See how the gradations of white might shift across any one area of whiteness. All the subtle changes.
Now select another colour and do the same.
Now, coming away from the visual, turn your attention to the sound-space you’re in.
Pay attention to the varieties of sounds.
To the rhythms of those sounds, the patterns formed by the sounds.
Linger with that for a few moments.
Letting that attention to the sound-space move into the background, now bring your attention to your body and its sensations.
Feel your body in contact with whatever you’re sitting or lying on – feel the pattern of sensations there.
Explore that for a few moments.
Now, how are you feeling?
When we teach this we often hear that right after doing this exercise people feel calm, or settled, or more alert.
What’s happening is that you’re moving your attention from being mainly caught up in mental activity – reading, understanding, thinking, planning and perhaps occasionally worrying – to a much more immediate, sense-based focus. There’s an intriguing neuroscience around these two different ways of experiencing, but for now just notice these differences.5
Because our minds tend to revert to a thinking/planning/worrying/analysing/daydreaming focus most of the time, scientists call the set of brain networks that deliver these ‘the default mode network’. It’s what our brains default to when we’re not trying actively to do anything else. For example, sitting in a traffic jam with nothing else to do, your mind drifts off into daydreaming, then to worrying about work, then to thinking about your relationship, then to wondering whether to book that family holiday, then back to daydreaming – all in the space of a few short minutes.
During Mind Time we begin to work on that tendency. We learn to recognise the default mode when it kicks in and we learn to choose to come away from it, at least for a time. As you’ll see, we do this over and over.
The Mind Time practices we will share are a key to changing your mind. The simple truth is that you will only get the benefits we promised you at the start of this book if you put in the work. But the good news is that it only takes 10 minutes a day. Just 10 minutes to change your mind!
In each chapter, we’ll be offering advice and exercises to help you reflect on how these 10-minute practices might help to change your mind and affect your life in key areas.
Our 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