Episode #4 Building Focus & Intent
In this episode, we look more closely at HOW to grow into coherence.
There are four obvious types of meditation, mindfulness, contemplation – whatever you want to call it– and we explore how these four types form the foundation of this work. All of them help us to build our focused attention into intention.
As we’ve said already, the key to successful practice – to building enduring habits – is to evoke a background affective texture (that is, a feeling) that is intimately woven with the act of our practice. The feeling of Joyful Curiosity – the child-like wonder of something truly magical happening – is the key to this. If each breath, or each moment of watching a candle flame, or a leaf or whatever we choose, is utterly magical, then it’s far more likely to be engaging and we’re far more likely to want to bring our mind back again to the single point of focus.
And then we move to Open Focus meditation, which is the same kind of life skill, but spread out into everything we experience in the moment: everything we see, hear, smell, taste, feel – all of it, as it happens, in the moment. This is an eyes open meditation and a really good grounding for becoming fully present through the days.
The music that book-ends the podcasts is created by Caro C and is called ‘Sense Ability’ – you can find it here.
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