A. Paul Miller - The Mindful Place of Calm Find Your Way Into the Space Between Thoughts & Actions

Llewellyn Publications

Woodbury, Minnesota

Copyright Information

The Mindful Place of Calm: Find Your Way into the Space Between Thoughts & Actions 2019 by A. Paul Miller, PhD.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any matter whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Llewellyn Publications, except in the form of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

As the purchaser of this e-book, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. The text may not be otherwise reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, or recorded on any other storage device in any form or by any means.

Any unauthorized usage of the text without express written permission of the publisher is a violation of the authors copyright and is illegal and punishable by law.

First e-book edition 2019

E-book ISBN: 9780738762517

Cover design by Shira Atakpu

Llewellyn Publications is an imprint of Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Miller, A. Paul, author. | Pond, David, writer of foreword.

Title: The mindful place of calm : find your way into the space between

thoughts & actions / A. Paul Miller, PhD ; foreword by David Pond.

Description: First edition. | Woodbury, Minnesota : Llewellyn Publications,

[2019]

Identifiers: LCCN 2019029651 (print) | LCCN 2019029652 (ebook) | ISBN

9780738761848 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9780738762517 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Mindfulness (Psychology) | Peace of mind. | Meditation.

Classification: LCC BF637.M56 M55 2019 (print) | LCC BF637.M56 (ebook) |

DDC 158.1/3dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019029651

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019029652

Llewellyn Publications does not participate in, endorse, or have any authority or responsibility concerning private business arrangements between our authors and the public.

Any Internet references contained in this work are current at publication time, but the publisher cannot guarantee that a specific reference will continue or be maintained. Please refer to the publishers website for links to current author websites.

Llewellyn Publications

Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.

2143 Wooddale Drive

Woodbury, MN 55125

www.llewellyn.com

Manufactured in the United States of America

Contents

Creating Your Foundation
for Inner Peace with Meditation

: Creating Awareness

: Acting on Our Awareness

: Change: Tracking Your Personal Growth

Wisdom Insights to
Shift Your Perceptions

Dedication

To my soul, I can certainly say to you, Well that was not a boring life and I did not see any of that coming!

To my wife Kate who has supported and encouraged me over so many years. Bless you to the moon and back.

To all of you who walk on your path of self-growth not knowing where itll lead but are prepared to trust the lanterns light.

More powerful than the truth are your perceptions

Foreword

A meditation teacher was talking with his students about the benefits of the mindless state of awareness achieved with meditation. One of his students asked many questions during the talk and finally asked how to stop his mind from thinking. The teacher calmly responded, Do you know that place that can be sensed just between one thought ending and another beginning? Yes, the student responded. Widen the gap.

Paul Millers book, The Mindful Place of Calm: Find Your Way into the Space Between Thoughts & Actions, is a wonderful handbook with insights and exercises to widen the gap. Millers book adds fresh insights and techniques to achieve what he calls the Meditative Feeling within five minutes, and then how to extend and prolong the feeling into the day.

Miller also shares what he calls the Wisdom Insights that he received from his meditation practices. The Wisdom Insights are presented as sutras, pithy poems of guidance on staying aligned with the truth of your higher self. His discussions on each of the Wisdom Insights reveals how the teachings can be applied in everyday reality.

The benefits of mindfulness meditation practice are well
researched and documented. Jon Kabat-Zinn, author of the meditation classic, Full Catastrophe Living, pioneered introducing mindfulness meditation into a medical setting in 1979 at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. He introduced the meditation practice as part of the patients healing regime and was able to help the patients manage the pain and discomfort associated with their illness, minimizing their need for medication and enhancing the healing process. Mindfulness meditation training is now practiced in over 200 hospitals worldwide as a further testimony to its effectiveness.

Meditation training actually can rewire the neural patterns within the brain. We are not hardwired to always and forever respond as we always have with fear, anxiety, and uncertainty driving us more than we wish. A regular meditation reduces the size, function, and neural pathways to the amygdala, the fear-making gland that amps up the fight or flight response to anything uncomfortable.

The Mindful Place of Calm is a fresh and welcome addition to our collective understanding of the practice of mindfulness. It can inspire and teach you how to listen to your own Wisdom Insights that can come from meditation. Reading this book will inspire you to utilize the techniques you will learn to enhance, not only your meditation practice itself, but also its application in your life.

David Pond, author

Llewellyns Little Book of Meditation,

Chakras for Beginners,
Astrology and Relationships
January 2019

Introduction

Recently I was watching the movie Matrix Reloaded and there was a scene in which the Oracle says to Neo:

We can never see past the choices we dont understand.

Hearing those words was like someone waking me from the deepest sleep and I thought, Wait, what was thatwhat was just said? I instantly paused the movie and then replayed that part of the scene. This was the underpinning of what I have been sharing with people through my meditation, yoga, and therapy practices. Our actions are all about choicesgiving impetus to those that we can see clearly and searching for those we had no idea existed for us.