What does care feel like? When we care for something, we offer it our attention. We tend to it with gentleness. To remain present with something or someone, to listen and observe, to let be, allow for and accept. These are all caring acts. These descriptors are also characteristics of mindfulness.
In this guided meditation with Sean Fargo, we’re invited to open to this moment, just as it is, with caring awareness. The meditation turns attention to sensations in the body and heart with increasingly deeper layers of care.
Listen in a safe, quiet place where you can be relatively free from distraction. Practice with eyes opened or closed, in a posture that balances comfort with alertness. May this meditation be of benefit to you in your practice.
Sponsored by the Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification MindfulnessExercises.com/Certification
To care for something or someone is to look after it, to tend to it with gentleness and kindness, to accept it as is. It is a caring act to offer a person, an animal, or even this moment, our full presence, our undivided attention. Caring and mindfulness go hand in hand.
The awareness we cultivate with mindfulness practice is necessarily a caring, non-judgmental awareness. Try not to judge, however, and you’ll find yourself facing a great challenge. The awareness we develop in mindfulness practice is actively caring, loving, and kind.
It is this quality of care that allows us to be present with the whole of our experience. The fullness of each moment – the pleasant and unpleasant, the joy and sorrow – can only be held simultaneously when held in the spaciousness of care. For most of us, however, caring awareness is a perspective that needs to be practiced.
We have a habit of relating to this moment in an uncaring manner. We’re either too busy to be present, or we’d prefer that this moment be different. We quite literally use the phrase, ‘I don’t care for this’ to signal our discontentment. There is nothing wrong with recognizing something as unpleasant. Suffering can arise, however, when we fail to accept reality as it is.
With mindfulness meditation, we cultivate an awareness of such habits. By replacing attachment, aversion and indifference with the practice of caring awareness, we learn to let each moment be just as it is. Each emotion is allowed to be here, we can feel what we feel, and we allow energies to move. As we surrender control and open to presence, we may respond to our experience with calm, clarity, and perhaps most importantly, care.
Learn more about caring awareness, including how to practice and teach it, with the following free mindfulness resources:
- Podcast: Appreciating a Moment of Body Awareness, A Meditation with Sean Fargo
- Blog: Mindful Compassion: Live With Fullness, Connection, & Awareness
- Blog: Self-compassion Guide for Mindfulness Teachers
- Blog: 60+ Self-Care Quotes: Inspiration for a Balanced Life
- Meditation Script: Opening Your Awareness to Whatever is Arising
- Meditation Script: Cultivating Self-Care and Extending It Out
- Mindfulness Worksheet: Limitless Awareness
- Mindfulness Worksheet: Taking Care of Yourself
- eBook: Intuitive Awareness by Ajahn Sumedho
About Sean Fargo:
Sean Fargo is a former Buddhist monk who founded Mindfulness Exercises and leads the Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification.
