The book is divided into four sections:
I: How do we function?
- On facts and interpretations
- Autopilot
- Depending on the lens...
- Unconscious truths
II: How do we choose to live?
- Stop the world
- And if I stop?
- Tolerating discomfort
- Learning and observing
- Reducing reactiveness
III: Mindfulness
- What is mindfulness?
- Being where we are
- Body consciousness
- Reducing reactiveness
IV: Building love: with ourselves and others
- Love, addiction, and other demons
- Mindfulness for our lenses
- Tell me how you communicate...
- Love your neighbor
Prologue:
Define mindfulness as "full presence/open consciousness". It will allow "greater calm before the constant stresses of today's world". This is related to acceptance, which can be defined as "the capacity to be with things as they are".
Introduction:
Be wary of spiritual bypass, "the use of ideas and spiritual practices to evade personal questions and emotions. In this way, superficial spirituality tries to compensate for" our unresolved psychological needs.
Mindfulness belongs to a spiritual tradition, but it also has a profound rationality and empirical basis.
I: How do we function?
- On facts and interpretations
The "cognitive" refers to our capacity to understand, learn about, and symbolize reality. It captures the characteristics of reality that touch us most closely, and in this way we define our universe by our own meanings. This creates the illusion of a solid and factually tangible reality. (While there may in fact be one, we don't have direct access to it.)... It could be that a breakup isn't factually positive or negative in itself, but for the significance that the breakup had for us. So there is a fact (the breakup), but the fact is neither good nor bad. But it holds a significance for us, so we judge it in some way or another. We live in a world of meanings. We have the ability to modify these meaning that we assign to facts about our lives. The therapist's job is to determine what each situation represents for the patient... "These facts that repeat and have significant impact on our existence allow us to learn." ... "Two clear obstacles arise from our mental/cognitive capacity: auto-pilot and suffering." [RP: How does the author know that these "obstacles" exist uniquely in animals that have this cognitive capacity? I would argue otherwise]
- Autopilot
We start to live in a world in which most things are part of "already lived" experience.
"Ya sé lo que es comer una manzana.
Conozco su gusto, su olor, su color, su brillo.
Qué puede haber de nuevo en esta manzana?"
We don't find novelty in our experiences and we start to feel a (constructed) tedium. We then rush off in a voracious search of novelty. "How many new foods can we try? How many new methods of transportation can we explore? How many alternative routs to go to work can we find?"
"Life is short! And each year goes faster! we say. Is that sensation related to this automation we live with?" See: David Eagleman.
"We live in our concepts and forecasts. We live in a world where we leave fluidity in search of security." [RP: But it is possible that the mind, this internal world, is more interesting, more novel, than living "in the present moment" with sensory experiences... fantasy, poetry, etc, are completely in the mind, without sensation.]
Somos así.
Soñamos el vuelo, pero tememos las alturas.
Para volar, es preciso tener valor para afrontar el terror al vacío.
Porque es solo en el vacío donde el vuelo tiene lugar.
El vacío es el espacio de la libertad, la ausencia de certezas.
Pero es esto lo que tememos: el no tener certezas.
Por eso cambiamos el vuelo por jaulas.
Las jaulas son el lugar donde las certezas viven.
-Rubem Alves
Mindfulness is about the idea that "the apple that I'm eating RIGHT NOW is new and unrepeatable. There are no two identical apples, nor am I the same" As Heraclitus said, "No one bathes twice in the same river."
[RP: the author asks if we have lost the essence of life. Maybe, but if we have, it isn't related to mindfulness. To me, the essence of life is passion.]
- Depending on the lens...
Exercise with 9 dots... what does it bring up for you? I identified with, "I have to solve it, I'm always really good at this type of thing."
- Unconscious truths
Epictetus writes, "We are not perturbed by facts, but by our way of seeing them."
Buddha writes, "Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional."
We often live by, "mas vale malo conocido que bueno por conocer."
We suffer from a number of biases, among them, confirmation bias, and self-fulfilling prophecy. For example, if a student perceives herself as unintelligent, she may interpret the outcome of an exam differently. If she passes, she may attribute the success to luck or charity of her professor. If she doesn't pass, it's clearly evidence that she is unintelligent. Moreover, that student may be surrounded by people who overvalue intelligence, to the exclusion of other personality traits. We have a tendency to hear what is consistent with what we already believe. "My image of someone of little intelligence can be sustained by that of someone who always needs to feel intelligent."
Section I Summary:
Humans have an incredible cognitive capacity to understand, learn, and manipulate reality. This capacity also separates us from the fresh experience of present reality, leaving us with tedium. This causes a false illusion of suffering directly from the conditions around us, rather than understanding and observing the construction of our suffering.
II: How do we choose to live?
- Stop the world
Candarle tries to address the point that our virtual connections are disconnecting us from the moment at hand. But the same argument could be applied to the invention of the printing press! There are a thousand ideas that could take us out of the present moment. It is convenient but incredibly unfair to blame it on technology. There is a poem on pages 68-69 that addresses correcting our mistakes.
- And if I stop?
In his excellent book Ser o tener, the post-Freudian psychoanalyst Erich Fromm shows us that the characteristic development of man is centered in having more than in being. We pass the majority of our lives working to earn money and then, in that dissatisfaction of having material things, we try to gratify ourselves by buying goods and services for which we must continue working the majority of our time.
"I don't stop, because if I stop..."
- Tolerating discomfort
When we practice psychological avoidance, we reaffirm our fears. We try to rationalize avoidance (eg, someone with a fear of elevators claiming to take the stairs because it is healthier). But ultimately it simply makes us more fearful and uncomfortable than we would have been if we learned to stand up and face the fear head on - it is never as bad as we imagine.
A greater tolerance for discomfort results in more liberty and personal strength. The richest man is not the one who has the most, but the one who needs the least.
- Learning and observing
In the process of stopping and observing, you may begin to note that your body tenses in uncomfortable situations (eg, when you have free time unoccupied by any task). This is valuable information in understanding our discomforts and how to address them. In the example of someone who is unable to slow down, often this evasion is reinforced by society, who might view that person as "hard-working."
- Reducing reactivity
There are stimuli which produce an automatic, Pavlovian response. We form associations and conditioning that cause us to react reflexively and automatically to situations around us. When we stop and observe ourselves, we can begin to see how many habits flood our daily lives. How free can we be if we are thus automated? [RP: in some ways, automation frees us to spend time on other tasks. In other ways, it binds us.] The goal is to reconnect with what is really happening, rather than repeating your habitual automatic reactions.
Section II Summary:
The goal is to disconnect from tasks of “doing” and instead focus our consciousness towards simply being. We can do this by learning to stop ourselves. This may require us to confront our shortcomings and change our habits. But it will allow us a greater capacity for creativity and improving our life.
III: Mindfulness
- What is mindfulness?
Mindfulness connects us fully with what is happening in the present moment. When we are mindful, we are present, attentive, and open to the reality around us. Jon Kabat Zinn developed Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) at UMass. He found that his program could reduce chronic pain and change a participant’s relationship to suffering.
- Being where we are
Every distraction teaches us to be conscious of our habitual inner turbulence, trains the capacity not to be overcome by it, and how to redirect attention where we want it. “I would be happy if…”
- Body consciousness
- Reducing reactivity
IV: Building love: with ourselves and others
- Love, addiction, and other demons
- Mindfulness for our lenses
- Tell me how you communicate...
- Love your neighbor