind can give you thousands of thoughts about her. But if you just notice the chatter without doing anything about it, it will end. There is a huge difference between noticing and paying attention. When we listen to a toddler blabbering or a car engine starting, we just notice the sounds produced. We just acknowledge their presence without actually doing anything about them. We don’t respond to them in any way, neither do we think about the sound of the baby or the car engine, unless there is something really peculiar about them. But when we are in a business meeting, we are actually paying attention. We consciously retain and mentally process all suitable information that we come across.

“Vivek” or discretion to choose the rights things to process is the process as well as the incidental result of mindfulness. Through mindfulness, we are telling our mind that there is no need to process everything. We can choose what we want our mind to process. Thus ‘Vivek” is a mental scanning process that accumulates useful information for the mind to process. And it can happen only in the space provided by mindfulness. 

Such “Vivek” is a 100% protection against any kind of accidents because there is always a way to avoid them. With mindful driving, you would connect with the cosmos and always know the right thing to do, under any circumstances.

It is not a great idea to expect instant mindful experience when you are a beginner. It is natural that above mentioned is the exact situation when you will need mindfulness the most! But let us treat mindfulness like a tree. You cannot expect fruits immediately after sowing the seeds. So let us not allow this tender seedling to wither away in hot and dry conditions. Gradually, as you sharpen your tool of mindfulness, you will be able to experience mental normalcy in the most drastic situations. Therefore, if you are just out of a hot business debate in a disturbed or angry mood and driving back home, it is better to cool down with light music or jokes, rather than trying to apply mindfulness.

Mindful Traveling

This is a situation when you are not exactly driving a medium of transport but are being transported, for example, a train or a bus journey. There can be situations when you don’t have anything to do. Instead of too much use of electronic gadgets like mobile phones, laptops etc. on such long journeys; you can try to practice traveling mindfulness.

The following steps can help you to get a glimpse of traveling mindfulness. In the end, mindfulness is mindfulness, whether it is applied during traveling, sleeping or eating!

Feel your movement as you move inside a train or a bus.

Notice yourself walking towards your seat, parking your luggage and getting seated. It can be a haphazard or relaxed process.

Observe yourself seated in your place.

The most important factor in mindfulness is that we don’t have to focus our attention on something outside. We have to treat ourselves as a part of the whole and try to mindfully observe the whole!

Some people face travel anxiety. They fear the travel, about turning off the lights in the house, about forgetting important things on the journey, about losing things. They might be suffering from travel anxiety. They might also fear fatal accidents. These fears spring not from the immediate reality but from some deep-seated prejudices or disturbing past experiences. But if you are connected with your present moment, such useless thoughts or emotions will fail to grab your attention.

With the constant practice of mindfulness, you will observe yourself in a relaxed and unhurried mode while traveling. You will fail to forget important things to keep like the train tickets or to switch off the electronic appliances or to make important phone calls before traveling and so on and so forth. You will be able to apply a travel plan almost up to 100% in real life!  

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Sleep is one of the 3 pillars of health, according to ancient Indian medicine, Ayurveda. Therefore, good quality of sleep is indispensable for good health. Unfortunately, most of us have improper sleep on most of our nights. There are many reasons for improper sleep, hyperactive brain, stress, anxiety, fear, anger, and other negative emotions can drastically degrade the quality of our sleep. Sleep quality is not great for most of us and the reason might vary from person to person.

Good quality of sleep cannot be compartmentalized as a separate part of our day. We cannot switch on good sleep after a bad day. Ideally, It can be an incidental result of a peaceful day. Therefore, moment to moment mindfulness helps to create a deep rejuvenating sleep at the end of the day. it is better to correct an emotional slip within a few minutes, rather than planting it as a thorny bush in your mind and letting it grow till the night. Therefore, when all religious texts ask us to forgive the mistakes of others, it is more for our immediate good rather than anyone else’s. No one sleeps better than a forgiving person.    

However, sometimes we do have very bad days. Sometimes, it is difficult to forget or forgive some people immediately. But it is always possible to steer away from the sad memory and find a safe emotional place to tackle it. This is not an escapist approach. In case you have your house on fire, you would first get away from the fire and then try to put it off. There is no sense in standing in the middle of the flames and trying to find a solution. Even if you don’t follow mindfulness the whole day, saving emotional stress is a great practice not only to ensure a great sleep but also a very peaceful day. Find more about it under the heading – anxiety and anger management.

You might have ample justifiable reasons for bad sleep. But let’s not dwell on the reasons for long. In order to remove the darkness, we do not need to think of its reasons; we need to focus on lighting the lamp. Let’s make a resolution to improve the quality of our sleep and have a fresh look at the following awesome ways that we all already know about.

Ways to a mindful sleep

The right time to sleep

The best time to sleep is a few hours (2-3 hours) after the sunset. However, we can make our own time table according to our convenience. However, it is important to be punctual for the bed. For many people, night appears to be the most relaxing time, when they can actually focus and work. Many people work at night and sleep during the day. But the long term effects of this unnatural behavior are bad health and rapid aging.

Some workaholic people are not able to stop working or thinking about it even during night time. However, this extra mental exertion hardly gives us anything except the satisfaction of extra time devoted to work. Whatever is important and worth thinking can be worked upon in 5 hours of daytime. All extra hours we normally put in work might results in low productivity over the years. Looks like these extra hours work on the law of diminishing returns. They constantly decrease in productivity as they increase in number. Therefore, it makes sense to halt the work when it is time to rest.
 Consider sleep as important as a business meeting and pay equal respect to it. Let us be mindful of the important role sleep plays in our lives. We are truly in the hands of God, when we are sleeping. In ancient Indian tradition, sleep is considered to be a goddess that rejuvenates all the creatures. When we are mindful of sleep, we can approach sleep as a pious ritual instead of a by-product of daily metabolism.

Gratefulness

In spite of all kinds of problems in my life, I have had a very peaceful sleep for most of my life. This was sole because of a feeling of gratefulness that I had while I went to sleep. I am averse to cold things, cold weather or anything cold. Therefore, when I went to sleep at night and I had a warm blanket to cover myself, I felt that the blanket is actually God’s love that covers me. In childhood and teenage, most of my days were not great. As I used to lay in my bed, I used to feel so happy that the day is over now and I have no liability for tomorrow as no one knows about it. Only when I got a job and I had more than I ever had, I forgot about this subtle ritual and gradually drifted towards sleepless nights. I forgot about the blanket, as I started taking it for granted. Instead, I kept thinking about all the things that have gone bad and all other things that might go worse. I drifted to sleep in a resentful and angry mood. And what followed was even worse. When I hit the worst possible, then I remembered about the blanket and the warmth that I have always had. Now I feel that we invite problems because we fail to learn and improve without them. I could have gone from good to great, but I chose to move in a downward spiral because a few things were not going according to me.  

Bottom-line, gratefulness is the single most important quality that can change your perspective about things, make you happy and peaceful in a moment, and feel abundant and satisfied.

Music

Light cheerful music is a great way to move towards sleep time if you are tensed or frustrated. It makes sense to start playing a devotional song or soft music that you relate with the sleep time. For example, if you have to get into bed at 10 pm, you can start playing the music by 9.30/9.45 pm. Gradually, your body will start responding to that signal and immediately relax on hearing the specific music. This especially works in case of toddlers and babies who have problems falling asleep.

Body Scan

The body scan is an amazing way to relax the body just before sleep. It can be completed in less than 5-7 min. It is another method to become mindful about the body and consciously choose to relax.

Body Massage

A short and gentle body massage with a moisturizing lotion or oil can be very relaxing before bed. Body massage is another great way to become mindful about the body. You can be mindful about a specific part of the body as you move your hands around it. You can feel the soft skin, throbbing of the heart and rigidity of the bones. You can also become more aware of the stress, pain, inflammation or any other mild sensation that was not felt during the day as you were engrossed in your work. You can massage the painful body part and suggest to your mind that the pain is gradually getting healed.

Mindful Sleep

Now let us assume that after your nighttime rituals, you are finally lying in the bed. Normally, most of us are thinking about some random thoughts and we move into sleep unconsciously. However, sleep is a doorway to our unconscious and subconscious mind. If we can sleep mindfully, we can have a dip in greater consciousness. If we are unaware of the sleep process, we might sleep with a negative emotion or a useless thought. Ancient Indians believed that the thoughts that we sleep with get registered permanently and form sanskaras or mental blocks. Therefore, it is advised to remember god or a higher consciousness as we sleep. You can start mindfulness by remembering God before sleep.   

For mindful sleep, just notice the thoughts passing in your mind. Consider them like cars passing through the road out of a window that you are looking out. You do not focus on any specific car, you do not judge where they are going or coming from, you do not try to imagine who might be sitting inside, none of these. You just watch the cars. They might just make a pretty spectacle to look at that. Zero complexity. In a similar way, you can look at the thoughts passing your mind. As a matter of fact, we might never know why a specific thought appeared in our mind. There is an endless connection of past events that we might be oblivious of. The reasons that we can think of appear as a result of a structured reasoning process of our mind, sourcing facts from conscious memory. Therefore, engaging deeply with any thoughts is as mindless as thinking about who might be sitting inside an unknown red car. So just be aware of the thoughts, no reasoning, no fusing, no justifications; just simple observation. This is mindfulness.

As we become more mindful, strong unresolved thoughts will start emerging at bedtime. It is important to remember this that this is not a degradation of our practice, in fact, it is proof of advancement. Now we are rid of general chatter and have dug deeper into our consciousness. The thoughts can be about a painful past or about uncertain or dangerous future. Sometimes, it might look justified to get involved with the thoughts. 

Consider this example – you are invited to watch a video on a life-size screen. Everything appears lifelike, but you know that it is just a screen. However, you see the image of a very dear friend or your family member approaching. It is quite possible that you might forget for a while that it is just an image, not a real person and you might try to strike a conversation with the image.

I had an experience while meditating. Years back, when I was a little child, my grandfather slapped me very hard for not listening to him. My grandfather was a very strict person. He was visiting us for some time. Till that time, I was almost never beaten at all by my parents. And it was a very stark and painful experience because I did not understand why I was beaten. And nobody said anything about it. But I forgot this experience and never recollected it. However, while meditating I remembered this incident as if it was happening right then and there. I started crying. I could see that I felt lonely and left out. I could feel the situation. I started thinking about the experience again. I felt resentful towards my parents, grandparents and almost everyone around me in a chain reaction. I did wrong. This is not the way such experiences can be handled. They re-emerge to seek an answer. Now it does not have to be a physical or a material solution. In fact, all real solutions are basically threads of acceptance. So what I should have done was to accept that IT HAPPENED. As I accepted that it happened, I could see that my grandfather basically meant good. The thrashing was the only way he knew to communicate something serious. Probably he had a very high temper and was mentally handicapped in that way. This is what he must have been treated like as a child and never grew beyond it. I remembered so many good things he had. He was extremely honest, hard-working person. He was generous and always helped the poor and needy and so on. All these complimentary thoughts can emerge as we open door to them. If I choose to think negative, I will be able to dig out equally potent reasons. The essence is even the good thoughts are not to be fused with. So there is no need for me to reason that since my grandfather was a good person, he did well by slapping me. And probably I can do the same to my daughter. The essence it – IT Happened, period. 

So even painful thoughts that might emerge in your mind at times during the day and esp. before sleep – are just thoughts! They just happened, period. It takes time and patience to achieve this goal and to be honest, I am far from it. But the only benefit that I might have is that I know it when I make a mistake. And it helps to steer in the right direction. So, let’s just focus on the fun with mindfulness every day instead of trying to achieve it as a target.

Other most prevalent thoughts that I face during sleep are thoughts about the future. Thoughts on the future are far more compelling because the future is something that we must prepare for. It can be a fairly compelling argument that if we don’t think about the future, how are we going to be prepared for it? The general procedure to deal with overthinking can be something like this – thinking, esp. overthinking can only deplete your mental energy and leave you feeling drained. How are we going to work in the future if we feel mentally depleted? So there is no need to think, or better stated, worry about the future. These are 2 logical extremes of thought station. You can choose either one of them and you will find yourself to be equally correct. However, with uncertainty and unpredictability of life, this 2 logic will keep changing and you will be oscillating like a pendulum between them. No peace!

In mindfulness, we have the midway, the central stable point when the pendulum is not moving. The power to rest in Mindfulness is the weight of the pendulum. And we all know that heavy pendulum needs more force to get destabilized from its resting position. More mindful you are, the greater the force it will take for any problem to move your mind into chaos. So accept that the future is uncertain, it is unpredictable, it can be even dangerous.

The queries of mind are not real. They are assumptions, like the factor x, in order to solve the equations of life. The conscious mind has limited memory and processing capacity. Therefore, it is not wise to expect the best results from it. It is like expecting a digital calculator to be able to print a document. However, if you accept this limited capacity, you will have fewer reasons to be affected by mental chatter. You will be able to notice it without reacting to it, just the blabbering of a baby. We hear it, we respond to it, but we don’t try to find any meaning in it. Nor do we try to suppress it because it is meaningless. So mind is saying” tomorrow I might get a promotion” – or “ I might get fired”. These might also be practical possibilities for tomorrow. However, there is no need or no gain by fusing your thoughts with emotions. For example, feeling happy at the first thought or feeling sad at the second one is fusing with the thoughts and proving that they are real. Thoughts are like souls, if you acknowledge their presence and believe in them, you can give them body. they can get really powerful if you give affirmations to them over and over again. Most of our phobias and manias are basically strong thoughts. They are so strong that we are not able to handle them. And their seeds can be sown very effectively while going to sleep. So it is extremely important to be mindful while going to sleep, even more, important than being mindful in the daytime. 

Sometimes you might face extremely strong thoughts about the past or about the future and you might get swept away. I had a huge fear of death since I saw my father pass away at a very early age. Sometimes, when I was frustrated and scared as a teenager, I would have thoughts about death while going to bed. The negative or positive thoughts that are attached to a real incident in life can be very difficult to tackle. They look quite real and possible. At that time, I did not know anything about mindfulness, but I devised a way to be happy at bedtime. I would shift my attention towards more real things, like the blanket, bed or the fan that I have and I am comfortable at night. I have a home and I have a bed to sleep. Besides, I started to believe that sleep and death are the times when you meet God. So I would imagine a very loving God who is going to take care of me as I sleep. This was super strong imagery. In fact, I was always the happiest as I went to sleep.

The point is that when you have super-overwhelming emotions already attached to some thoughts, you might find it difficult to practice mindfulness. So you can take help of love and gratitude. Ask yourself the question – “is it happening right now?”, we can be grateful that we have a peaceful time right, even if something wrong is bound to happen.  “what are the good things that I have right now?” or “what are the good things that have happened to me?”. Past positive experiences are always the best staff to hold when you are emotionally shaky. These questions will help to bring yourself back to the present. After that, you can practice your normal routine for sleeping mindfulness.

Cleaning

I would like to share one practice that significantly helped me improve my emotional stability. You can find more information about it on

Click to access GUIDED%20CLEANING%20script%20.pdf

This practice helps to clean the impression that we have collected during the day. It is believed that the sanskaras (the mental blocks) formed during the day are processed by our brain during the sleep and they solidify in our memory. If we are able to remove such mental blocks before they become registered in memory, we will have a clearer mind. Now is it possible to remove the blocks by giving yourself a suggestion that they are getting removed. I believe yes, because you can remove thoughts with another thought of cleaning. Hope that the cleaning process helps you as much as it has helped me!

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