The idea of confidence in mindfulness attitudes focuses on self-confidence. How many of us have lost touch with our instincts or distrust them? The confident attitude is about having the courage to cultivate and develop self-confidence.
It may seem illogical in this technological and digital age of facts and evidence to talk about instincts, but when it comes to understanding ourselves and our well-being, listening to your inner self is a fundamental skill.
Think of the myriad of actions that our brain is controlling that happen as a result of unconscious processing. The unconscious is a process that occurs automatically and is not available for introspection. The subconscious, on the other hand, is part of our consciousness process that is not actively in focal consciousness. Your nervous system, the five senses and the data that enters our brain, the processing of that data, all the unconscious activities without which we would not survive. The physical processes that take place in our body, respiration, digestion, hormonal secretions, heartbeat, arteries and veins contract, electrical signals jump over synapses, all vital and life support functions, and all this done unconsciously. We don’t have to think about putting one foot in front of the other when we walk, or any movement we make. We are aware that a brain injury (such as a stroke) can cause us to have to relearn these unconscious skills, so we know that our brain is responsible for processing our unconscious activities.
Now consider those times when you consciously want to do something, perhaps your attachment to a New Years resolution, but how your unconscious self will overcome that willpower. You look for sugar because you are behaving automatically. We know that one of the most difficult things to break, once you have successfully rid yourself of an addiction, is the habitual behavior that accompanies addiction. The cigarette after dinner, the drink after work, not necessary actions but habitual behavior that can be as difficult to shake as the addiction itself. Change must occur on the unconscious level and that takes practice. Recently, someone told me “practice makes permanent”. Instead of striving for unattainable perfection, we should try to incorporate our change at the deepest level to make them part of us.
Developing confidence in yourself and your feelings is an integral part of meditation training. For many people, it is an act of faith to start meditating and I fully acknowledge it. This attitude of trusting yourself and your own basic wisdom and goodness is very important in all aspects of meditation practice. It is far better to trust your intuition and your own authority, even if you make a few “mistakes” along the way, than to always seek guidance outside of yourself. If at some point something doesn’t seem right to you, why not honor your feelings? Why should you dismiss or dismiss them as invalid because some authority or some group of people thinks or says differently?
If you think about it, there are so many things in life (both simple and complex) that are beyond our control, but we trust them without hardly thinking or realizing that trust, so why can’t we do the same with U.S? ourselves – our minds and hearts?
By cultivating the attitude of trust, what we intend to do is to become more fully ourselves. Therefore, it is important not to get sucked into the reputation and authority of your teachers (or peers). If you feel that any guidance given takes you away from who you are, trust yourself and take another path that seems right to you. It is impossible to become like another person. The best you can hope for is to be more fully yourself, so don’t compare yourself and aim to become someone you admire.
The attitude of trust is about tuning into our deepest selves. It is listening to yourself on a much deeper level than you are thinking. It’s about going beyond the mind, to the intuition and what you are feeling, then trusting those intuitions and feelings and letting it guide you to become more fully yourself. It is not an attitude of ignoring common sense, confidence is not blind or unintelligent, but allows your inner voice to be heard and considered in your decision making. It is at this deeper level that we make change happen, releasing the inner clarity that we all have. We are resilient by nature, but as we mature and are shaped by our circumstances and experiences, we can lose touch with the innate force that exists within us. Practicing awareness can put us back in touch with that ability, and then we can choose to use it to recover from life’s challenges.