It seems mindfulness is everywhere these days, there are probably more books and apps about it than there are grains of sand on the earth (or something).
While that can be a good thing in that people are more interested in self-awareness, it can also lead to a certain kind of saturation-blindness to what mindfulness is actually about.
What is mindfulness?
Mindfulness is all about awareness – observing and noticing your own experience, in terms of perceptions, internal responses, feelings and thoughts.
It’s about not getting caught up in judgements, analysis, values, shoulds and shouldn’ts – but noticing them when they arise.
My favourite analogy is to imagine your conscious experience as like a waterfall, all those automatic thoughts and responses gushing down chaotically without any effort on your part, the stuff that we typically get lost in like slaves to our own minds.
Mindfulness is about stepping behind the waterfall, and just observing it, noticing it, but without interference.
If you notice a thought like “oh no, I’m thinking about that again, why do I keep thinking about that?” then take a step further back still, to observe that thought, without judgement.
The more you keep doing this, the more you will approach that pure light of conscious awareness – the awareness itself, rather than the distorted lens it shines through to create your subjective reality.
Awareness
Expanding your awareness is always a useful thing.
One of the first psychology books I bought which fascinated me was Robert S De Ropp’s “The Master Game”. It’s all about how people tend to fall into distracting “life games” of attaining success, status, control etc, while the only really meaningful game is that of expanding conscious awareness. This is after all all that you are – you are not your stuff, you are not what people think of you – you are pure awareness.
Staying trapped within your thoughts, identifying with them as if that is what you are, can be really limiting in terms of personal growth and development.
It’s like trying to rearrange a lot of furniture in a small room, without being able to leave the room. Mindfulness, and expanding awareness, is like stepping outside of the room, seeing the situation fully, and then being able to manage things more efficiently.
Identifying with your pure conscious awareness is like being an observer in the cinema of your mind, rather than being the automatic film that’s playing out (being your thoughts, responses, perceptions, feelings). You can take it further still by becoming aware of the observer. That awareness is something that you probably aren’t used to noticing and can feel completley different from normal waking life.
This can be a useful practice for so many reasons. It liberates you from identifying with the automatic clutter of the stuff that emerges in your mind.
The shoulds, shouldn’ts, have tos, frustrations, doubts, anxieties – when you become fully aware of them as an observer, you’re no longer experiencing their tenacious grip in persuading you that that’s what you are.
It’s difficult to notice all your thoughts and feelings when you’re in the waterfall itself – by stepping behind it, you can have a different perspective and become aware of patterns and automatic responses in different ways.
Developing awareness will teach you a few things about you identify with yourself.
You are not your thoughts – they are automatic, generated by the myriad of complex neuronal firings.
You are not your feelings – they are also automatic, emerging from the emotional associations triggered by your experiences and internal activity.
If you lose a limb, you are still you.
If you continue stripping away everything that isn’t you, what is left?
Pure awareness.
There are some excellent books that do much greater justice to these ideas than I can provide:
Anthony De Mello – “Awareness”: A very readable, gentle exploration of what it means to be aware, and how to develop those skills.
Stephen Wolinsky – “Quantum Consciousness”: an excellent book broken down into different areas, with practical exercises to focus on while practicing mindfulness. Stephen Wolinsky is a hero of mine, another book of his called “The Dark Side of the Inner Child” is all about how we automatically regress into the same trances developed during traumatic experiences. It’s incredibly insightful.
Nisargadatta Maharaj – “I Am That”: a classic text that’s excellent to dip into for a good dose of perspective around awareness. It’s packed with naturalistic dialogue around various areas, and is very readable and thought-provoking.
Mindfulness and Hypnotherapy
Developing self-awareness in this way, as well as distancing yourself from the emotional turmoils that can result from identifying with your conscious clutter, can be hugely beneficial to growing beyond your learned barriers.
Practicing mindfulness will give you the perspective of your internal responses as happenings rather than doings, which is a core component of what hypnotic training also achieves.
You’ll be in a much better position to more accurately recognise your automatic responses to events, which can greatly assist with the efficiency of a hypnotherapeutic journey – knowing where you’re getting stuck and what is truly wanted.
Mindfulness is so beneficial to growth and development overall, that it forms a core component of DBT.
Leave a Reply