Rest your attention

Portraits of meditation, part 1

The last couple of weeks have been characterized by spikes of anxiety every time I close my eyes to sleep. It may be the product of hormonal changes from my treatment, or it could be an outcome of my general current life circumstance. Either way, it’s led to me pull out every trick in my mindfulness toolkit as I lay myself down each night. In that process, I recalled the cue to rest my attention on my breath.

I love this prompt, because it reminds me that meditation is an opportunity to rest. Rather than giving my mind another task it must accomplish, I can offer it a reprieve. Instead of straining to follow the breath, I can allow myself to rest my attention to rest upon it. I started to envision myself rest on that cyclical rising and falling. From there, images flooded in that I’ve used as anchors for my practice. I want to share those images with you, in hopes they help you find the same restfulness for your mind.

Here’s the first.

One meditation app I like offer the metaphor of our thoughts as clouds and presence as the blue sky always there behind them. I’ve always found this metaphor clarifying, and it inspired the imagining of my mind as a little cloud.

My mind is a cloud at rest on a hammock. As the hammock swings side to side, it carries the cloud gently with it. The waves of my thoughts may break infinitely in the background, but my mind does not have to ride them. It gets to take a break. 😎