Awareness The Foundation of All Transformation

Our lives are filled to the brim. We're dealing with our relationships, jobs, bills, projects, and household responsibilities on a daily basis. We're also constantly in maintenance of our own mental state, which has a tendency to fluctuate. Happiness seems to not always be available, and life always has something to throw at us.

On a larger scale, information has become available for almost everyone. Anyone with access to the internet has access to the greatest books, movies, and music ever made. We can learn skills from top professionals in their fields, find communities and relationships, and produce and publish our own content. There are also increasingly advanced AI tools to assist with almost any activity one could think of pursuing.

And yet, our attention spans are becoming increasingly shorter. The average amount of times people pick up their smartphones is around 100 times per day. As technology becomes more widespread and the algorithms designed to capture our attention get more refined, being constantly distracted becomes normalized.

What effect has this had on our minds? Many people are quite restless, and rarely present. We become unable to focus on achieving the things we really want, or we become unable to even know what we want. Have you ever gotten what you wanted, and then later become unhappy again?

There's a reason why people say that money doesn't buy happiness, and why there are rich and successful people going through divorces in court.

"Unsatisfactoriness drives our actions, and we can notice it to various degrees as we go about our day."

How many times, and to what extent, are we having a conscious mental battle which results in copping out of what we should do, just to avoid this feeling of dissatisfaction? This is what causes one to cheat on their diet, or scroll on social media instead of work on the project they've been telling themselves to prioritize.

So, just like how our minds were conditioned to tend towards distraction, we can actually condition the tendency of attention to our fluctuating mental states. This is called mindfulness.

By paying closer attention to the activities of the mind and being mindful of the fluctuations, you can really begin to understand the nature of these fluctuations and how it affects your resulting actions.

It is available to anyone and everyone, at any time, and is useful in a variety of situations.

Mindfulness is not just about increased productivity and the ability to focus on and achieve your goals, although it's undoubtedly extremely helpful for that as well. What it also gives you is the ability to not get distracted in more important ways, such as when you need to be present for a loved one, or when you need to be strong in a stressful situation, which we'll inevitably encounter in our lives.

By being mindful and not getting distracted or overwhelmed by the sensations of a strong emotional response and the persisting negative thought patterns that accompany it, one can find peace and equanimity in any moment, despite what the world may throw at them.

This is why mindfulness techniques are increasingly being taught by therapists, addiction counselors, and also in schools, in the military, and in prisons.

Something should be said early on about the types of techniques used to cultivate mindfulness, what meditation actually is, and what the "goal" is here.

There is a long history of cultures that have adopted various meditative techniques, and attached their various belief systems to them. Some have hierarchical goal-oriented approaches to meditation, with rituals and traditions, and are based around attaining certain specific states of consciousness. Some are non goal-oriented in the way we'd traditionally see it, but still have a background lore that includes things like other realms and reincarnation.

Nowadays we have studies on mindfulness meditation, cognitive behavioral therapy, and other techniques that involve paying close attention to one's own thought process, recognizing the unhealthy patterns, and developing healthy mental habits.

As scientific knowledge of the human body progresses, it's becoming increasingly clear how many factors can contribute to our mental states. These factors range from genetics, how we were raised, our role models, and the people we hung out with, to the type of food we eat, when we eat it, how much sleep we get, and the list goes on.

The brain is a part of the body, and we're well off to understand it. Knowing the relationships between one's history, body, and mental states is the foundation of various types of therapy, and the recipe for maximal health is always changing.

At first, you'll notice that it's actually quite difficult to sit and focus on one specific thing for even a few minutes. This is expected. As you practice, your ability to stably hold your attention on one thing will increase, and you'll be able to inspect the nature of conscious experience without getting distracted.

"This is seeing clearly. Mindfulness is the foundation of insight."

The insights we can gain about the nature of our minds, and the nature of thoughts and emotions, really do have a lasting impact on the condition of our minds, and therefore the quality of our lives and of those around us.

We can tune out distractions, and to an extent, we can choose the amount of pain and unsatisfactoriness that we deal with as a response to external factors that are out of our immediate control.

Once again, there's nothing here that will require belief in the supernatural or some dogmatic acceptance. It's available to all of us and requires nothing more than sitting down and paying attention.