Where I Learned The Truth That: "This Too Will Pass"
My experience of mindfulness in a situation of imposed change is illustrated by the story about a king who sought wisdom.
He searched all over his kingdom for wisdom and did not find it.
Eventually he heard of a man living in a remote part of the kingdom who had a reputation for great wisdom and the king summoned the wiseman to counsel him...
My experience of mindfulness where I learned the truth that: "This too will pass"
Approximately 20 years ago I was in a senior management position working on a large multi-million dollar IT programme in London. You can read the full story and lessons learned here:
There was a voice (well several actually) that used to start up and accuse me of failing and being hopeless and unemployable. Because it was late and I was so exhausted I was in the grip of these voices and could hardly sleep.
By morning I was exhausted. And so the cycle repeated itself for a number of days.
I realise that I had to do something – fast or I was going to be ill or worse…
Thankfully I was now aware of mindfulness practise and doing it fairly regularly and I knew what to do – I just needed to do more of it and I especially needed to find a strategy that I could use more or less automatically in the early hours of the morning.
What came to me was a simple phrase that had meaning for me at the time, was easy to remember and repeat over and over again. Because the phrase had meaning and energetic power for me it meant that I could really feel the emotional and spiritual power in those words.
The phrase was:
"I choose the light – I walk in the light"
I used this mantra every night as I was falling asleep – and constantly if I woke up in the night. I used to wake up every morning with that mantra going round and around in my head.
The point of it was that it stopped my native thoughts, in fact it stopped all thinking because it gave my thinking mind something to do which shut it up. So I was able to stay mindful, present and completely relaxed.
From the moment I started doing this I never had another bad night’s sleep. After a few weeks, as with other practices shared below and elsewhere on this site, it became automatic and a habit.
As a final reflection on this experience, I have also used this approach a number of times since in situations where I have wanted to impress some particular positive and empowering thoughts on my subconscious mind.
The words can be whatever we want them to be. I have found that it helps to choose words that are easy to remember and repeat, and also that have energetic power and meaning to me at that time.
I have also expanded on this with the use of a graphic image that illustrates the truth of the words in the mantra and I have put that picture on my laptop as a screen saver and framed it and hung it in a prominent position on the wall in my kitchen.
