The Headspace Guide to: Mindfulness & Meditation

by Andy Puddicombe

The reversal With all this good advice, it wasn’t long before my mind really started to settle down. There were still days when the mind was busy, but I was becoming increasingly comfortable with watching the thoughts as they passed by. The thoughts were somehow easier to deal with and I’d taken the analogies of the road and the blue sky to heart. However, when strong emotions arose in the mind or I started to feel physical discomfort, I had a hard time just sitting with it. I found it almost impossible to be unbiased in these situations. When I felt happy and blissed out I wanted to hold on to that feeling for as long as possible. But when unpleasant feelings arose I couldn’t help but resist them. I’d lost count of how many times I’d been told that resistance was futile, that it only made the situation worse, but I just couldn’t help myself. This went on for some time. I saw it as a kind of heroic battle with the ego and, being quite stubborn, refused to back down. I didn’t yet have the awareness to see that the only battle I was waging was against myself. Eventually I had to concede that I was getting nowhere and so once again I arranged to see my teacher. As I explained the situation to him, he nodded away as if he’d heard the same thing a hundred times before. ‘It’s the same for everyone,’ he began. ‘We’re attracted to the things we like and we become attached to these things. We don’t want to give them up for anything. The only problem is, the more we chase after them...