Mindful Awareness; a personal perspective and experience...1.

I hesitated before I decided to write this. You know , the old stuff about “ do I know enough” or “ am I good enough” , “or who am I to be writing about something like this ? “ .

Bah!! Same old same old nonsense of self-un-worthiness so built into us in western civilization.

Well it’s just for that reason I’m going to start a series on Mindfulness for us here because it is just plain a useful tool to rid or lessen thinking like that nonsense.

Please note that I’m going to tell of my personal experience here, that is share what I have learned and what I do . Maybe it will be helpful for you or maybe not. Hopefully at least it will lead you to think about it.

Yes I think I do know enough to write about it because what I do has had tremendous benefits to me. And that is enough for me to be bold and put it down for others to see. And reducing it to text will be helpful to me personally in clarifying it.

So I will tell of a personal journey, which is ongoing and which will continue day by day, moment by moment, for as long as I am around here. The past several months, where I have had time, has been very instructional and productive. Some would call it a spiritual awakening. But I’m not sure what that means but it sounds good. I’d really call it a period of intellectual and spiritual growth without defining the word spiritual other than to say it is not about religion. My belief system is definitely non- theistic and I find much more wisdom in the thoughts and traditions of the Buddha than any organized religion . Again this is secular; Buddhism isn’t a theistic belief system  or a religion, although some treat it so. The Buddha was a person – a wise teacher of truths as he saw them. I guess millions agree and I’m among them. But I’m no more a Buddhist as I am a Catholic. I don’t like those concepts of ists and ics anyway.

But I have read deeply into the ideas of Buddhism as well as some Hindu too.  It all started in India centuries before the time of the Buddha so there is much overlap. Let’s just say here that Buddhist thought evolved from the Hindu and changed a lot it the process. It became simpler in my estimation and I find I correspond much more to the Buddha thought than the Hindu- and I think most Americans at least will too.

But I meander- and I will write about the Buddhist roots in a later section

But for me it all started some years ago when I got the idea to bring in mindfulness practice to Smart Recovery meetings. And to do that I needed to learn some things to do it safely so I started to learn- and that has continued to this day.

My path jumped about a year ago when I took the Stress Reduction course (MBSR) at the Center for Mindfulness at UMass Worcester- the medical center where Jon Kabat-Zinn launched applied mindfulness practice about 30 years ago here in the US and it’s taken off since.

It was really after that that I started to see huge benefits in myself and I hope this is being transmitted to the MAP’s (Mindful Awareness Practice) I often guide at meetings. I also meditate daily now and also find my non- meditation time is often more mindful. More on this in a moment.

I hope that my writings in this series will encourage people to try this and see what happens for themselves and also be helpful in seeing just what it means at least to me- both in theory and practice.

So this first posting is sort of an overview and introduction. Over the coming months I will post such things as some fundamental concepts, some of the roots in Buddhist thought, some of the good science behind it both in clinical psychology and neuroscience, and some others not yet totally conceived but will come in time.

My first outing really was in the earlier blog titled McMindfulness. There I talked about what things Mindfulness isn’t or can’t do and so forth. I think it’s far easier to describe what it isn’t than actually what it is, although I will tackle the latter in this series – at least what it is to me.

But a few details to start off.

One often thinks of Meditation when one hears the word Mindfulness.

However, not all Meditation is Mindful Awareness .Yes it can be but not necessarily.

More importantly, not all Mindfulness is found in Meditation. You can be mindful during other parts of your waking day.  Most of the time we tend to exist  in a state of mindlessness; ruminating about the past or rushing to the future. But in that we are missing the best part often- that is the present- what’s going on right now. Becoming aware of and more focused on the present is what mindfulness is all about.

Guided imagery is certainly useful but it is not necessarily mindful. It can be however.

Transcendental Meditation is useful for some. However its popularity has dimmed and transcendence is not really an integral part of mindfulness awareness although some say it happens to them. Has not to me is all I can say, but then I’m not really sure what it means anyway.

Paying attention and being aware of the present experience nonjudgmentally with acceptance is a common definition often used. It is in that awareness that all sorts of good things can happen. I’ll go into all this in greater detail in subsequent blogs.  But we speak of it as being the stillness of presence- or the power of now as in the well-known book by Eckhart Tolle of the same name (which I recommend).

I like the term MAP or mindful awareness practice which I got from the UCLA center that studies it- and there are lots of such centers in the US now in or not medical complexes. It’s the practice that’s important- that is doing it and doing it often. It’s easy but hard and one needs to do it and practice it often to develop increasing skill. Just like Recovery, it’s a process of learning and experience—and gets better and better with time. Remember the Smart tool- Practice, Patience, and Persistence.

My next posting will be non-meditative Mindful Awareness Practice. So stay tuned.

 Your SR Science Correspondent