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Chapter 1

What is mindfulness

In simple words, mindfulness means bringing your awareness, your conscious attention, into the present moment. It can also be described as the practice of paying attention in the present moment and doing it intentionally and with non-judgment. Mindfulness is a very simple concept to grasp but the difficulty comes when we apply it in practice, in our real life. It is so, because our habits, mental filters, and habitual thoughts are so deeply enrooted in our minds, that we can find it quite hard to overcome them, in the beginning.

Mindfulness is the basic foundation for living a conscious life. It is also a practice that reminds us all the time to be present, to be here and now, rooted in the mighty Earth and firm with our feet on the ground. This kind of attitude can give us the strength, the courage, and the power to overcome all the situations and problems that might appear like ripples on the surface of our lives, and since mindfulness takes the busyness of our minds away, we will start to experience lighter and clearer states of mind, the more we practice it, and even the most daunting tasks will seem doable and interesting.

In being mindful, one has a relaxed but sharply aware attitude, with the intention of dwelling in the present moment and regarding anything else as what is “happening” on the surface of the present moment. To assure a continuous mindful attitude throughout your day, it is as easy as bringing your point of attention back again to the present moment, whenever you feel your mind has wandered off. In practicing this way, all the things that we are doing are just a means to keep our momentary mindfulness, to sustain our practice. We just do them so we can enjoy being in the present moment, not the other way around. We shift our focused attention from the object that we are working on, to ourselves and to our surroundings, and in doing so, we manage to keep our momentary awareness all throughout the day.

The experience of being mindful starts when you begin to gently observe your self, your outer surroundings, and when you begin to immerse yourself in the present moment. A clear and sharp mind is starting to manifest, and that is coming from the diminishing of the constant stream of thoughts that happens in the back of our minds. This background daily chatter that we all have going on in our minds, be it that we are aware of it or not, makes us usually pay attention only to what happens in our minds and on the surface of the present moment, making us being identified with our thoughts and living mostly in the captivity of our own minds. Mindfulness, or the exertion of being aware in the present moment, will help us gradually clear our minds of this kind of non-necessary stream of thoughts, by observing and gently letting go of anything that surfaces our minds. Since we consider the intention of being in the Here and Now as a primary necessity and we offer no resistance to our surroundings, we start to slowly perceive in a clear light, everything that the here and now has to offer.

After we start practicing being mindful, we notice that there’s a natural feeling about it. We start to notice gradually the spaces between our thoughts, which reveal to us the natural state of our minds, which is called the mind of no-thought. In our empty and clear mind, the only thing that exists is our awareness of the present moment. This natural and uplifted state of mind that appears when we’re being aware, is the encouragement for our practice, which points us towards the need to stay more in our mindful state, throughout our day, resting more in the awareness of the present moment, no matter what situation is currently occurring in our lives.

We have to differentiate and explain an important thing from the beginning. Being in the present moment does not mean being aware of what’s happening in the present moment. It just means being present, being here and Now. Everything that “happens” in the present moment, is only manifesting on the surface of the present moment. The present moment can be envisioned like a really deep, unwavering, and clear lake, on whose surface ripples appear, and these ripples are our momentary thoughts and the events that happen from time to time. The present moment can also be envisioned as the stillness and the silence that is always here and now, out of which everything can appear or manifest. This stillness of Now has a strong connection with the very deepness of our being, where we can also find the silence and stillness of our soul, especially while we are immersed in contemplating, or when we are meditating. Seeing and understanding this difference, between the Now and what is “happening” Now, will make us understand correctly what mindfulness means, and will ensure that we practice the right way, every day.

One important consequence of being in the present moment is the cessation and dissolving of every past event or future outcome, from our momentary attention. Any possible story about our future or any identification with an event from the past is gone because by being now, we observe only what the present moment is offering to us. The future outcomes might appear in the future, and the past events are written in our past history, but when we are mindful, all our attention is focused on the here and now, when we only witness our deep and peaceful state of existence. As we dwell more into the present moment, we start to notice slowly more and more details around us, and that will root us more into the beautiful experience of being now. A certain type of silence enters our being and our minds, and that is what it feels to be mindful, to be present, or to exist in the present moment.

The importance of being mindful is undeniable because usually, our minds are always busy with thinking by default. The average thoughts a human being thinks during a day is about 60 to 70,000. We are used to thinking on a regular basis and we think about anything we encounter in our lives, even though sometimes it is not necessary to do so. And most of the time we tend to exaggerate by thinking too much. Overthinking has become an impulsive and also a compulsive way of being for some people, most of which are not being able to stop their stream of thoughts, to the point where this situation can even become unbearable. So thinking can become a problem; it can steal us the ability to be able to stay focused, it can deprive us of having a clear and peaceful mind, in the stillness and quietness of the present moment, and this can lead us to not being able to relax, accomplish even the easiest tasks, or even sleep, for some of us. The need to observe our own thoughts, to befriend them, to befriend ourselves, to understand ourselves at a deeper level, to understand how our mind works and thinks, has become now a critical and most important thing, for many of us.

That’s where mindfulness comes in. Observing our own thoughts in silent meditation or in the daily active practice of mindfulness, where we are only aware of the Here and Now, gives our mind the reference point of the still, clear, and unwavering present moment. In meditation, we are purely engaged in the mere observation of our own minds, by being aware of our breath, and in being mindful, we are also purely engaged in the experience of our momentary truth, that is always to be found in the present moment. By practicing this for a longer period, our current discursive thought patterns will dissipate more, and our mind will clear itself out of anything that prevents us to witness the world in its simplicity, in its beauty, deepness, and peacefulness, as it is.

In this book, I will mostly be referring to the activity of being aware of the present moment as mindfulness, but sometimes I will also call it presence. Mindfulness is a term that comes from Buddhism and it refers to the aware or conscious mind of the day that captures the same pristine and clear quality of the mind that is to be found in meditation, while presence is a term coined by the spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle, which basically points out to the same thing. Both presence and mindfulness mean placing our momentary awareness, in a relaxed but alert fashion, on the present moment, where we experience a direct connection with our immediate surroundings, and where our senses and our perception are immediately connected to the fresh reality of the Now. Being aware of the present moment and our surroundings, makes us become more conscious of ourselves and of everything that is around us, helps us in clearing up our minds of unnecessary thought, and causes us to experience cleaner levels of thinking and perceiving. Being mindful feels as if we have stepped into a fresh, new world, where there is tremendous clarity, and where a particular joy of being and doing appears, in every moment. By dwelling in the simplicity of the present moment and by rejoicing in the happiness that being aware gives us, we start to experience the aliveness of this world, which will, in turn, bring about great changes in our lives.

We will explore the art of being mindful in this book, chapter by chapter, seeing all the aspects, characteristics, and ways of practice that could lead us to the mastering of this practice, which can immensely improve the quality of our lives, clear our own perception about the world, and also ensure that we are always making progress on our spiritual path.