Mind Full or Mindfulness

First, we must dive into what mindfulness is, especially nowadays when it seems every teacher has a different flavor of mindfulness or a different branch of the teaching. In that logical fact, we are no different. The reason that happens is when somebody takes a true journey into mindfulness, they allow the context of their own life to adapt what they’ve learned so it fits for them. I’d like to be clear when I say this, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that! In this course I’m going to teach you the framework that I learned. I’m going to talk about some things where I found the truth behind the story and discuss where I found the story important. My hope is that you take everything that I’m teaching you here today and change it to suit you. There will be nothing that I’m teaching you here in this course that bears any resemblance to ritual or practice outside of a daily habit. Feel free to look at this course like a large lump of clay, make it your own, reshape it, and create something that is meant just for you.

We define mindfulness as “the active participation in one’s own thoughts and emotions”.

Let us look at what that means. Mindfulness is a practice to build space between an event and a reaction. Now that reaction could be physical, mental, or emotional. Most people if not every person has experienced reacting before thinking at least one time in their life, but what if you had the space to think about a situation or an event unfolding in front of you without emotion or ego and you could plan out your reaction? Do I want to take action? Do I want to ignore this? Is this offensive? Am I in danger? Am I creating danger? Is this love? Is this a happy situation?

If only every person had the space to process and think about this before they reacted. Unfortunately, this is not the case, and we are left with an imbalance of under-reactions and over-reactions because it wasn’t thought out and the decision is easily swayed when we fold in hindsight. Now I say that lightly but more often than not when somebody’s ignoring that space, we have the unfortunate buildup or the crescendo of having multiple events building up on top of each other and you’re left to sort out which emotion belongs to which event and often we get it wrong. The good news is that space is indeed available for every single person, but it takes time, energy, and practice in order to build that headspace and have the mindset to be present enough to stay in it while something is happening. This is called mindfulness! In the circle back to our definition highlighting the active participation in one’s own thoughts and emotions, it really talks about when you choose to be mindful and when you don’t. Many people are under the impression that once you become mindful you are mindful all the time and this simply is not true. Our bodies and our minds need time when we are not mindful or when we are multitasking or when we are on autopilot. This sometimes is done to conserve energy, to reduce a mundane task, or a product of repetition. Not being mindful is not wrong when you’re choosing it. There is a time and a place for both to be productive and useful providing you have the capabilities and the presence to make the choice between the two.