Really knowing your very most essential WHY ... really understanding the UNIQUE reason for your existence ... it's about trying to understand the ONE Origin of your most original origins ... it is a matter ascetic lifestyle in order to free one's mind from distractions.
Forgive, let go of all attachments to emotions, stop allowing people to pile their drama upon you ... move forward trying to be more present in the moment ... stop multitasking; instead focus more intently on what you must accomplish first, right now to make you better able to accomplish things in future. Instead of worrying, just focus on the questions like "What's my goal for the next half hour or hour or next few hours? What do I most need to accomplish today? How have I timeblocked my day ... but MOSTLY stop ever blaming others ... when you tend your garden of HATE, it will take over every last thing that you possess. Stop EVER Blaming Others!
The soul comes first. Our spiritual existence is eternal, so one must place a priority on one's spiritual existence.
However, being able to contemplate a healthier spiritual existence in this life is possible only when one's mind is free from worry, fear, anxiety, drama and other negative emotions which detract from our spiritual focus and Love of God. IN ORDER TO FOCUS ON THE SOUL, it is necessary to cultivate the healthier living garden of one's mind to be able to feed the soul.
Your MIND is the only place in this life that you have to live.
Take better care of your mind. REFUSE to allow others to dump their drama pollution upon your, but don't hate them for being filled worry, fear, anxiety ... they simply don't know any better ... this is ANOTHER reason why we must Stop EVER Blaming Others! but the FIRST reason is that IDIOTS do not get to live rent-free in one's mind.
A healthier body supports the mind.
It's tough to have much of life that isn't about pain and the suffering and anxieties that comes from knowing the future is nothing but pain if one doesn't take care of one body. This does not change the inescapable Reality that your mind is the only place in this existence that you have to live. In order to cultivate the living garden of one's mind it is necessary to protect and sustain that living garden with a physical temple ... your body is that temple, that physical edifice that houses your mind.
*EVENTUALLY, one finally realizes that the ONLY decent use of life is prayer ... or being in a constant state of prayer and sustaining a constant meditative awareness so that one is able to pray without ceasing.
One does not need ANY the other CRAP that is part of our affluent existence ... but [if one cares about one's soul] one really needs to be able to pray without ceasing ... to be in a constant state of prayer ... to be in a constant state of meditative awareness.
There are several types of prayerful meditation and strategies for greater cognitive awareness that have been practiced by monks and spiritual practitioners across various traditions throughout the ages.
Here are some of the most prominent ones ... in order of importance:
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Devotional Meditation: Devotional meditation focuses on some core principle or idea cultivating a deeper sense of love, humility or surrender, and an openness to more direct connection ... to emphasize our complete devotion a higher, more deeply spiritual Reality. Practitioners tend to engage in prayer centered around a devotional topic in order to cultivate a stronger feeling of the presence of God, to open hearts and experience a sense of divine union.
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Mindfulness Meditation: Mindfulness meditation involves focusing on the present moment with a non-judgmental awareness. Concentration meditation aims to develop single-pointed focus and mental stability. Practitioners choose an object of attention, typically the breath because it is something that is always present wherever one might be and train their mind to remain steadily absorbed in just the breath and breathing. By emptying the mind of all arising thoughts and returing focus the breath and breathing, this practice cultivates better mental discipline throughout the day which lead to deeper states of calm, clarity, and equanimity. This type of meditation helps develop clarity, stability, and insight into the nature of reality.
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Compassion Meditation: Compassion meditation focuses on cultivating feelings of love, compassion, and goodwill towards oneself and others. Practitioners visualize or contemplate the struggles of others and generate a heartfelt wish for the well-being of others and their freedom from pains, fears, anxieties, delusions. Practitioners silently repeat phrases of well-wishing, such as "Show me how I can genuinely help so that all can be happier and freer from suffering." This is NOT a matter of practicing idiot compassion and searching for charities to write checks to ... compassion is what we can DO, it's not about virtue signalling or guilt alleviations. The compassion meditatation practice is about earnestly wishing to create a stronger sense of empathy, forgiveness, and love for others ... to especially be more PRESENT for those around us.
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Body Awareness [All Sensations, Including Pain] Meditation: Practitioners try to intensify their attention to a particular bodily sensations, as well as thoughts and emotions that arise out of these sensations without getting caught up in them. This practice can extend to unpleastant sensations, such as pain, and can help practitioners develop a greater sense of equanimity and acceptance in the face of physical discomfort. It important to point out that this practice does not alleviate pain and it's not about trying to ignore or suppress or "think away" pain, but rather it is about trying to coldly, calmly observe the sensation and thoughts that arise out of the sensation with a sense of curiosity and openness ... this cultivates a better informed [because one is actually paying attention RATHER than running away in fear], more practically compassionate and active attitude towards one's own suffering.
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Open Awareness Meditation: Open awareness meditation, also known as "just sitting," but it can also be "just waiting in line" or "just stopped in traffic" as it involves trying to be hyperaware of what one's is doing and one's surroundings ... but, it is about dipensing with other distractions, ie with a thought that might be something like, "That's fine, princess, but I'm NOT going to think about that RIGHT NOW!" It's important to stress that resting the mind in this way is about being more aware of one's surroundings and the situation one is in. Resting the mind refers to dispensing with all distractions or daydreams or things that pop into one's head ... one is fixated on the situation at hand and NOT UPON some passing thought OR focusing on any particular object or experience. Practically, if one is enduring some sort of anxiety attack or being overcome with some sort of worry/fear, the only exception might be on recentering focus on one's breath and one's breathing. Practitioners maintain a broad, spacious, situational attentiveness to whatever might arise in the present moment in one's surroundings ... this is inherently restful, but but one finds that one is also ready to be more present for others.
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Movement Meditation: Movement meditation incorporates mindful physical practices, such as hiking meditation, yoga, or martial arts solo exercises. By bringing full awareness to the mechanics of the form of the exercise, to different parts of body in motion, practitioners cultivate a sense of presence, grace, and unity between mind and body ... but MOSTLY movement mediations is about JUST DOING IT RIGHT ... when one walks, one focuses on walking RIGHT -- studying everything about the gait, how the body feels, what could be better, but the focus is on walking RIGHT, ie NOT on a podcast or on the day ahead, but JUST on walking RIGHT. The discipline from this practice should carry over to other movements and activities throughout the day ... for example, when climbs and descends stairs, one focuses on JUST climbing and descending the stairs in the most efficient and safest manner possible.
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Analytic or Reading Meditation: This is about EARNESTLY seeking to undertand a concept that is being presented. It might involve reading a book, working through a paper with code/data, reviewing open source software code or any sort of activity in which is necessary to understand a concept RATHER than casting one's own biases, assumptions, past history on top of the concept, eg it's NOT IMPORTANT that you did something like this in the 90s!!! What matters is trying to REALLY understand the author's p;point of view. Analytic meditation can also involve contemplating specific scientific, mathematic philosophical or theological CONCEPTS, from different perspectives, different authors to gain deeper insight and understanding of the concept. This practice is really more about mental self-control than it is about meditation; they point of being intently focused on seeking first to understand is about develop critical thinking skills and even more CRITICAL LISTENING SKILLS, which are necessary for a more nuanced and comprehensive understanding of the world.
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Gratitude Meditation: Gardening OR Cooking OR Household Chores OR Home Maintenance. Minimalize, but take care of what you have. Be PRESENT. Gardening OR cooking meditation incorporates mindful practices, like walking meditation or analytic mediation but it incorporates a the accomplishment of a task in a manner that does not cause noise or create similar negative externalities ... it should be something that something that one needs to do anyway, but something one can do with passion and as well as humanly possible ... if the meditative task is one that one does not particularly enjoy at all, like housecleaning, one can try to make it more meditative and more enjoyable by focusing speed or efficiency of movement or how much one can accomplish in fifteen minutes. The discipline from meditatively doing tasks one does not particularly love should carry over to other activities throughout the year, eg doing taxes, cleaning out the garage, etc.... this form of meditation is mainly just on this list in order to allow for changing up one's practice ... there's nothing especially sacred about the repition of just words or sounds ... the POINT is use something, other than one's breath or breathing, in order to re-center and re-focus on JUST BEING PRESENT.
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Quote or Mantra Meditation: Mantra, Quote-, Word- or Verse-of-the-Day meditation involves the repetition of a chosen word, phrase, or sound, either silently or aloud. The repetition of something like a favorite Bible verse serves as an anchor for the mind, helping to quiet mental chatter and to generally cultivate a sense of inner stillness and connection to the divine ... but this form of meditation is mainly just on this list in order to allow for changing up one's practice ... there's nothing especially sacred about the repition of just words or sounds ... the POINT is use something, other than one's breath or breathing, in order to re-center and re-focus on JUST BEING PRESENT.
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Chore Meditation: The information security chore of changing passwords presents an opportunity to work on memorizing new passwords based upon new top-ten list as mnemonics, eg use 8.D.O.W.N.T.I.M.E.8 to eliminate waste. Changing passwords is something that you'll need to do anyway ... this is not a great meditation practice, but it is a way to make repetitive memorization more enjoyable and to make a game out of it. To some extent, cognitive strategy awareness is about making a game out of the little things that one should remember ... this form of meditation is mainly just on this list in order to allow for changing up one's practice ... there's nothing especially sacred about the repition of just words or sounds ... the POINT is use something, other than one's breath or breathing, in order to re-center and re-focus on JUST BEING PRESENT.