Mindfulness is our original essence. How to learn to live consciously: stay in the present moment, take responsibility for everything that happens in life, take care of the living world, observe yourself from the outside and look at everything from the heart.
Where to begin?
Start with awareness of the body and its movements. Learn to be aware of how you walk, stand, sit, lie, your gestures and the position of your arms and legs. Do this exercise: go to a state of rest (it is better to lie on your back) and observe. Record everything that you feel: the coolness of the exhaled and inhaled air, the feeling of support under you, the touch of clothing to the body, temperature. Try to feel your own muscles, feel them: start at the tips of your toes and gradually move your observation upward. In the process, you can find tense areas of the body (feel pain, itching in them), relax them. So gradually become aware of your whole body.
Interesting is the "Taoist" exercise of awareness, which takes only a couple of minutes. Find a comfortable position that allows freedom of movement. Concentrate on your body and freeze. Sitting motionless and gradually becoming aware of each part of the body, without moving, ask yourself: "Where would my body want to move?" Feel your own tendencies, but don't move. After that, allow the body to move slowly in the chosen direction. Track slow movements and the experiences you are experiencing. Notice everything that happens inside. Keep moving in that direction until the body explains itself and its direction.
Mindfulness of action
Penetrate into every movement you make: the process of shaking hands, turning the head, step. Watch how you drink water. As you focus on the body, feel how it works. Drink in small sips and feel how you do it, what comes from the water entering the body. Look with your inner eye, feel the path that water makes: from touching your lips to your stomach. Watch how it flows, how it washes your body from the inside.
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Remember the Japanese tea ceremony. The Japanese deliberately fill the kettle with water and put it on the coals. They deliberately wait for the kettle to boil, listen to the boiling noise and gurgle of water, look at the flickering flame, and then deliberately pour water into the teapot, pour tea, serve it and deliberately drink, keeping complete silence all this time.
This is a mindfulness practice that should be carried over to all your actions. Learn to do everything carefully, calmly, unhurriedly and beautifully. If you exercise in awareness of the body, thoughts, feelings, the course of your life will become the same calm, deliberate, harmonious. This does not mean that you will do less. On the contrary, you will have time to do more, doing everything consciously, without fuss.
Mindfulness of thoughts
In the same way, be aware of your thoughts. Often if you suddenly ask a person: “What are you thinking about?”, He replies that he himself does not know. This happens because we do not really think, but only allow thoughts to flow through the mind in an incoherent, disordered stream. Therefore, learn to observe your thoughts, and you will notice that their flow decreases. At the moment when as a result of awareness all thoughts disappear and the mind becomes silent, only pure and clear consciousness remains, which lies at the basis of true meditation.
Awareness of the world around
How many minutes a day do you spend concentrating and looking at something? We have forgotten how to look at the world around us, because we do not have time. On your way to work, you pass by blooming daisies under someone's window, but you don't see them, you don't look at the sky, you don't watch the flight of swallows. Your mind does not perceive the present moment and what is happening in it; it is busy with abstract reflections. But is these reflections the meaning of your life? And what gives you life, the perfection that is present in the existence of the living, being in this second, doesn't it matter? If you do not know how to perceive consciously what is happening now, you are living in vain. You don't live at all, because to live is to be here and now. Therefore, look at things, at their true essence, without mixing personal assessments and opinions.
There is such an instructive story. One day a student came to the teacher and asked how to write bamboo. The teacher replied: if you want to write bamboo, learn to see it first. The disciple began to look at the bamboo, its stems and leaves, day and night, in spring and autumn. He spent several years contemplating bamboo, and during that time he really saw it. He realized bamboo, became one with it, and then he could write it. This should be the position of a conscious person: to look, see, be aware and, thanks to this, become deeply receptive, understand kinship and unity with the whole world.
People awareness
Learn to look consciously at people around you and remember that they are souls. In India, for example, there is a form of awareness of another person known as darshan. People flock to the ashram (the center where the spiritual teacher and his disciples live) to look at the teacher. The teacher just sits, and everyone else silently looks at him, receiving his darshan. They try to realize him - as a spiritual person and a living embodiment of the ideal. Without this awareness, the teacher's instructions have little power. You can do this exercise with someone in a pair: sit opposite and look at each other, without embarrassment, tension, laughter. Just look, without evaluations and judgments. This will help to achieve true harmony in communication, because without awareness there is no true interaction between people.
Listen, look, learn
It is likely that you will encounter a lot of internal resistance as you practice mindfulness. The psyche always resists changes, good or bad, and the body is used to doing a lot automatically. Therefore, changing yourself is work. Get ready for this! Remember that your own awareness process is the best teacher. If you submit to your inner awareness of the path, it will lead you in the right direction. Whenever you are faced with a choice, let awareness guide you. Just ask yourself: "In which direction does the earth lead my body, and the World leads my soul?" And you will definitely hear the answer.