experience, as well as our research, tells us that, as we have said, if you do these practices for 10 minutes or more each day (and the more you do the better), that can help you develop your capacity for allowing, inquiry and meta-awareness. Very broadly speaking, here’s how it works:
With each of the different Mind Time practices, we’ll invite you to select a different ‘focus’ – somewhere to place your attention. In the Breathing practice, for example, you’ll focus on the breath and the sensations that come along with it; in the Body practice, you’ll focus on the sensations you find at different parts of the body in turn, and you’ll place your attention on these.
What you’ll find is that your attention will stay with your chosen focus for a time and then it will drift off. Maybe you’ll start thinking about some of the things you need to do today. Then you’ll notice that your attention has drifted away, you’ll see where it went to, you’ll unhook your attention from where it went, and you’ll bring it back to your chosen focus.
And, strange as it may seem, this simple process builds your AIM.
It builds allowing
You intend to keep your attention on the breath but your mind wanders off. You might want to give yourself a hard time about that. ‘Why can’t I do this simple thing? My mind is so busy! It’s so loud in there. Pipe down! Settle! Come on, this isn’t rocket science! It’s so simple. Why can’t I do this?’
You might find yourself carrying on an internal conversation like that. Or, maybe you’re doing this in a city where there’s lots of noise outside. ‘Oh no! Can’t I have a few minutes’ peace for Mind Time? Car alarms! Again. And that pneumatic drill. Why are they always doing building work?’
Or maybe there’s noise from your family. ‘Kids! Please … Just a few minutes … Please. Where’s that husband of mine? Can’t he help – just for a few minutes?’
Over and over again, as you listen to the Mind Time guidance, we’ll remind you to bring a gentle, kindly, allowing attitude to whatever you find as you sit to meditate.
So you find an allowing attitude for a bit, you settle into it, and then it slips away and another attitude takes over. Then you notice what’s happened and you come back to allowing. The allowing slips away again, after a bit you notice what’s happened and you come back to allowing. Over and over.
Gradually, you’re building your capacity for noticing the quality of your inner state and for choosing to become more allowing. Self-criticism, irritability, harshness, unkindness. We all harbour these to some extent. As you engage in the Mind Time processes you’re learning to spot these states more readily – and you’re learning to come away from them more easily and to embrace whatever comes your way with a more allowing attitude.
Sometimes it can be fairly easy to adopt an allowing attitude to unhelpful or unwanted thoughts, feelings, body sensations and impulses. At other times it can be very much more difficult. Experiences like deep grief, loss or shame, for example, can seem at times to be overwhelming and very hard to allow. At such times, though, even the smallest touch of allowing might help to turn down the volume – just a little. If your experience feels overwhelming, approach it with caution. At times it can be like entering a lake of very cold water. You touch your toe in and then withdraw. You approach it again, and then withdraw. Gradually, though, you begin to let yourself down into it a bit further – step by cautious step. There’s no rush. Take your time. Eventually, maybe you’ll find you can swim.
It builds inquiry
We can think of Mind Time as setting up the dedicated conditions for investigating the complex processes that underlie our moments of experience. To create such conditions, you go somewhere quiet-ish, where you won’t be disturbed. That reduces input to some extent. Then, if you’re comfortable doing so, close your eyes. That reduces input still further. Sit upright and alert – that lets you pay close attention to whatever you find. Then choose a focus, for instance the breath, and watch what happens.
You will begin to see your inner processes unfolding. The focus on the breath is there as an anchor, to return to over and over. It lends stability and direction to the process. All of your unconscious processes are still running; they don’t go away just because you sat down and closed your eyes, only now you can see them.
Over and again, we’ll remind you to treat what arises in the changing flow of your experience with a kindly curiosity. Coming back to that, over and over again, builds your capacity for inquiry.
Through inquiring, you’ll begin to see where your attention slips to out of habit. Maybe it goes over and again to your to-do list, or to worrying about your relationship. You get interested in that. Curious about it. You see that this is what your attention does now. This is what’s preoccupying you. More than that, you also begin to see and to inquire into what comes along with that. When you’re worrying about your relationship, what’s happening in your shoulders, in your stomach, in your jaw? Notice any tightening or tensing. Feel it, explore it for a few moments. See what it’s like to come away from it. Ease those shoulders, let go of tension in the jaw. Now what’s here in your thinking?
In this way, in the dedicated conditions of Mind Time, you gradually build your capacity to notice and inquire into the different, interrelated elements of your experience.
When you become better able to inquire in this way, you become better able to manage and regulate the changing flow of your emotions. You also become more alive to, and curious about, other people and what’s happening with them. And you become more alive to the world around you and all the wonderful, infinitely complex systems that your life unfolds in: family systems, social systems and natural systems. As your capacity for inquiry builds so all of these begin to reveal more and more of the extraordinary wonder that you can see unfolding wherever you turn your attention.
It builds meta-awareness
You sit down and select your focus. Maybe the breath. Then your attention wanders and you start to think. You think and think and think – and then you notice that you’re thinking. That noticing is a crucial moment of meta-awareness. You’re no longer just thinking. Now you’re thinking and you’re aware that you’re thinking. That is meta-awareness. When you have this meta-awareness you can choose what to do next. You let go of the thinking and you shift your attention back to the breath. It’s easy to make that move, from thinking to paying attention to the breath, but it’s only possible to make it – only possible to choose – when you have that crucial moment of meta-awareness. Meta-awareness is the beginning of choice.
Of course, it’s a choice you’ll have to enact over and over. You’ve had 15, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 – however many years of habit of not noticing what your attention is up to. So, of course your attention will slip back into its familiar grooves. But gradually you’re now building another habit. The habit of meta-awareness. So now you can see and choose more often where your attention goes.
We’ve been talking about meta-awareness of thinking, but it’s wider than that. With meta-awareness we can also be aware of feeling.
In the example above, if a noise starts up while you’re practising and you become irritated with it, you can notice that. You now have meta-awareness of irritation. That can let you choose. You can treat that irritation with kindness and allowing – ‘Ah, there are those irritable thoughts again …’ – and you can come away from those thoughts. You don’t fight with them, push them down or push them away. Rather, you allow them, perhaps explore them for a few moments and see what they’re like and what they are doing to the rest of your system (perhaps they come with particular body
