So what is mindful awareness and how is it cultivated? ...
Mindful awareness is a mental attitude, a method, and a set of practices, situated in the long-standing tradition of philosophical inquiry and spiritual awakening, that is, of the pursuit of the truth. The task of a deep and productive psychotherapy after the truth of the self is to get to know your inner workings, a little bit about how your constitution and conditioning came to be, to take a comprehensive and honest self-assessment and from there, to learn the art of compassionate yet constructive self-work and personal growth that facilitates shifts in thinking, frees up compulsive and destructive habits, and opens new possibilities and previously blocked life directions.
Why wouldn’t we want to know the truth about ourselves and our experiences? Though it seems obvious and straightforward, this therapeutic task, although simply defined, is usually not easily achieved. For one, most of us have had to acquire and develop a ‘defensive structure’ to cope with dysfunctional early environments, traumatic events, interpersonal wounds, and the harshness and insensitivities of our social and physical world. This defensive structure can be so habitual and pronounced we might mistake it for our truer nature, a unique individual at the center of our being with a soft, tender heart that wants things out of life and a depth of consciousness not often let out of its interior cage. But how we cope and have stylistically learned how to cope is not who we are. Coming to terms with these strategies and styles of coping that are often self-protective in nature, but also cut us off from our depth and range of human experience is a feat won by increments; session by session new discoveries, connections, and collaborative understanding bring a discernable picture out of the initial, bewildering puzzle of self that struggles to name the nature of the suffering and dissatisfaction that warrants professional help.
Getting in the way of self-understanding, the ego naturally resists letting in painful truths about ourselves, our experiences, and the gritty realities built into human existence. ‘Ego’ is a vast term not necessarily meaning ‘egotistical’ in the way we commonly speak, though the terms are related. Rather, ‘egoic identity’ is used as a contrast to our deeper nature, always beyond the image we construct for others and the way we’d like to conceive of ourselves. Ego is both far smaller than the range of our psychology and personality and also much more false than the totality of who we really are.
To develop productive self-understanding that really underlies deep change, we have to get beyond the perimeter of the ego and we have to sustain our inquiry to get to the root of what’s really happening within us; one of the best tools at our disposal is mindful awareness, a way of relating to experience and to the ego that is nonjudgmental and deliberate.
In essence it is persistent, rigorous, and kind, for when we automatically judge something we often don’t understand the way it exquisitely formed within a certain context, just as crystalline patterns in snowflakes or minerals develop precisely by the chemical and environmental conditions that surround them. Once we come to genuinely understand what the defensive strategy is all about, we will feel incredible relief and compassion for even the most obnoxious, prickly, or shameful parts of the self and one’s history. The great news is that so much of our defenses, however useful and intelligent they were in a historical circumstance – often a crazy or crazy-making circumstance, are outdated, irrelevant, and no longer needed to survive physically or emotionally.
With the gift of this type of awareness, clients get to choose rather than remain enslaved to their conditioning, whether or not to keep, modify, or entirely dissolve patterns of thinking, relating, and behaving that had previously been keeping them stuck, stagnant, or distressed. An additional benefit of these practices are the calming and stilling of an otherwise overactive, over-analytical, overthinking mind beset by stress and maladaptive thinking which frees up attention for more wholesome, life-sustaining, and creative pursuits.
If you want to dig deeper, a helpful introduction to more of what mindfulness means and what qualities contribute to its powerful methodology can be studied here, excerpted from David Michie’s 2015 book utilizing both contemporary science and traditional Buddhism exploring mindfulness and its applications.
Why wouldn’t we want to know the truth about ourselves and our experiences? Though it seems obvious and straightforward, this therapeutic task, although simply defined, is usually not easily achieved. For one, most of us have had to acquire and develop a ‘defensive structure’ to cope with dysfunctional early environments, traumatic events, interpersonal wounds, and the harshness and insensitivities of our social and physical world. This defensive structure can be so habitual and pronounced we might mistake it for our truer nature, a unique individual at the center of our being with a soft, tender heart that wants things out of life and a depth of consciousness not often let out of its interior cage. But how we cope and have stylistically learned how to cope is not who we are. Coming to terms with these strategies and styles of coping that are often self-protective in nature, but also cut us off from our depth and range of human experience is a feat won by increments; session by session new discoveries, connections, and collaborative understanding bring a discernable picture out of the initial, bewildering puzzle of self that struggles to name the nature of the suffering and dissatisfaction that warrants professional help.
Getting in the way of self-understanding, the ego naturally resists letting in painful truths about ourselves, our experiences, and the gritty realities built into human existence. ‘Ego’ is a vast term not necessarily meaning ‘egotistical’ in the way we commonly speak, though the terms are related. Rather, ‘egoic identity’ is used as a contrast to our deeper nature, always beyond the image we construct for others and the way we’d like to conceive of ourselves. Ego is both far smaller than the range of our psychology and personality and also much more false than the totality of who we really are.
To develop productive self-understanding that really underlies deep change, we have to get beyond the perimeter of the ego and we have to sustain our inquiry to get to the root of what’s really happening within us; one of the best tools at our disposal is mindful awareness, a way of relating to experience and to the ego that is nonjudgmental and deliberate.
In essence it is persistent, rigorous, and kind, for when we automatically judge something we often don’t understand the way it exquisitely formed within a certain context, just as crystalline patterns in snowflakes or minerals develop precisely by the chemical and environmental conditions that surround them. Once we come to genuinely understand what the defensive strategy is all about, we will feel incredible relief and compassion for even the most obnoxious, prickly, or shameful parts of the self and one’s history. The great news is that so much of our defenses, however useful and intelligent they were in a historical circumstance – often a crazy or crazy-making circumstance, are outdated, irrelevant, and no longer needed to survive physically or emotionally.
With the gift of this type of awareness, clients get to choose rather than remain enslaved to their conditioning, whether or not to keep, modify, or entirely dissolve patterns of thinking, relating, and behaving that had previously been keeping them stuck, stagnant, or distressed. An additional benefit of these practices are the calming and stilling of an otherwise overactive, over-analytical, overthinking mind beset by stress and maladaptive thinking which frees up attention for more wholesome, life-sustaining, and creative pursuits.
If you want to dig deeper, a helpful introduction to more of what mindfulness means and what qualities contribute to its powerful methodology can be studied here, excerpted from David Michie’s 2015 book utilizing both contemporary science and traditional Buddhism exploring mindfulness and its applications.
| what_is_mindfulness_and_why_does_it_matter__[david_michie_2015].pdf |