What is mindfulness? Mindfulness is really a keyword these days,
it's really out there, everybody's talking about mindfulness.
And oftentimes people ask me: "Okay, so explain it to me?"
Mindfulness is when you get into a moment,
when you are not stuck
in your thoughts. So, for example,
if you start to realize that your mind is going
all the time, chatter, chatter, chatter, it's always
talking to you, from the time you wake up in the morning till the time you go to sleep
at night, your mind is like lalalalala,
and if you realize you actually don't have the ability to turn it off.
If you would actually think about it and try to turn off your mind
for a moment and make it stop talking, you probably couldn't, unless you've been practicing
for a really long time.
And what that proves is that we actually don't have control
over our mind, it does what it wants. And, oftentimes, it's programmed
by experiences in our past, situations that we've grown up with. This is what
therapy is all about - trying to understand what your mind's talking about
and how it got in there, right?
What happened with your parents, what happened in your society, what are all the experiences
that have shaped
this mind chatter that goes on in your head.
And, so, what mindfulness is the awareness that all that chatter
isn't your essence, it's not your truth, it's just a chatter that
got programmed in you, as if you were like a clean computer when you were born,
and it had no programs in it, and then your life happens and
influences happen, and all these programs start to run in your computer,
and now it just runs. And, oftentimes, our awareness is stuck in that
computer, in that program, we think that that's our truth, and that's what we think,
and that's who we are.
But, if you can get a really quiet moment, and you can have this realization that
"Oh, I don't actually believe that thought." Sometimes you have
inner dialogues where one side of you is saying one thing, another side of you is saying
another thing,
and mindfulness is really starting to differentiate between the parts of yourself,
and to more fully connect with the calm,
loving, wise, sincere, knowing
part of yourself, and to start observing the mind
chatter without having to be attached to it as if it's
your own voice. It's kind of like,
if you're the sky, and the mind chatter is the clouds, it's learning how to
access and be the sky and to not be caught up
in the clouds, and amplify them, and make them a reality. And the second you
actually pull yourself out of the chatter of your mind,
it's very peaceful, 'cause it's quiet, 'cause you're not stuck in all the nonsense anymore.
The terms consciousness and unconsciousness are
often thrown around.
The idea of being conscious is the same concept as being mindful,
which is "I'm conscious of this chatter in mind that I have,
and I'm not being stuck in it in a particular moment."
Whereas the idea of unconsciousness is that
your awareness is in your thoughts, is in the chatter of your mind
and that's fully overtaking you in a particular moment. You're unconscious, you have no idea that
you're stuck in the chatter of your head
in a particular moment.