Mindfulness Meditation - A Complete Guide With Techniques & Examples Notes Part 1:

Mindfulness Practice Step by Step Simple Instructions:

Set a timer for 20 minutes
Run the 10-second cycles for the entire 20 minutes: (1) Note, (2) Label, (3) Savor. Let your mind focus on whatever it wants to focus on. Whatever is most salient.

Mindfulness Practice Step by Step In-Depth Instructions:

Find an object in your present awareness. There’s basically three main modes through which you experience things: (1) Seeing (See with your eyes), (2) Hearing (Hear with your ears), (3) Feeling (Feeling with your body).
Note it. Note for noticing. Notice the fact it is an object. It takes a split second. Example: Oh Yeah! I’m looking at an object! (You’re going to say it to yourself in your internal dialogue).
Label it. Silent label. You’re going to say it to yourself in your internal dialogue. Label based on the channel you’re experiencing the object. Do NOT label if it is inner or outer. Just label based on the 3 basic channels: (1) See, (2) Hear, (3) Feel, even if it is internal or external. (4) Savor the experience, take in the raw perceptions that are there, take that in exactly as it is right now in the present moment, and you’re going to do that for 5-7 seconds. We’re not concerned about any judgments, conceptualizations, or stories about the object, here we’re only concerned about what’s actually literally there in your present awareness.

Technical Note (Examples):

There’s actually 6 channels in this case from the basic 3: (1) Outer Seeing (See with your eyes, i.e. physical red juicy apple), (2) Inner Seeing (See with your mind’s eye, i.e. imaginary red juicy apple), (3) Outer Hearing (Hear with your ears, i.e. bird chirping outside), (4) Inner Hearing (Hear with your mind’s ear, i.e. internal dialogue), (5) Outer Feeling (Feel with your body, i.e. physical sensations in your feet or even your heartbeat inside your body), (6) Inner Feeling (Feel your emotions, i.e. happiness, sadness).

Guidelines:

If you want to get a little more advanced, you can focus on just one channel for the day.
If more than one phenomena comes up simultaneously, just focus on whichever one you want. Usually whichever is most salient, and drawing the most attention from your mind.
If the phenomena disappears while you’re running a cycle, just noticed that it stopped, and you can also savor the memory of it that you have. In fact you can use a special label for this, and call it “gone.” It’s pretty good to notice that things stop and that they end.
If a phenomena morphs, just stay with it and notice what happens to it.
If you don’t really know what a phenomena is, that’s okay. You’re allowed to guess and you don’t need to be 100% accurate with your labeling. And its even okay if you mis-categorize something. Go with your best guess. And what’ll happen is that over time, as you practice mindfulness for weeks and months, you will get better and better and then you will not have these doubts anymore.
If the phenomena comes up too fast, recall, savor, and be mindful of the last snapshot of the phenomena. For example, the last gun-shot of a finite series of machine gun shots.
Do not label the labels themselves in the cycling process. Labeling is a tool in this process. Keep it very simple. Put all your attention on everything but the labels and everything but the process you are using.

Tips:

Do this practice daily. 20 minutes is recommended every single day. And if you want to get better, faster, then you can increase 30, 40, or 60 minutes. Do it daily without any excuses, without skipping any days ever. Without skipping weekends, vacations, and or holidays. Start very consistently with no excuses.
It really takes time and momentum to build up a solid mindfulness practice. You’re not going to do it in just one week. This is really a practice that you do over the course of months and years. It might sound kind of like a bore, like another thing you have to do, but trust that it’s really going to be worth it for you.
If you really want to supercharge your mindfulness, take a mindfulness retreat. Really common ones and really great ones are vipassana retreats. This gets you a lot of progress really really quickly. The progress you will make in one year of 20 minutes everyday, you can probably get that much progress in a single week at a retreat. And the ideal is that you do both. You should have a mindfulness practice outside of retreats, daily, and then of course you should take 1 or 2 retreats per year to really supercharge yourself and learn more advanced techniques.
This is a very basic form of mindfulness, it’s very powerful, it can take you very very far. You don’t need the fancy stuff. But there’s also more fancy elements that you can learn at these retreats.
There is no best technique. All of the meditation techniques on Actualized.org are in fact great techniques, very powerful techniques. Experiment with them if you’re a student of raising your consciousness and you really want to self-actualize. For the long-run, test out each of these techniques, test it out for a few months and see which ones you like, which ones you don’t like, you’re probably going to have favorites, but also don’t worry too much because even the ones that are not favorites of yours they’re still very powerful and very effective. There is not best technique. So don’t get caught in that trap.
The hardest thing is: are actually going to do it? It’s so stupidly simple.
This is probably the most important skill that you can develop as a human being because this is how you interface with reality—it’s your senses. If you’re not mindful of what you’re perceiving, you’re basically not mindful of reality, and you’re living in your imagination. You need to see and understand reality for what it literally is. You need to improve and cultivate this skill over your entire lifetime, this is really not an optional thing if you want to have a powerful life.

back