This page contains the meditations and a summary from the study day “Dealing with our Conditioning” which took place on Friday the 13th July in the Chapel of the RNI. The programme for this day consisted of 3 sections: –
1. Contemplation, thinking and meditation – in order to recognise patterns of behaviour and conditioned reflexes in ourselves there is a need to understand and practice the techniques that are required. These include meditation, contemplation and thinking all of which have a role to play but in order to be used successfully require to be defined and understood intellectually and emotionally. In the first part of the day we will discuss and practice these techniques.
2. How conditioning develops – once we have practised the necessary techniques we can look at how conditioning, conditioned reflexes and constructs of the mind are generated with particular reference to negative and self-critical influences. Again this will be involve discussion and meditation practise.
3. Dealing with our conditioning – in the third part of the day we will practise meditation techniques to help us realise our conditioned reflexes and our mind constructs so that we can develop a sense of freedom and choice. Since this requires the use of our emotional intelligence we will mainly be meditating.
The meditations are presented in sequence exactly as they were practised. The summary was recorded at the start of the afternoon session (section 3 above). Those who are not familiar with the Chapel of the Royal Northern Infirmary, where many of our mindfulness sessions and courses take place, may wish to know that it lies in a lovely location just by the river Ness as it flows through the city of Inverness. It’s generally a quiet location but does sometimes act as a base for large numbers of seagulls whose loud calling can occasionally be heard on the recordings of meditations. We are of course quite used to this accompaniment but for those who are not I apologise if the sound of gulls chattering loudly to one another is distracting.
Practice 1 – “Thinking, contemplating and meditating body scan (plus seagulls)”. A 35minute body scan meditation in which the concepts of thinking, contemplating and meditating are introduced.
Practice 2 – “Sitting with an event” – a 35minute sitting practice in which the meditator is asked to recall one of life’s events and practise thinking about it, then contemplating it and finally meditating on it.
Practice 3 – Loving-kindness practice – a 20minute practice that followed a brief discussion regarding the need to adopt a kind and caring attitude when looking at our conditioned reflexes and behaviour patterns.
Summary of the morning’s discussions and conclusions that arrived at working definitions of thinking, contemplating and meditating in the context of recognising and dealing with our conditioning. A 6minute recording.
Practice 4 – Recognising and dealing with our conditioning through meditation practice. A 35minute practice in which participants are asked to bring to mind some aspect of their behaviour which they recognise as being recurrent, repetitive or even mildly addictive and then to meditate on the feelings involved.
Practice 5 – Being caring, kind, loving and compassionate – a 30minute practice to illustrate how these qualities are essential if we are to be able to realise our conditioning and learn from it.
