Mindfulness II: As Unnatural as Human Nature

There are perspectives to which we are so habituated they are invisible to us like the rims of glasses in your peripheral vision or the traffic noise of the city. To understand why mindfulness is so “difficult” we have to first make visible some of these values.

First and foremost, our society is designed around one word: lack. Advertisements tell us we are missing out or not enough. Popular religions tell us we are promised blessings in the future and to discount our present suffering. All media, especially social media, sells us a glamorized version of not-us. As a result, the present moment is filled with anxiety, derived from the German word, angst, which since the 8th century CE meant a “constricted” or “tight” feeling. We feel as if we are being squeezed by an external force.

In mindfulness meditation, we sit with the emptiness and are directed to observe how full our present moment is. We take stock of the plethora of sensations, thoughts, sights, and sounds. In a non-judgmental way, mindfulness meditation reminds us that the world abounds with nourishment: if not concretely, then at least in a self-affirming way. Our thoughts, feelings, and experience exist despite the culture of lack. With such a busy and engaging experience, it is therefore much easier to let go of the wish for satiation. A powerful line in one of the mindfulness scripts I used to teach is “abandon the wish for your subjective experience to be different.” How liberating it is to be able to just take off the straitjacket of society once in a while.

Second, our society reinforces the idea that human “actions” generate the objects to fill in the lack. This is the core role we have to play if we want to partake in the Western-ethnocentric, patriarchal, capitalistic society. Unfortunately, due to the fact that commodities like food and shelter are tied to the marketplace, we do not have much of a choice.

Think of the constant bombardment of stimuli calling us to action. There are push notifications on our phones for everything from paying our bills to new sales on clothes that will never help us find inner peace. The hidden threat behind each notification is a reminder of the lack so deeply drilled into us. Advertisements line our streets, our public transportation, and even on “smart” fridges. 

Contrarily, mindfulness meditation is the radical process of letting go of the urge to act. That’s easy to do when the urge to act is about buying products, but less easy to do when the urge to act is to attend to one’s anxiety or depression. Consider this, however - when has the frantic action of trying to get rid of one’s uncomfortable emotions really led to a sustained improvement in said regulating emotions? I have heard in my practice people who forcibly suppress their own panic, rage, and despair only to have those same feelings erupt out at inopportune times. Also, many people report going into tailspins specifically due to the attempts at curbing negative thinking. “I’m feeling panic. I have to stop panicking. Why am I still panicking? Just stop panicking! You always do this! Why can’t you just be NORMAL?!” Then, the ability to suppress troublesome emotions fails altogether. Then they come to treatment.

It seems our efforts from a problem-action-solution mindset often trade off short-term solutions for long-term problems. Note how with the mindful stance, “problem” and “solution” do not exist as concepts; when we are aware of the present moment without judgment, there is no further annotation of the experience of suffering beyond “I’m feeling panic” or “I’m having a catastrophic thought.” In an intuitive yet paradoxical (meta-paradoxical?) way, relinquishing the reins of one’s mind allows our internal biological wiring to calm us down in a much more effective way.

To put it in a Zen Buddhist metaphorical way, consider an attempt to catch a slowly drifting feather in an open palm: the gust of air from our hand moving toward the feather would push the feather away. While we leave our palms open and still, the feather may miss it entirely but as compared with our active self-sabotage, at least there is the chance that it lands this time.

I want to suggest the book Zen and the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel to those intrigued by this anti-capitalist, anti-positivist mindset. Zen can be applied to any and all actions we conduct, including those with seemingly obvious goals in which descriptors like “accurate” and “inaccurate” are applied (like in archery where there’s a big, honking target). In the Western perspective, there is a concept called the “flow state” which best correlates with the Eastern “intentionless action.” Jazz musicians, sports stars, dancers - anyone who has practiced a craft to the point of being able to pump out high-quality output in a seemingly hypnotized state - have all described this state of hyperawareness of the current moment where they are simply allowing their bodies to effortlessly do the spectacular work inaccessible to almost all humans on the planet.

And the best part is - anyone can achieve this state doing anything with enough time practicing. You may already have something that you do that fits the description of a “flow state.” Just be sure to remember this is a state of awareness and not of distraction, so doom scrolling or mindlessly playing a phone game doesn’t count.

Lastly, in synthesizing the above two points - the dichotomy of “lack” and “full” combined with the constant barrage of attention-seeking stimuli - our brains have developed a bad habit of snap judgments where lack and inaction are bad and satiety and action are good. From the words we use in daily conversation to what we do with a free Saturday afternoon, nothing actually “is what it is” anymore. As it relates to mental health, our emotions receive the same drubbing. Almost any emotion except for “happy” gets labeled as bad, which requires immediate remediation. And to a certain extent, this problem-action-solution kind of thinking is healthy and helpful. It’s like in repeating a science experiment where the conclusion one arrives at has been reached over and over again. For example if I sleep early, I feel good and if I sleep late, I feel grouchy. The mental shortcut is pretty much set.

Mindfulness offers a chance to return to the drawing board and re-examine the experiment itself before imposing the conclusion. For if you really want to get technical about it, each time we get a feeling of anxiety, even if it seems like the same pieces of the puzzle are present, we are necessarily in a novel situation because it’s a different point in time. As such, as opposed to enacting the well-worn script, we can bring a beginner’s mindset to the process. This includes the act of mindfulness meditation itself. Instead of calling your meditation time good/bad, useful/not useful, or right/wrong, think of it as a time of exploring one’s experience.

In summary, the act of mindfulness is so foreign to our everyday experience so no wonder it is hard for us to get into it. The next section will walk through a mindfulness experience so that you can try it at home on your own time. So tune in next time!