Mindfulness

The ordinary contents of the ever-restless mind

Among the things that have to be given up are fretting about what to do next; trying to make sense of past events; going over conversations to decide whether you said the right thing or not; speculating on future events and looking forward to them; carrying on imaginary conversations; rehearsing anger at other people for their stupidity, forgetfulness, or unkindness. These, I soon discovered, were the ordinaty contents of my ever-restless mind. Is this such a loss? They are indeed hard to give up. At first you think you won't be able to do anything if you don't think all the time. But it isn't true. And once the burden has gone--what a relief!

Blackmore, In Search of the Light, 265

Let it through. Let it be. Let it go.

When thoughts arose, as they did all the time, I met them with something John Crook had taught us as a technique for meditation. When a thought comes along (or anything else for that matter) just meet it with "Let it through. Let it be. Let it go." In other words: Don't block it. Don't do anything with it. Don't hang on to it. "Let it go. Let ..."

Blackmore, In Search of the Light, 264-65

What was mindfulness?

As far as I could understand, being mindful meant being in the present moment, paying attention only to what is happening now, not thinking of past or future. This didn't sound very complicated, and seemed an odd thing to be so concerned about. Could that be all there was to it? Could I be mindful? How could I know if I wasn't?

I would have to try it. Now.

Don't think, just pay attention.

I did. And now. Oh dear, this is a bit weird. If I think about what to do next I am no longer mindful. If I decide to be mindful for an hour I am no being mindful now. If I think about what I am doing, I am thinking, not being mindful. I just have to do it.

I did.

Susan Blackmore, In Search of the Light, 264

Mental discipline, persistent thinking

... I was getting better at mental discipline, and I no longer found it at all hard to work. After many years of practice I could set myself to thinking out a given problem and keep at it for a considerable time. It was part of the same skill that is trained in meditation, that made it possible to sit and not to let stray thoughts drag my awareness to and fro. The same discipline helped in "just sitting," in in controlled imagery, or in thinking persistently. Lying there in the hospital, I thought. I tackled these questions, one by one, again and again, pinning my awareness on a rambling crackin the pale green ceiling. 

Blackmore, In Search of the Light (selvbiografi), 155.

Our own precious self: some (really) tough choices

Hm. Jeg blir ikke ferdig med dette. Det er ikke det at det plager meg; det bare klør veldig i hjernen min:

It seems we have some tough choices in thinking about our own precious self. We can hang on to the way it feels and assume that a persisting self or soul or spirit exists, even though it cannot be found and leads to deep philosophical troubles. We can equate it with some kind of brain process and shelve the problem of why this brain process should have conscious experiences at all, or we can reject any persisting entity that corresponds to our feeling of being a self.

I think that intellectually we have to take this last path. The trouble is that it is very hard to accept in one's own personal life. It means taking a radically different view of every experience. It means accepting that there is no one who is having these experiences. It means accepting that every time I seem to exist, this is just a temporary fiction and not the same 'me' who seemed to exist a moment before, or last week, or last year. This is tough, but I think it gets easier with practice.

Susan Blackmore, Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction, 81.

Experiences with no one experiencing

Another question is whether we humans can drop the illusions and experience the world without them. Those who practice certain kinds of meditation or mindfulness claim that they can. They say that the ordinary world falls apart and there are just experiences with no one experiencing them. 

...

Others practice mindfulness, in which they try to stay alert, open and fully present in the moment, whether meditating or not. This apparently simple technique can, with long practice, give rise to a state in which phenomena arise and fall away but without any sense of time or place, and with no one experiencing them.

 

Susan Blackmore, Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford), 132-133.

The Illusion of Consciousness

Consciousness - a grand delusion

Consciousness ... is a grand delusion. It arises through asking such questions as 'Am I conscious now?' or 'What am I conscious of now?' In that moment of questioning, an answer is concocted: a now, a stream of experiences, and a self who observes it all appear together, and a moment later they are gone. Next time you ask, a new self and a new world are concocted, backwards from memory. If you go on to believe that you always were conscious, and construct metaphors about streams and theatres, then you only dig yourself deeper and deeper into confusion.

Susan Blackmore, Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford), 131.