What's in it for me?

I was having dinner with some good friends the other night and one of them asked me 'what is mindfulness?'. In attempting to explain it, we kept coming round to the same questions: Why do you do it? What do you get? What is the point?

This really is one of the nuances of mindfulness - you don't do it with the goal of achieving any particular state - for example, to relax or to get happier. If you do, this can be counter to the principles of the practice - which is about non-doing, non-striving. Just being. The whole point of it is to accept the now, accept the present and not strive in that moment to make it anything other than what it is. So there is a point to it, but you are not practicing to achieve a state of being...Rather you are just being - full stop.

The raisin exercise helps to make this clearer. Get a raisin and put it in your hand and look at it. Don't think about it. Just look at it. Then smell it. The aim isn't to think about the smell. Just smell. Squish it in your fingers. Feel it. Hold it up the light. Check out the colours. Put it on the  tip of your tongue. Taste it. Put it in your mouth without chewing. Feel the saliva. Crush it between your teeth and feel your taste buds buzzing. Chew. Swallow. You are experiencing a raisin - without thoughts or judgments - just awareness of different aspects of the raisin. This is a meditation practice. You aren't making the raisin be anything more than it already was - but is probably tasted stronger, sweeter, felt squishier and looked more interesting than it normally does - because you were more aware of it than you would be if you ate it the normal way. Probably several at a time in a bun or a cake with lots of other ingredients.

There are, of course, numerous benefits of meditating - including feeling more relaxed and being happier - and these are well documented, but you don't meditate to achieve them. Instead, they are potential by-products of the practice. As Eckhart Tolle says: 'Do not be concerned with the fruits of your action - just give attention to the action itself. The fruit will come of its own accord.' (Practicing the Power of Now, E. Tolle, pg 48).

photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/66719390@N08/7000816209/">SueKing2011</a> via <a