There are also far more complex-seeming things that can also be held as an object of our conscious attention. These are thoughts, emotions, and the specific combinations of them that seem to coalesce and swirl into whole new sensations.
Reflecting on these mind states in meditation, or better yet, being mindful of them while they're occurring, is extremely revealing.
Emotions Deconstructed
Most emotions are some combination of distracted thinking, mixed with a physical sensation. Take anger, for example, or frustration. The physical sensation itself can be a sort of tightness in some part of the body, like the chest or limbs, combined with a chain of thinking about whatever is making you angry.
This conditioned combined pattern of thinking "feels like anger", and becomes ingrained in the mind as such. But, when you're actually observing and being mindful of it, it's just the combination of thoughts and some physical sensation of pressure and temperature.
Anger, and other emotions, may subjectively feel different for you and other people, but the ability to observe the feeling itself is universal.
What emotions do you experience most frequently? Can you identify the physical sensations and thought patterns that make them up?
Our most deeply felt emotional states are the ones that have the biggest capability of derailing our lives, if not observed for what they really are.
"Meditation is not meant to remove our ability to have strong emotions. What it does is allow us to clearly see what feelings are arising in our conscious experience."
If we aren't even aware of this as it's happening, then there's no option but to succumb to the emotion and act on the thoughts. We see this happening all around us. The ability to be mindful of one's emotions really is the most powerful tool when it comes to actually making better decisions in the moment.
The mind also has the capability to get very imaginative. We're not just dealing with simply seeing something, and getting angry at that thing. The mind is capable of creating entire stories, bringing up vivid images and memories, and even creating new fictions, instantly.
Someone can say something to us, which was benign from their point of view, but in us triggers a wave of self conscious reflection about something entirely different.
Once again, if we're not careful, we can spend our entire day cycling between different patterns of thinking that really distract us from our life.
Take certain simple sensations, and observe them carefully, and we will find a world of detail that was previously unavailable or ignored. Complexity and simplicity almost seem to flip, or perhaps become equalized, to the mindful mind.
The Bell Example
Ring a bell for example, and you might find quite different observations from one with a mindful mind vs one who's unpracticed. The unmindful hears the sound, and says "that's a bell", whereas the mindful mind is keenly hearing every oscillation, the reverberation, the seeming panning effect as the sound wobbles through the mind.
The last thing to say for now about cultivating mindfulness of one's emotional state is that it can have the very interesting property of dissipating the negative emotion itself, when recognized in the proper way.
When we can clearly see an emotion arising, and recognize the thoughts that come with it, as opposed to falling into the flow of distraction and acting, it really does seem to lose its power over us as a negative force.
"I'll let you see that for yourself as you practice further."