What is Mindfulness?

Unless you're deaf or live in a cave, you've heard the word mindfulness. The term has started creeping its way into psychotherapeutic vernacular. Originally an Eastern mystical exercise, it has now forms the cornerstone of some major Western psychotherapy techniques including Dialectical Behavioral Therapy and Mindfulness Psychotherapy. What is it? How do you practice it? Why won't the Dalai Lama shut up about it? What will it do for you?

Mindfulness is a technique that concerns the way you respond to the content of your mind. When you are mindful, you watch the contents of your mind with a curious, innocent nature, rather than an analytical and judgmental nature. To really understand what mindfulness is, you have to understand what it isn't. To do that, lets examine our day-to-day mental life.

We go through most of the day somewhat oblivious to what's going on inside of us. We analyze, worry, prioritize, and plan one thing to the next. When we get bored, anxious, or sad, we respond by thinking of ways to relieve that feeling. If I'm bored, I think about what I can do for stimulation. If I'm anxious, I start telling myself not to be anxious and plan out ways to gain an upper hand in the situation. If I'm sad, I might start analyzing the crap out of my life, looking for something I can correct to alleviate the sad outlook. There is a snap, automatic judgment that occurs in between the unwanted thoughts and feelings and our reaction where we say: I don't like this; I want something better.

This automatic resistance to experience is normal. It's what keeps our species going. For example, if I'm lonely, I look to solve that loneliness by meeting someone. If I'm concerned about my status and appearance, I do something to help boost that status. When I'm horny, I call up your ex girfriend/mother. This is how our ancestors pushed forward, found ways to survive, and deposit their genes in you.

The trouble occurs when you realize that contentment and satisfaction aren't the aim of evolution. Following your "genetic destiny" by resisting and reacting doesn't guarantee happiness. Why? Well, why should it? The "aim" of evolution is survival. It's tricky, because our biology and psychology coaxes us into believing that if we follow the plan our genes have designed for us, we'll be happy and content. "Keep fighting for money, love, status (generally, "security") and you'll be happy! I promise!*"

Mindfulness is a different way of responding to mental content. Instead of being stuck in our heads, planning, thinking, dwelling, worrying, resisting, and reacting, mindfulness tells us to STFU and wait. In mindfulness, we look at our experience with curiosity as it unfolds and morphs from one thing to the next. When you're bored, you look at the way boredom feels. When you're anxious, you see how your back is all tense and twisted and your mind cluttered with thoughts about what might happen. It's interesting. Strange. When you're depressed, you see how your moods and interpretations are gloomy. Hm. Okay. Not the greatest feeling in the world, but interesting.

All of this is accomplished with relaxed attention. You aren't trying to force yourself to do something special with your thoughts or perception. You aren't trying to see the world as all rosy and full of rainbows and love. You're just looking at what's already here without being a dick to yourself.

Mindfulness slowly collects you and puts you back in your body. You don't automatically stop thinking, and when you first start, your mind starts to wonder and analyze content, but over time, you start to analyze less. You stop thinking about your thinking, which has the overall effect of minimizing the clutter in your head. You can kind of think of it like frogs mating. When your mind is reacting to content, you generate new thoughts, and then new thoughts about the new thoughts. Each generation doubles in size. Before you know it, your mind is full of frogs**. (Wait, what?)

When you practice mindfulness, you stop generating new thoughts about your thoughts. Over time, the original thoughts pass and your mind starts to clear up. When your mind clears up, strength and joy start to creep in. You find that you're able to work through difficult feelings, situations, and stages without resorting to automatic resistance and reaction. You find alternative, wiser ways of responding to things that help create long-term rest and harmony.

Your perception begins to crystallize a bit too and you can see things just as they are. Buddha and his posse taught that with that clear mind, you can look at your own identity and realize that it's not made of anything independent. There is no "I," no actual thing called Edahn. Edahn is just an idea I represent in my mind as having certain attributes, stories, and aspirations, not an independent thing that needs to be defended. It isn't something in the universe; it is the universe. Not the whole thing, but connected with it in a very intimate way. This is the point where all resistance to experience (karma) stops.

If you want to try it out, just see what's going on with your right now. What does your body feel like when it breathes? Do you feel any tension in your shoulders? What kinds of thoughts are youo having? Take a look and see if you can answer those questions. Pretend like I gave you a quiz with those questions and your job was to present the answers not in the form of words, but in the form of an experience. Show me the experience of breathing, feeling, thinking, hearing, touching, pain -- whatever is going on.

*I wouldn't deny that there's some truth behind those promises, but it occurs because of a confusion of terms, mainly, the term "love" which comes in the form of romantic and platonic love. I'll explain this another time.

**I've been informed by one of my loyal readers that frogs produce more than 4 offspring together so each generation multiplies by a factor great than 2. You're right. I assumed, naively, that each pair would have 4 kids, so each generation would double from 2 to 4 to 16. I was wrong for assuming this and I apologize, sincerely.