Mindfulness is More Than Being In The Moment
If you are on my email list, in last week's newsletter, you learned how mindfulness is about more than just ‘being in the moment’ and ‘letting thoughts go’. Practicing the skill of presence (which is how most people in the West define mindfulness) is wonderful and beneficial; however, for lasting change in the brain and mind to occur, rather than just a band-aid solution to existential anxiety and frustration with life, there needs to be another element: observation and right action.
To really change your mind (so you can change a bad habit, be more loving to others, be a better listener, stop being so self-critical, whatever your goals are) you need to be able to...
Be present with what’s happening, AND
Observe your mind non-judgmentally, with compassion if needed
Take the action that supports your highest values (at first, this will conflict with what your mind WANTS you to do. Remember, it’s a habit for a reason)
Where does sensation play into this?
Sensation is a way to get out of the stories your mind tells you. And when we remove ourselves from the story, we are less likely to cling to it or try to push it away (this is called ‘craving’). And when we are free from craving, we are more likely to keep our cool, see clearly, and act in ways that are more effective.
Let’s take it piece by piece. We’ll start with the stories in your mind.
We are born with a brain that has (often unhelpful) biases that kept our ancient ancestors alive, then we receive conditioning from our family, peers, and culture about how to love, what’s okay and what’s not, and more, and then, we reinforce those habits of mind with thoughts, beliefs, and actions. Our view of reality is inevitably flawed. It is colored by our unique past living on this planet as well as our evolutionary history. It is hard to see clearly.
What we sense (via sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch) is pure and “real” until it becomes categorized, labeled, and identified as something by our brains and we start thinking about it. You might think the two are inseparable (sensation and thinking), but they are actually two distinct steps. If you pay close attention, you’ll become aware of how we “add on” a story about a particular sensation. This is an unconscious process until we bring attention to it.
Notice what you hear right now.
Odds are, you heard something and immediately labeled it as “the ceiling fan”, or “the song I’m listening to”.
Now, try just receiving the sound as it is, without labels or thoughts. And when you inevitably move toward thinking about the sound, rather than experiencing the sound, recognize that you’re thinking, and come back to receiving the sound.
The effects of thinking about the sounds you hear around your house are probably inconsequential, but issues like racism, defensiveness, and self-criticism / self-hatred stem from having not trained our minds to dis-identify with thoughts. And these issues have huge consequences.
Instead of noticing racial biases, many people become (unconsciously) more entrenched in the stories they have about people who look different.
Instead of listening to their partners' grievances and feeling the discomfort it brings up in their gut, many people get lost in thoughts about why their partner is wrong, preventing them from listening and understanding, and ultimately, resolving it, whatever that looks like.
Instead of noticing how crappy rejection feels, many people jump right into what that rejection means about them - how they’ll never be able to find someone again, how they’ll never get that promotion, how they should just give up.
Imagine a world where we were all able to notice and set aside our thoughts about whatever is happening, and stick with the experience itself.
As Rick Hanson puts it in his new book, Neurodharma, “When you recognize the show in the theater of the mind in this way, you can take it less personally and feel less implicated in it and thus less weighed down by it”.
Now let’s talk about how craving plays into the mindfulness of sensations. Craving can be defined as clinging / trying to hold onto something pleasant, and avoiding / trying to push away something negative.
When I think of craving, I’m reminded of the psychology courses I took in college where we learned about operant and classical conditioning. I think about the rats in psychological experiments who would rather go hungry than push the lever to get food, but be shocked when they do so.
Although we are different from rats in a lot of ways, we are not so different in this regard. We will do almost anything to avoid feeling discomfort.
Also like the rats, we are motivated by pleasure. We don’t want it to stop (even though it always will). When ‘pleasure electrodes’ are implanted deep within the brains of rats and stimulated when rats push a lever, they repeatedly push the lever, even up to 2000 times per hour.
But UNLIKE rats, we have more evolved mechanisms for observing the discomfort and strengthening our ability to BE with it, so we aren’t a slave to it (because if you’ve noticed, both clinging and avoiding are not as relieving as we think they will be).
So instead of avoiding the hard conversation or going for your 12th cookie, you can pause and notice the sensations of aversion and the sensations of wanting. Both are wildly uncomfortable, especially at first. What if it was okay to feel that discomfort? Notice all the thoughts the mind will conjure up: “I’ve already eaten 11 cookies, what’s another?”, “I feel so bad right now. I deserve another one”, “This conversation probably won’t be worthwhile”, “I don’t want anything bad to happen”
When we can detach from the stories, we can be with discomfort, which frees up space for us to act in alignment with what we REALLY want and who we truly are.
How amazing does it sound to be able to keep your cool during uncertain & chaotic times, see more clearly, and act in ways that are more effective and in line with your values?
This is what’s possible when you make a point to train your mind to become mindful of sensations.
It doesn’t take hours a day, you don’t have to move to a remote island, and you don’t even have to pick up a meditation practice. You can begin training your mind right now, right here, smack dab in the middle of your busy, full life.
For a few of my favorite practices and mindfulness tips & tricks, check out my E-Book, The Mindfulness Handbook.