5. The Raisin Exercise

     The Raisin Exercise

• This is an opportunity to awaken a sense of “beginner’s mind” by exploring an object that is very familiar to us, as if we have never seen it before! It shows us how meditation practice can be very grounded in our every-day experience, in this case the act of eating. We practice opening up to this experience through our senses of sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste, and by slowing down in a way that we can pay close attention to our experience.
  
  
• We notice something about how the mind is constantly trying to distract us from being present, with a variety of thoughts and comments, judgments about liking and disliking, or how well we are doing, memories and associations, some of which can enhance the experience and some which pull us away.
  
  
• We can reflect on how different this experience is from the way that we normally eat raisins (mindlessly by the handful!). We can also reflect on the quality and intensity of the taste when we are really present to experience it.
  
  
• We may notice something about how we pay attention and the quality of awareness. There may be moments of dullness or distraction. There may be moments of clarity. Our perception of time may change in some way as we open up to the present moment of experiencing and tasting. We recognise that by paying attention we can deepen and enrich our moment by moment experience of living.

Automatic pilot:

• The raisin exercise reminds us that most of the time we can be lost in a form of “automatic pilot”, in which we are not fully paying attention. We may be driven by our agendas and habits of busyness without being fully aware of what we are doing.
  
  
• We may often be doing something and at the same time thinking of something else – perhaps worrying, or planning the next thing to do, judging or evaluating – literally being lost in thought, and less present in our real lives! We can actually lose significant chunks of our lives in this way, because we are not present for them. And, these are not just moments, they are our life! If we miss these moments, we miss our life.
• When we are lost in automatic pilot, we are also unprotected – like a guard on duty falling asleep. We are more likely to “get out buttons pushed” and to respond in an unhelpful reactive manner. We are more likely to fall victim to our old habits of thinking and behaviour, which can increase the risk of worsening mood states, whether that is anxiety and stress, anger or depression.
  
  
• With awareness, we can break out of these patterns and bring a more creative response to our experiences. We will find that we have more choice as to how we respond. We can become more aware of our thoughts, our emotions and our behaviour and what experiences push us into reactivity. We do not have to be continually trapped by the same old “mental ruts” that have caused us problems in the past.

(NHS Lothian 2017)