Little girl with her doll sitting in the ruins of her bombed home
London 1940
Reference: Mindfulness 7: Experience fully
In this exercise one contemplates over one’s loss. This is not easy. Therefore, before you attempt this exercise, make sure you have completed the twelve exercises for mindfulness.
Loss is something very close to heart. The emotions are usually very intense and they get suppressed. Such emotions may reemerge during this exercise. It can be very unsettling.
When intense emotions come up, courageously dive into the very center of them and experience them without resisting. Make sure you do this exercise in your privacy. There should be no interruptions when you are deeply absorbed in the exercise.
.
Exercise
Purpose: To contemplate over a loss with mindfulness.
-
Look at an instance when you lost somebody you loved, or some other loss.
-
Contemplate over that loss with mindfulness.
-
As feelings and emotions come up address them one at a time as follows:
(a) Spot the location of the emotion in, on, or near the body, if possible.
(b) Dive into the very center of that emotion. Experience it fully without avoiding, resisting or suppressing it.
(c) Look at the location of the emotion with mindfulness, and notice if there are any messages or flows coming to you from there.
(d) Let that location know that the messages or flows have arrived. CAUTION: No approval, disapproval, make-wrong or anything else. Just give a courteous indication that the message was received.
(d) Take as much time as you need to stay with the feeling or emotion until it starts to discharge.
-
Once all emotions connected to a loss are discharged, review the loss with mindfulness until nothing is suppressed and you can be with it comfortably.
-
You may now take up another loss and repeat this exercise.
-
Wrap up the session with the exercise Mindfulness 12: Let it be effortless
.
Further references: KHTK Mindfulness
.
