Mindfulness Meditation (For Everyday Life)

critical choices, and use their energies to grow in
strength, wisdom, and compassion. A willingness to
embrace and work with what is lies at the core of all
meditation practice.
One way to envision how mindfulness works is to
think of your mind as the surface of a lake or of the
ocean. There are always waves on the water.
Sometimes they are big, sometimes they are small,
and sometimes they are almost imperceptible. The
water's waves are churned up by winds, which come
and go and vary in direction and intensity, just as do
the winds of stress and change in our lives, which stir
up waves in our minds.
People who don't understand meditation think that it
is some kind of special inner manipulation which will
magically shut off these waves so that the mind's
surface will be flat, peaceful, and tranquil. But just as
you can't put a glass plate on the water to calm the
waves, so you can't artificially suppress the waves of
your mind, and it is not too smart to try. It will only
create more tension and inner struggle, not
calmness. That doesn't mean that calmness is
unattainable. It's just that it cannot be attained by
misguided attempts to suppress the mind's natural
activity.