CONCENTRATION EXERCISES
RECOGNIZING THE “SPIRIT” IN MATTER.
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Many of our escapes are involuntary: addiction and dissociating from painful feelings are two examples. Anyone who’s worked with a Strong addiction – compulsive eating, compulsive sex, abuse of substances, explosive anger, or any other behavior that is out of control – knows that when the urge comes on its irresistible. The seduction is too strong. So we train again and again in less highly charged situations in which the urge is present but not so overwhelming. By training with everyday irritations, we develop The knack of refraining when the going gets tough. It takes patience and an understanding of how we’re hurting ourselves not to continue taking the same old escape route of speaking or acting out.
Pema Chodren – living beautifully with uncertainty and change
Attention and memory
These are best repeated several times a day. A good time to place them within a Daily Practice might be to do one or several at the beginning of a meditation session.
An easy exercise is simply counting backwards from 100 down to 0. You can practice this multiple times in succession until you can do it fluidly with no other thoughts intruding. This is a good exercise to repeat each day.
Another concentration practice is memorizing images. Images that work well are Buddhist mandala images or classic tarot card images. Look at the image for several minutes, and then, turning the image away from you, close your eyes and re-create the entire image in your mind. Allow yourself to recreate even the smallest details. You can practice this each day with different images or use a complex image for multiple days.
If you become distracted as you work on the exercises, simply pause and bring your attention back to your practice.
You can also try this exercise with other items, such as a soccer ball or flower. Simply recreate the object in your mind. Imagine the image to be as detailed as possible.
Daily practice of your concentration skills can have wonderful benefits. Principally in your strength of focus and ability to maintain attention upon the subject of your choice for a length of time.
This may seems like a deceptively simple exercise. Give it a try. Fit it into your daily practice.
Sherlock Holmes and other have used practices like this to their benefit! Mind palace.
Elements of Daily Practice
We can apply kindness, tolerance, and compassion in our daily lives; and much more…
There is one holy book; the sacred manuscript of nature, the only Scripture that can enlighten the reader.
– Inayat Khan
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