Mindfulness gets you engaged

What is mindfulness? Phenomenologically, it is the feeling of involvement or engagement.

How do people achieve it? Learning to be mindful does not require meditation. It is the simple process of actively noticing new things. It doesn’t matter how smart or relevant the new distinctions are; just that they are novel for the person at the time.

By actively drawing novel distinctions, people become situated in the present, sensitive to context and perspective, and they come to understand that although they can follow rules and routines, those rules and routines should guide, not govern their behaviour.

It is not difficult to understand the advantages to be in the present.

When in the present, people can take advantage of new opportunities and avert the danger not yet arisen. Indeed, everyone thinks they are in the present.

When they are mindless, however, they’re “not there” to know that they are not in the present.

What is mindlessness? It is not the same thing as ignorance. Mindlessness is an inactive state of mind that is characterised by reliance on distinctions drawn in the past.

When people are mindless, they are trapped in a rigid perspective, insensitive to the ways in which meaning changes depending on subtle changes in context.

The past dominates, and they behave much like automatons without knowing it, where rules and routines govern rather than guide what they do.

Essentially, they freeze their understanding and become oblivious to subtle changes that would have led them to act differently, if only they were aware of the changes.

Mindlessness is pervasive and costly and operates in all aspects of people’s lives. Although people can see it and feel it in other people, they are blind to it in themselves.

Your dreams rely on your mindfulness to come to existence. Don’t be a victim of your past!