Finding the Center Within: The Healing Way of Mindfulness Meditation. (38 page)

BOOK: Finding the Center Within: The Healing Way of Mindfulness Meditation.
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F I N D I N G T H E C E N T E R W I T H I N

Practice for Week Eight

1. Continue with the practices of a day of mindfulness, moments of mindfulness, reading, walking meditation, and dream work. 2. Increase your meditation time to twenty-five minutes twice daily, if you feel ready to do so.

3. Practice the exercises in this chapter:

• “Challenge Depressive Thinking” (p. 161)

• “Identify Your Maladaptive Schemas” (p. 167)

• “Twenty-five Healing Things” (p. 171)

• “Work with Anger Thoughts” (p. 178)

• “Work with Worries” (p. 179)

4. In general, this week give special attention to your emotional life. Read this chapter at least twice. When negative emotions surface, recognize them. Don’t try to push them away, but don’t wallow or get lost in them either. Breathe in and out, making a calm, open space to experience them fully and clearly. Look into the roots of the problem. Do something to nurture yourself from your list of twenty-five healing things.

Practice for Week Nine

1. Continue meditation (twenty-five minutes twice daily), a day of mindfulness, reading, walking meditation, and work with dreams. 2. Spend one or both of your daily meditation periods on metta meditation (pp. 188, 191). 3. In all of your interactions this week, focus on listening a little more deeply to others. Make a space for them. Use the exercises in this chapter to help:

• “Observe Filters” (p. 198)

• “Listen Actively” (p. 201)

4. Focus all week on right speech. Avoid spreading rumors, participating in gossip, or saying anything about anyone that you would be unwilling to say to her face. Concentrate on speaking only that which is useful, helpful, encouraging, and true. Meditate on the guidelines in this chapter and seek to put them into practice. Add your own insights to the practice as you learn from your experiences and reflection. 11 BIEN app.qxd 7/16/03 10:03 AM Page 251

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5. Focus on kind action, without seeking credit or recognition. This may be for the most part little things, simple and undramatic. Let the other car get in front of you. Be the one to empty the dishwasher. Straighten up. Show others your smiling face. 6. Focus this week on awareness of how others help you. Express this awareness. Tell the other person you appreciate it. Especially notice simple things: the sales clerk who is friendly. The kind word. The people who drive reasonably and courteously (instead of focusing on the relative few who drive aggressively, as we are wont to do). Practice for Week Ten

1. Increase your meditation time to thirty minutes twice daily. 2. Continue with the day of mindfulness practice, reading, walking meditation, and work with dreams.

3. Start a journal. Try to spend some time each day this week writing in it. Experiment with each of the approaches in this chapter:

• “The Felt Sense” (p. 222)

• “Journaling to Remember” (p. 223)

• “Build a Memory Bridge” (p. 223)

• “Use Stream-of-Consciousness Journaling” (p. 224)

• “Inner Guide Journaling” (p. 225)

• “Dialogue with Significant People” (p. 229)

• “Write Your Life Chapters” (p. 231)

• “Find Your Creativity” (p. 233)

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Index

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abandonment schema, 164–65, 168

animals, in dreams, 147

abundance, lack of openness to, 6–7

animism, 121

abuse schema, 165, 166

animus, 141, 142

acceptance

anxiety, 52, 59, 63–64, 178–80

of experience, 29–30, 31–32, 35–36,

appreciation, 210–11

50, 61

archetypes, 139–40, 148

of feelings, 52

Art of Loving, The
(Fromm), 185, 190

peace and, 61

asking for what you want, 204

radical, 24, 35–36

“Ask: Who’s in Charge?” meditation,

of true face, 29–30

95–96

struggle vs., 53

assumed intent, 177

“Acknowledge Your Many Roles”

as
within,
so
without,
52–53

practice, 10

“atman is Brahman,” 74

action

attention, 27, 90–91

force vs., 32

Augustine, Saint, 36

loving, 208–10

authority, 31–33, 111, 113

results of, 212

autonomous personalities, 140

right, 109, 111–15, 208–10, 212

avoidance, 125–27, 181

active listening, 198–99, 201

Awakening: A Sufi Experience
(Vilayat

active mind, 60–63

Inayat Khan), 103

activities, reinforcing, 169–73

awareness

addictions, 61, 113, 169

abstract, 51

advice, 200–201

of body, 68, 222

agitation, 61

of breath, 27, 59–60, 67–68

agree/disagree filter, 197, 198

conditional, 163–64

“ah” mantra, 58

dreams and, 131

alcohol, 169, 190

journaling for, 216, 222

Alexander the Great, 228

of life’s preciousness, 105

all-or-nothing thinking, 157

one-sided, 131

always
statements, 204

resistance to, 49

amplification, 139

Anapanasati sutra,
59, 67–68

balance, 51, 52, 92

ancestors, importance of, 12–13

bardo
realm, 127

anger, 173–78, 205

“Basic Meditation” practice, 76

Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames

Beauty and the Beast,
143

(Nhat Hanh), 182

“Be Aware of Self-Punishing Thoughts”

anima, 141, 142

practice, 17

257

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