{"id":1110,"date":"2018-08-11T19:42:56","date_gmt":"2018-08-11T19:42:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bloomsoup.com\/?p=1110"},"modified":"2022-09-16T11:16:01","modified_gmt":"2022-09-16T11:16:01","slug":"mindful-awareness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bloomsoup.com\/mindful-awareness\/","title":{"rendered":"Mindful Awareness: The Art of Living in the Present"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Your mind is a puppet master, creating angst and high drama, set to the backdrop of a high-octane script.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thoughts attempt to draw you from the present moment repeatedly, through intricate fantasies played out in a fictional future or reliving a distorted, illusory past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Emotions are perhaps even more adept at luring you into self-made fantasy. An anxious thought leads to an unhappy feeling, which magnifies your mental time travel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Such mind wandering is akin to a fast-flowing river, with scenes played out incessantly in small eddies and currents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Much like a mirage, these stories are so realistic as to become intoxicating, until you wander trance-like into the water, only to be swept away by your imagination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
No sooner are you immersed in the fiction, living all too realistically the ego-driven narrative of mind, that you lose yourself in the tumult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Intermittently you claw your way back to to the river bank, gaze skyward and cough story water from heaving lungs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But after resting temporarily in presence, you leap transfixed into your story once more, to live out your endless Sisyphean saga.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The cure? Training to observe and appreciate the flow of your mind river without becoming mesmerised by its content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n