We all experience a struggle with staying ‘right here, right now’, to some degree or other. Even if it is something important that we really want to come to grips with, if it becomes difficult our minds start to stray to the next thing to be done – or other things we could be doing – or things that we should have done and so on.
Mindfulness is a specific practice in fully experiencing what is happening around you and in you at a specific moment in time; in other words, teaching you how to fully be, right here, right now.
Research has shown that if we regularly practise being right here, right now, like the birds, and if we really take notice of what is happening, we can move from being dissatisfied with life to being more satisfied and thereby suffering less. In other words, if we train ourselves to notice pain we can decrease suffering. This is a surprising paradox.
The specific practice of mindfulness is one way of training ourselves to return to being right here, right now. It has been found to be very effective in helping us to learn to stay in the moment more and more in our daily lives and to notice what we are experiencing. When we provide the time and space for ourselves to actually notice what we are experiencing, we gain important information about ourselves that we may have otherwise missed in the rush of life.

Meditation is mentioned over and over in the Bible, with numerous commands for us to meditate and promising God’s blessings and contentment as a reward. The secular practice of mindfulness is an ideal preparation for effective meditation. This CD spells out in simple terms what the Bible has to say about meditation and how the practice of mindfulness can help. Mindfulness is explained and different exercises provided to simply demonstrate the process, showing how mindfulness can be used to prepare the mind for Christian meditation. Topics for meditation are suggested and some further exercises detailed as a basis for further meditation