Training Your Brain

I'm going to take a step back now in this series of posts on meditation and mindfulness. I am doing this from a course I am involved in right now on Attention and Interpretation Therapy with Dr. Amit Sood here at Mayo and his book:

• These thoughts are all mine, by the way. The understandings and interpretations are my own of what I have been reading and experiencing. 

The past seven weeks I have posted on the seven daily themes that we are invited to cultivate in each day's growth in awareness and mindfulness. They are:

• Monday: Gratitude
• Tuesday: Compassion
• Wednesday: Acceptance
• Thursday: Deeper Meaning
• Friday: Forgiveness
• Saturday: Celebration
• Sunday: Reflection and Prayer

Having set that out, I want to think a little more deeply. Over this and the next seven weeks I will look at some of the background. This will include things like awareness, meditation, paying attention.  To get it started I want to talk this week about why this is important. The title of this post sets it out- the purpose is to train the brain- train ourselves- to be more intentional, aware, and focused. So much goes by us in each day and even each moment. So much happens that we never see because we are simply not paying attention.

Mindfulness and meditation get us trained to see things that are already there and to experience things that are already around us- and we don't even see or experience them most days.

I will simply start the week, then, with a quote from the man who has probably done more to pull all this into the American health care consciousness, Jon Kabat-Zinn.

The little things? The little moments? They aren't little.
― Jon Kabat-Zinn

The more we are aware of those things and those moments, the better we will be at life.

They are not little. I will ponder that, meditate upon that for today.