Hi everyone,
Wow what a great thread, there are so many cool ideas and conceptions of mindfulness; it's been super interesting to read!
One thing I've noted is that a lot of people perceive mindfulness as a behaviour which promotes relaxation and relief, but not really understanding why that is. The way I understand mindfulness, and the way it brings that relaxation, is that it gives a brief separation from the constant thoughts of our unconscious minds; I'll elaborate.
So basically, we feel as though we are in control of our thoughts; that they come up because we initiate them. "I'm going to have a piece of toast"; I could have had any food, but I freely chose toast. But if we stop and really analyse how our thoughts arise, we find that they just pop into existence; did I think to myself "I'll choose toast", or did my brain say "you want toast", and I instantly thought "I'll have toast"?. If we really just sit there, and see where our mind goes, then it becomes clear that these thoughts sort of emerge out of our subconscious, and we're only thinking them once they're forced into our consciousness. There is much more to this but I'm still learning, and I'll keep it a bit brief, because the topic is mindfulness, not consciousness!
So what this means, if you accept that your thoughts are unconscious, is that we're experiencing a torrent of thought throughout the day, with no real control over what thoughts we have. They can be relentless in nature, whether they're about regret, embarrassment, anxiety, fear, the past, the future, multiple universes; anything. But when we're lost in these thoughts (which is almost all the time), we're not in the present, we're just watching whatever our unconscious mind serves up. Mindfulness, sometimes achieved by meditation, can be a way of separating yourself from these thoughts, and just watching them, acknowledging that those thoughts do not define you, and that you can find peace and happiness independently of them.
Mindfulness can help acknowledge that the past and future don't exist, they're just memories stored as electrical signals, or predictions about what's to come in an unpredictable world. What this means is that all that's left is the present; this moment, these sensations and feelings, and nothing else is really 'real'. The goal is to enjoy this moment, and not get swept up in all the uncontrollable thoughts about past and future which really don't exist.
Anyway, just some ideas 🙂
Jackson85
