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Foreword

Back in 2001, I landed in the beautiful City of Vancouver, on the shore of West Coast Canada. At that time, I was thrilled to arrive in such a great and peaceful city, at the young age of 22. Aside from being a regular person, whose passions were software programming and creating electronic music, my spiritual interests related mostly to the mystical and paranormal side of things. I had no idea what a spiritual life means, but I was mostly driven by my own curiosity, looking for that which is not seen, or that which is extraordinary, which is above the regular things in life.

Soon after I arrived, I made a friend that was a dedicated Buddhist practitioner, going to retreats, and also going regularly to a Shambhala Buddhist meditation center, where people gathered to do group meditations or attend courses, talks, or programs. It is there where I was introduced for the first time to meditation, a practice that would, in the long run, “change my life and the way I see things”, as my friend told me.

Everything there was done the proper way. For any beginner, there were meditation instructions that you could take as many times as you would need, presented by experienced meditation instructors. I was there almost every Wednesday, which was their “Open House day”, where anyone could go and meditate, have a 15-minute break for tea, cookies, and chats with the Sangha members and then, if they were up to, listen for another one-hour talk that was being given by a reputable member of the community. Every Wednesday I tried meditating following the words and directions of my meditation instructor, but a strange thing happened: my mind was getting more and more crowded with tens and hundreds of thoughts that I usually didn’t have before. I thought to myself: “this is getting worse; meditation was supposed to get me to this beautiful and serene place inside my mind”, as I imagined, “and now I’m getting all this chatter and agitation, I cannot seem to find my place on this meditation cushion, and I even cannot start to understand where all these thoughts are coming from, in the first place”.

For a while, I began to skip my visits to the meditation center, and I would just visit occasionally, so I can meet a few friends that I have made there. After two years on the West Coast, it came the time for me to return home. Once I was back home, I focused on my University courses and continued making music, which is now still my main occupation. My interest in Buddhism and Christianity rose year after year, as I was reading and immersing myself in studying spiritual books of all kinds, looking for answers to life-related questions through the pursuit of a spiritual life.

Fast forward 16 years later, it was the year of 2018. All of this time I was trying to meditate on a regular basis, but I could not manage to focus or concentrate enough to find that empty space in my mind, that everybody was talking about, no matter how much I would sit and meditate. The gaps of no-thought were still an unfamiliar thing to me, and I was facing all of the time the chattering stream of random thoughts in my head, not being able to have a clear and relaxed mind. But that didn’t stop me from trying, as I somehow knew that by even trying, this is an important part of the journey.

At some point during that year, I came across a short free video of Eckhart Tolle that came in my email from his newsletter. It simply said at some point: “Don’t look for your spiritual awakening in the future, when you will be so and so, or have this, or be that. Spiritual awakening can only happen Now, in the present moment.” This phrase resonated somehow deep within me, and I kept his YouTube free video in my Internet browser, and as I went to check my emails every day, I would also play it. The tone of his voice was calm, soothing, and full of inspiration. I liked the way he spoke so much, that I even played it at random times during the day. Every time I had some time off during those days, his words were coming again and again in my mind: “don’t look for spiritual awakening at a later date in the future. Spiritual awakening can only happen Now.”

And then, like a miracle, after almost one week of listening constantly to his words, after trying to be in the here and now as much as possible, one evening, after 18 years from my first attempt, I was trying to relax and meditate, and then it happened. A serene state of mind emerged all of a sudden, a clear space where no thought would occur and a calm warmth enveloped my mind for merely 2 minutes. I had finally discovered what the mind of no-thought meant, that everybody was talking about and managed to rest in the clear and unobstructed space of my mind, effortlessly.

By bringing myself back to Now, in as many instances of the day that I could, I was completely transformed in just one week. The two minutes where I experienced this great serene peace inside my mind healed my mental and emotional being so much, that I felt like every bit of suffering that I experienced during my last 10 years was gone. From that point on, the sensation that I experienced, in the beginning, faded gradually, but my progress with meditation increased every day, and I could slip into the stillness of being while meditating, right after the first few seconds of sitting: being able to be more mindful during the day had really transformed my life, and opened the way to understanding meditation. In this book, which was inspired by this beautiful experience that I had, I am going to talk and teach about my personal experience related to meditation and mindfulness.

Mindfulness can be seen as the clear and focused aspect of the mind while it is immersed in the present moment, and it is, indeed, a byproduct of meditation. I will bring you, the reader, from not knowing anything about mindfulness to the complete knowledge about what mindfulness is, how to practice it best in different circumstances, and how to reach it even if you confront yourself with difficult situations.

This book was born out of the desire to share my knowledge, insights, and experience with others. I find that mindfulness, although it is a very coined term in the 2020s, has yet to be understood by the majority of people, and most of all, practiced. My main spiritual influences that are present in this book come from Orthodox Christianity, which is my native faith, from Buddhism, and from a lot of spiritual teachers of today, among which Eckhart Tolle, which coins mindfulness with his own term, “presence”, and creates his unique system of understanding on how to be Here and Now, in the present moment.

I hope that you will become a better you after you have read this book and I deeply feel that by understanding and practicing “how to be mindful”, this will create a whole new ground for yourself, which will, in turn, show you the world as it is, in its whole aspect of peacefulness and beauty, by being rooted in this very precious moment of Now, that we all have, and that we all should cherish.

Namaste