Mindfulness is becoming a popular idea. This is mostly a good thing. Mindfulness, as a label, is akin to yoga a decade ago. It has become a buzzword, of sorts, appropriated by many traditions, methods and modalities. I am looking at Mindfulness from the point of view of the Shambhala Tradition, where Mindfulness is a precursor to Awareness. Which is to say, mindfulness is the initial contact we make with an object for the purposes of stabilizing the mind.
Interestingly, mindfulness stems from the same processes as “clinging, grasping, and fixation,” which actually occlude awareness. Mindfulness of a perception leads (ideally) to a greater sense of contextual space (meditative awareness). Grasping an object closes down the space, disabling context and understanding. Although, both of these processes stem from the part of the mind that hold to a perception, mindfulness implies an openness akin to acceptance. Grasping, on the other hand is closing itself off from contact with the object in favor os its judgement of the object. This keeps the mind at a safe distance, continually dissociated from life. Mindfulness opens into awareness. It leads to connection and communication, while grasping leads to disconnection and projection.
The developmental aspect of mindfulness practice is to become aware of the choice points in our behavior, so that we can eschew patterned responses, for a more direct and spontaneous interaction with life.
Let’s unpack this process.
Once we’ve perceived an object, successive functions of mind come in to play to help define, describe and utilize that information. The mind trained toward mindfulness will hold long enough to see, but then let go into the immediate experience and gain understanding from its context. The unexamined mind will grip to the event and identifying as itself, almost immediately compare mental perception to databases of past experience, and acquired learning. All of this informs, but also distorts, the initial perception. If unchecked, we are actually no longer paying attention to the actual perception, as much as to ideas instigated by the perception.
Should this data retrieval activate an emotional response, any number of sub-functions may occur, including a need to grasp on to – what has now become the idea of – the object. And, as trauma lies deeply embedded within the fabric of our psychology, if this impulse is unchecked by mindfulness, we could very well trigger negative feelings initiating fight or flight reactions, or any number of fixations that link the present perception to a negative past history. In this way, we have lost the mindful aspect of knowing, and simply grip to stories about the object, or our associated feelings and past history, provoked by the perception.
This base level programing is NOT the basis of our NATURAL mind, but the basis of our CONDITIONED mind which is, nonetheless, deeply embedded in our psychology. This conditioning is ideally adaptive and responsive to the environment. However, all to often it is maladaptive and reactionary. In any case, it is reflexive and not aware, so we have no control. While, much of this programing is well intended, many of our basic self-protective mechanisms trigger inappropriate reactions to everyday responses. As fear is the basis of this conditioning, we are rendered slaves to patterning that keeps us avoiding pain at all cost. Many of us have lived lives asleep at the wheel rather than look more closely, and objectively, at our experience. This is why the awareness born of mindful attention to life takes the MANUAL support of daily practice.
MINDFUL OF OUR FULL HUMAN EXPERIENCE
When we receive, we do so in three major ways. The body the Mind and the Emotive or Energetic Felt Sense are primary spheres of intelligence and experience. Generally, we are programed to live in our heads, and remain unconscious of the deeper spheres. But, “unconscious” is a lazy term. It is actually a blanket for that which we chose to ignore. But, when we are relaxed, we can more of our experience. At some point, we can actually feel into places the mind cannot think itself into. As we contact the iceberg below the surface, we open to a new world of experience. With further meditative stabilization we slow the game down, so to speak, allowing for deeper levels of investigation. We begin to see the mechanics of our occlusion and, in time, come in contact with distinct choice points. Once we see the choice points, the decision to wake up becomes our own. In short, awareness is power.
With the application of mindful awareness, less and less territory remains unseen. We have greater access to the totality of our psychological experience. As we gain more and more access to our experience, we gain more and more agency in our life. In order to access the deeper strata of mind, we must forgo telling the mind what is it experiencing, and employ the yang mind gently to place observation on an event, and then open to yin mind to receive the information on its own terms.
THE FOUR FOUNDATIONS OF MINDFULNESS PRACTICE
The body has its own needs, which are different than the needs of the mind, or the heart. This is true as we progress around the hologram. Each sphere is different. Yet, each has the power to affect the other and to support, or ‘infect’ its information streams. The mind can never accurately asses if the body is compromised, or in need. However, should we address its physical needs, the body is able to relax and support the investigation.
In so doing, we are able to calm and relax the heart.
When heart and body are open, aligned and relaxed, the mind can settle and doing what it does best, simply see the world with clarity.
Then we find deep synchronicity with life. Connecting on any of these levels. We can have a physical connection to life. We can pick up intuitive sense feeling about life. We can see life clearly. In all of these gates we can come in contact with our world. Thus we become mindful of our life.
BODY – The base brain.
SPIRIT – The felt senses are an large category we comprising “Emotions” “Sprit” “Life Force” . It refers to the childlike experience of our mammalian mind.
MIND – Cognition and higher brain function.
LIFE – Our interface with conscious reality.
DEEP SYNCHRONICITY WITH LIFE EXPERIENCE
The more the mind speeds up, the less it sees. Sometimes, when we are triggered, and we think we have to have a response NOW dammit! we are actually closing off access to yin mind, or the knowing mind. The harder we search for a way out of our Chinese finger trap, the more experiences closes in. Eventually, we are so cut off from a reasonable alternative, we can only fall back on the ineffective strategies we’ve employed in the past. When the mind dis-engages from its moorings, we spin into the same old patterns. Awareness practice trains us to remember Mindfulness. Mindfulness brings us back to the present. Awareness allows us to open into Yin mind and receive the information of the body, the and the heart, so the mind can rejoin them with openness. In this way, we reconnect to the earth, to the present and to the natural flow of our mind, and can deeply synchronize to the rhythm of our life.
In this way, we can connect to life with balance and openness. We can assert ourselves in a direction and then learn to let go, and let life help us. At least, we become an equal partner with life. We can reduce the antagonism of mind, as we increase our awareness of life.
Therefore, we need not focus our practice entirely on negatives. Along with understanding how the unexamined mind allows tension, discomfort and dis-ease within the mind / body system, it is equally valid – and perhaps more effective – to turn our practice to the positive results of being mindfully aware. And more importantly, we can rest in the fruit of the practice, which is the freshness of the experience of life itself devoid of judgement and the infusion of old tapes.
Mindfulness is stabilizing the mind with an object of meditation. We can use the body, the mind, the heart and any aspect of our life as the stabilizing point, as long as we realize the point is to stabilize the mind to release its natural clarity.