Imagine Well Being https://imaginebeingwell.org Bringing Well-Being to Everyone Fri, 17 Nov 2023 02:04:12 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://imaginebeingwell.org/wp24/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/cropped-LI-favicon512-32x32.jpg Imagine Well Being https://imaginebeingwell.org 32 32 Loving ourselves works miracles in our lives https://imaginebeingwell.org/uncategorized/loving-ourselves-works-miracles-in-our-lives/ Fri, 17 Nov 2023 02:04:12 +0000 https://imaginebeingwell.org/?p=17373 In these blog posts, I will share key points from books I’m reading. Today I am sharing from “You can heal your life” by Louise Hay, so that together we can benefit from these noble truths and transform our lives. I’d love to hear from you in the comments section!

 

1. Change can begin in this moment.
2. No matter what the problem seems to be, there is only one thing I ever work on with anyone and this is loving the self.
3. Loving ourselves works miracles in our lives.
4. I am not talking about vanity or arrogance or being stuck up, for that is not love. It’s only fear. I am talking about having a great respect for ourselves and gratitude for the miracle of our bodies and our minds.
5. Love to me is appreciation to such a degree that it fills my heart to bursting and overflows. Love can go in any direction. I can feel love for
– The very process of life
– The joy of being alive
– Another person
– Knowledge
– The process of the mind
]]> Gateways to wisdom and knowledge are always open https://imaginebeingwell.org/uncategorized/17361/ Fri, 17 Nov 2023 02:02:42 +0000 https://imaginebeingwell.org/?p=17361 In these blog posts, I will share key points from books I’m reading. Today I am sharing from “You can heal your life” by Louise Hay, so that together we can benefit from these noble truths and transform our lives. I’d love to hear from you in the comments section!

1. The gateways to wisdom and knowledge are always open.
2. Life is really simple. What we give out, we get back.
3. The universe totally support us in every thought we choose to think and believe.
4. The universal power never judges or criticizes us.
4. Most of us have foolish ideas about who we are and, many rigid ideas about how life ought to be lived.
5. When we are very little, we learn to feel about ourselves and about life by the reactions of the adults around us.
]]> You can be mindful of pain just as you are mindful of breathing https://imaginebeingwell.org/uncategorized/you-can-be-mindful-of-pain-just-as-you-are-mindful-of-breathing/ Sun, 15 Oct 2023 02:16:25 +0000 https://imaginebeingwell.org/?p=17330 In these blog posts, I will share key points from books I’m reading. Today I am sharing from “Mindfulness in Plan English” by Bhante Bhante Gunaratana, so that together we can benefit from these noble truths and transform our lives. I’d love to hear from you in the comments section!

  1. New meditators sometimes say they have trouble remaining mindful when pain is present. This difficulty seems from a misunderstanding. These students are conceiving mindfulness as something different from the experience of pain. It’s not. Mindfulness never exists by itself. It always has some object, and one object is as good as another. Pain is a mental state. You can be mindful of pain just as you are mindful of breathing.
  2. Once you have learned mindfulness with physical pain, you can generalize it to the rest of your life. You can use it on any unpleasant sensation. What works in pain will work on anxiety or chronic depression as well. This technique is one of life’s most useful and applicable skills. It is patience.
  3. Large amounts of previously blocked sensory data can pour through, giving rise to all kinds of unique sensations. It does not signify anything in particular. It is just sensation. So simply employ the normal technique. Watch it come up and watch it pass away. Don’t get involved.
  4. Take care of your body’s physical needs. Then meditate. Do not give in to sleepiness. Stay awake and mindful, for sleep and meditative concentration are diametrically opposed experiences.
  5. Mental images are powerful entities. They can remain in the mind for long periods. If you have been to the best movie of the year, the meditation that follows is going to be full of those images. If you are halfway through the scariest horror novel you ever read, your media is going to get full of monsters. So switch the order of events. Do your meditation first. Then read or go to the movies.
]]> Life is composed of joys and miseries https://imaginebeingwell.org/uncategorized/life-is-composed-of-joys-and-miseries/ Sun, 15 Oct 2023 02:14:36 +0000 https://imaginebeingwell.org/?p=17327 In these blog posts, I will share key points from books I’m reading. Today I am sharing from “Mindfulness in Plan English” by Bhante Bhante Gunaratana, so that together we can benefit from these noble truths and transform our lives. I’d love to hear from you in the comments section!

  1. You are going to run into problems into your meditation. Everybody does. Don’t think you are special.
  2. Life is composed of joys and miseries. They go hand in hand. Meditation is no exception. You will experience good times and bad times, ecstasies and fear.
  3. Your ability to deal with some issue that arises in meditation will carry over into the rest of your life and allow you to smooth out big issues that really bother you. If you try to avoid each piece of nastiness that arises in mediation, you are reinforcing the habit that has already made life seem so unbearable at times.
  4. Buddhism advises to examine your misery to death. If you are miserable you are miserable; that is the reality, that is what is happening, so confront that. Look it square in the eye without flinching. When you are having a bad time, examine that experience, observe it mindfully, study the phenomenon and learn its mechanics. The way out of a trap is to study the trap itself, learn how it’s built. The trap can’t trap you if it has been taken to pieces. The result is freedom.
  5. Pain is inevitable, suffering is not. Pain and suffering are two different animals. Buddhism advises you to invest time and energy in learning to deal with unpleasantness, because some pain is unavoidable.
]]> Practice of universal loving friendliness https://imaginebeingwell.org/uncategorized/practice-of-universal-loving-friendliness/ Sun, 15 Oct 2023 01:48:24 +0000 https://imaginebeingwell.org/?p=17325 In these blog posts, I will share key points from books I’m reading. Today I am sharing from “Mindfulness in Plan English” by Bhante Bhante Gunaratana, so that together we can benefit from these noble truths and transform our lives. I’d love to hear from you in the comments section!
  1. The practice of universal loving friendliness is also recommended for bedtime and just after arising.
  2. You must remember that you practice loving friendliness for the purification of your own mind, just as you practice meditation for your own attainment of peace and liberation from pain and suffering.
  3. Compassion is manifestation of loving friendliness in action.
  4. When you hate somebody, what actually happens that your own body generates such harmful chemistry that you experience pain, increased heart rate, tension, change of facial expression, loss of appetite, deprivation of sleep, and you appear very unpleasant to others. You go through the same things you wish on your enemy.
  5. Therefore we recommend very strongly that you practice loving friendliness before you start your serious practice of meditation.
]]> Laziness just will not serve https://imaginebeingwell.org/uncategorized/laziness-just-will-not-serve/ Sun, 15 Oct 2023 01:46:03 +0000 https://imaginebeingwell.org/?p=17323 In these blog posts, I will share key points from books I’m reading. Today I am sharing from “Mindfulness in Plan English” by Bhante Bhante Gunaratana, so that together we can benefit from these noble truths and transform our lives. I’d love to hear from you in the comments section!
  1. It’s crucial to sit for meditation regularly. Even ten minutes of meditation can be very beneficial.
  2. Unpleasant experiences during the meditation are some of the most profitable a meditator can face, but only if you sit through them. You have got to learn to observe them calmly and clearly.
  3. Self Discipline is the key and there is another word for it patience.
  4. Look within and watch the stuff coming up – restlessness, anxiety, impatience, pain — just watch it come up and don’t get involved.
  5. Mumbled words without intention are useless.
  6. Meditation is a tough job. It’s inherently solitary activity but other seekers have passed through this way before. So can you.
  7. Laziness just will not serve. Meditation takes energy. You need courage to confront some pretty difficult mental phenomena and the determination to sit through very unpleasant mental states.
  8. Mindfulness is egoless awareness.
  9. Greed and hatred are the prime manifestations of the ego process. To the extent that grasping and rejecting are present in the mind, mindfulness will have a very rough time.
  10. You can balance a negative emotion by instilling a positive one. Giving is the opposite of greed. Benevolence is the opposite of hatred.
]]> Stick to your meditation schedule with a gentle, patient tenacity. https://imaginebeingwell.org/uncategorized/stick-to-your-meditation-schedule-with-a-gentle-patient-tenacity/ Sun, 15 Oct 2023 01:42:16 +0000 https://imaginebeingwell.org/?p=17320 In these blog posts, I will share key points from books I’m reading. Today I am sharing from “Mindfulness in Plan English” by Bhante Bhante Gunaratana, so that together we can benefit from these noble truths and transform our lives. I’d love to hear from you in the comments section!

  1. Where to sit? Find yourself a quiet place, a secluded place, a place where you will be alone.
  2. It doesn’t have to be a forest or soundproof roof, but there are certain noises that are highly distracting, and they should be avoided. Music and talking are the worst. Mind tends to be sucked in by these sounds in an uncontrollable manner, and there goes your concentration.
  3.  A special spot reserved for meditation and nothing else is an aid for most people.
  4. Set up a practice schedule and keep to it with a gentle, patient tenacity.
  5. Your practice will go best when you are looking forward to sitting.
  6. Morning meditation is a fine way to start your day.
  7. Evening is another good time for practice.
  8. Give yourself time to incorporate the meditation practice into your life, and let your practice grow gradually and gently.
  9. Most beginners start with twenty or thirty minutes.
  10. We recommend that after a year or so of steady practice you should be sitting comfortably for an hour at a time.
]]> Establish a formal meditation practice schedule https://imaginebeingwell.org/uncategorized/establish-a-formal-meditation-practice-schedule/ Sun, 15 Oct 2023 01:29:22 +0000 https://imaginebeingwell.org/?p=17318 In these blog posts, I will share key points from books I’m reading. Today I am sharing from “Mindfulness in Plan English” by Bhante Bhante Gunaratana, so that together we can benefit from these noble truths and transform our lives. I’d love to hear from you in the comments section!

  1. As your concentration deepens you will have less and less trouble with monkey mind.
  2. The meditation experience is not a competition. There is a definite goal. But there is no timetable.
  3. Don’t think about your problems during your practice. Let your meditation be a complete vacation.
  4. Establish a formal practice schedule when you will do meditation and nothing else.
  5. This is not the easiest skill in the world to learn. We have spent our entire life developing mental habits that are really quite contrary to the ideal of uninterrupted mindfulness.
  6. We set up a formal meditation period in order to create a conducive environment for release everything buried in the unconscious.
]]> We don’t normally live in the present https://imaginebeingwell.org/uncategorized/we-dont-normally-live-in-the-present/ Sun, 15 Oct 2023 01:25:00 +0000 https://imaginebeingwell.org/?p=17315 In these blog posts, I will share key points from books I’m reading. Today I am sharing from “Mindfulness in Plan English” by Bhante Bhante Gunaratana, so that together we can benefit from these noble truths and transform our lives. I’d love to hear from you in the comments section!

  1. We use breath as our focus. It serves as that vital reference point from which the mind wanders and is drawn back.
  2. Ancient Pali texts liken meditation to the process of taming a wild elephant. Meditation tames the mind.
  3. Breathing is a present moment process. We don’t normally live in the present. Mostly we are caught in memories of past or looking ahead to future. When we truly observe the breath, we are automatically placed in the present.
  4. Watch the delicate interrelation between the breath, the impulse to control the breath, and the impulse to cease controlling the breath. By doing this you learn a major lesson about your own compulsive need to control the universe.
  5. In the wordless observation of the breath, there are two states to be avoided: thinking and sinking.
]]> Mind can never be focused without a mental object https://imaginebeingwell.org/uncategorized/mind-can-never-be-focused-without-a-mental-object/ Sun, 15 Oct 2023 01:23:57 +0000 https://imaginebeingwell.org/?p=17313 In these blog posts, I will share key points from books I’m reading. Today I am sharing from “Mindfulness in Plan English” by Bhante Bhante Gunaratana, so that together we can benefit from these noble truths and transform our lives. I’d love to hear from you in the comments section!

  1. The mind can never be focused without a mental object. Therefore we must give our mind an object that is readily available every present moment. One such object is our breath
  2. In spite of your concerted effort to keep the mind on your breathing the mind will likely wander away. As soon as you notice that your mind is no longer on your breath, mindfully bring it back and anchor it there.
  3. Keep your mind straight on the point where you feel the breath at the rims of your nostrils.
  4. When the mind is united with the breath flowing all the time, we will naturally be able to focus the mind on the present moment.
  5. The mind is tricky. Thought is an inherently complicated procedure. By that we mean that we become trapped, wrapped up and stuck in the thought chain. One thought leads to another, which leads to another, and another and so on. There is a difference between being aware of a thought and thinking a thought. That difference is very subtle. It’s primarily a matter of feeling or texture. A thought you are simply aware of with bare attention feels light in texture; there is a sense of distance between thought and awareness viewing it. On other hand normal conscious thoughts is much heavier in texture. It sucks you in and grabs control of your consciousness.
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