Beginner's Mind - Is It Possible?

How do you truly practice Beginner's Mind – and Let Go the frame of references of past experiences we bring along to this moment?

Nadia is a lawyer from Geneva (name changed) who had attended with me a Mindfulness Coaching session at Niraamaya Retreats and she naturally feel that she has the wisdom to assess the 'conduciveness' of this moment by measuring it against the past experience of what was seemingly a similar moment.

Is Beginners Mind just a theory?

I don’t know if you too have had such an experience before, where you meet someone after a long time and there is deep inside you an awareness that you should not talk to her because you vaguely remember that something that she did sometime back had caused you to distant from each other! You may not know exactly the reason for that tiff, but you know for sure that you were not in good terms when you last met.

And therefore, you play the video-tape of that last meeting and decide that ‘No, I should continue to not talk to her!’

This moment is, then, everything minus ‘Beginners Mind’.

Because, you are still hooked up to a moment in a distant past, and its filter distorting the possibility of a beautiful moment in the present. When walked into it with a Beginner's Mind, the conversations open up into realization of who you and she is in this moment, undisturbed by the noise and colours of what happened long ago. Attach Beginner's Mind with Let Go – another attitude of Mindfulness, and there you are, experiencing a new relationship! How often do we miss this opportunity!

We search in our archives of experiences for reasons to re-tell the old stories, instead of cleaning the slate and allowing the new stories to evolve.

We search in our archives of experiences for reasons to re-tell the old stories, instead of cleaning the slate and allowing the new stories to evolve. Beginner's Mind open up opportunities that we closed through Judgments; Beginner's Mind unties the knots formed from not Letting Go, and it creates life experiences that are full, clean and good enough for this moment (forget even what and where it will lead to in the next moment, because this moment is all that you have in reality)!

Beginner’s Mind is not a theory. It’s an experience of life to its fullest, in this moment! Nadia’s struggle was in her difficulty to Let Go, and her affinity towards her formed Judgments! And that's so for many of us too!

Our moments are filled with replayed experiences of past or matching this moment with expectations of future!

Walking Meditations we do at Niraamaya Retreats for its guests are a good exercise to practice Beginner's Mind. You've been walking all your life, but here is an opportunity to walk with Beginner's Mind, taking each step with an awareness of its experience in this moment! "This flower was made just to be crushed under my feet" said a guest who was participating in one of our Walking Meditations, while she suddenly lifted her feet from stepping on a tiny flower hidden behind the blades of grass, which would have gone un-noticed otherwise. That step for her was with a Beginner's Mind - a usual step of walking with an unusual awareness that opened an opportunity to appreciate the life around her!

"This flower was made just to be crushed under my feet" said a guest who was participating in one of our Walking Meditation.

Beginner's Mind begins and ends here, in this moment, till the next moment begins yet again with the Beginner's Mind - with not even an expectation to replicate the experience of the past moment, and allowing fully to experience how it is in this moment.

Shahir

#BeginnersMind #Mindfulness #Leadership #MindfulLiving #LetGo #NiraamayaRetreats #MindfulnessLab #Happiness #LiveNow