Mindfulness rests in the here-and-now… this moment in time. This pure awareness lives only in the present moment when you’re mindful of your breath, the feelings in your body, and your experience as you read through the lines on this very page. Through deliberate awareness, we have got the chance to reconnect with the present moment in a totally new way.
This choice to become more present to our lives is a fabulous way to snap out of the sense of being on “automatic pilot” that many people in our bustling Western society experience. Rather than living in a mental dream of the past or future, mindfulness exercises are techniques to bring you back to this moment – back to your life. Present-moment awareness is one type of deliberate awareness that brings your full attention to this present moment.
To illustrate the difference between present-moment mindful awareness and being mentally or emotionally distant/removed, think of a memory from your past to reflect upon. Imagine the qualities of that time in your life… what you were feeling, thinking, and experiencing. Are you able to picture it completely? Now… become aware that you are recollecting it. This awareness is taking place in the present. This ability to see your thoughts as they are happening is what it means to engage in present-moment awareness.
Look around the room for a minute. What do you see? Check in with your internal state. What are you thinking, feeling, and sensing? It is somewhat likely that you are perceiving the room and your internal state from the perspective of self. This is normal. We have learned to comprehend the world and the people in it as they relate to us. In fact, we learned how to get our wishes met as infants and young children through making demands. We learned what folks were useful or harmful based upon how they treated us. Nonegotistic alertness involves stepping outside the self and viewing our experience through the unbiased lens of open, curious, and nonjudgmental awareness.
Mindfulness involves taking a totally different observational attitude to reality and your experience in it. It involves letting go of the drama of self… of me, my, mine, and I. It implies noticing things just as they truly are, not as they are in relation to you. For instance, imagine that you have discomfort in your leg. Normally, you might react with “I have an ache in my leg.” With mindfulness, you can learn to notice sensations without attaching them to yourself in this manner.
Laura Schenck is a doctoral student of counseling psychology at the University of Northern Colorado. She practices mindfulness based forms of counseling, including Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). Check out Laura’s blog, Mindfulness Muse, for more of her thoughts on mindfulness.