Does Mindfulness Separate Opinion from Fact?
Being consciously aware makes you aware of many things.
Living in a fear-based society is problematic on many levels. First, virtually everywhere you turn there’s something in place to make you fearful. The play on your emotions is often deeply subtle, sometimes even subversive, and always present.
Advertising plays on fears of lack, scarcity, insufficiency, and missing out. Buy this item to be more lovable, sexier, and appear smarter and more refined – or suffer. Utilize that service to stay on top or gain the upper hand. Vote for this guy or allow the “other” to take away all that you are. It’s very nasty, insidious, and ever-present.
Fear, in its original incarnation, was healthy. It kept humankind’s ancestors alive in the face of predators, environmental threats, and other matters of life and death. When it was tangible, fear was a lot more helpful.
Now that fear has become mostly intangible, however, it’s less about saving life and limb and more about holding onto fluid values, beliefs, and habits. These, in turn, get attached to equally fluid notions that are presented as limited, though that’s largely artificial constructs intent on disempowering to maintain a person or organization’s control.
Unchecked, it’s very easy to fall for opinion over fact. When you aren’t mindful and consciously aware, but instead living via rote, routine, and habit, you’re more easily swayed by opinions that match your values and beliefs.
This is why mindfulness – active, conscious awareness – separates opinion from fact.
Why the notion of “woke” is being weaponized
There is this deeply disturbing. Increasingly shared narrative about being “woke”. That those who are “woke” are ruining the status quo, turning the world away from the tried and true, and ruining things for everyone.
I fail to understand how this is even a thing, though. Wouldn’t you rather be awake than asleep at the switch? Don’t most people prefer to be conscious and take control of their lives?
Maybe not. It’s becoming increasingly clear that lots of people prefer to have things done for them. Many people appear to want others to make their choices and decisions and direct them to where they need to be.
Is that really true? Hard to say, because I can’t get into the head, heart, or soul of anyone other than myself. Yet certain leaders – business, political, religious, and more – think they can. So they numb you and me with fear at every turn, and when anyone shows a hint of self-awareness or employs mindfulness, they are turning that into a negative.
Hence, “woke” is weaponized. Being “woke” has been turned into this idea that those who desire equal rights for all, fair treatment for the marginalized, and greater representation will take away what you already have. There’s only so much to go around, and the “woke” will take yours and leave you nothing.
When you look closely at this, from a place of conscious awareness, I think it’s clear that this is almost entirely opinion-based, rather than factual. For example, if you’re reading this, I presume you are interested in being consciously aware. Ergo, mindful, and awake.
The clear-headedness of consciously aware mindfulness is far more open to seeking out fact rather than accepting opinion.
Mindfulness opens the door to fact
Active conscious awareness is different from living via rote, routine, and subconsciousness. That’s because it’s a choice to be awake, aware, and present, rather than simply existing.
Subconscious living via rote, routine, and habit is just existing. It’s not an active approach to choices and decisions about how you live life. Thus, it’s highly suggestible and prone to accepting opinions as facts if they match your values and beliefs.
Take the idea of flat-earthers, for example. They will go out of their way to deny all the scientific evidence, facts, and reality to hold onto their opinion that the Earth is flat. They’re so convinced that what they know is true that they reject all logic and reason in the face of what stands against their values and beliefs.
Flat-earthers hold their subconscious opinions, beliefs, and values and refuse to accept they might be mistaken. Similarly, white supremacists, transphobes, homophobes, and the like allow subconscious opinions that hold to their beliefs and values to override fact, logic, and reason.
Then they weaponize the idea of being “woke” to shout down anyone trying to present anything that’s counter to them and their ways. Living subconsciously, they close the door to fact.
Being actively consciously aware and applying mindfulness opens the door to fact. However, it’s important to recognize and acknowledge that this starts from within you.
Mindfulness in action
Active conscious awareness – mindfulness – is about what’s inside of your head, heart, and soul, first. That’s how you can view the world outside of yourself with clarity, logic, and reason.
Activating mindfulness is easy. You simply need to ask questions like,
- What am I thinking?
- What am I feeling?
- How am I feeling?
- What is my intent?
- Is my approach positive or negative?
- What am I doing?
All of these, together, make you actively consciously aware, here and now. This is important because the present, the now, is the only time that’s wholly real, and in which you can gain near-total clarity.
With mindfulness, you can see more clearly what’s opinion versus what’s fact. By starting with conscious awareness of yourself, your self-awareness opens you to external awareness.
That’s how mindfulness separates opinion from fact.
This helps you. But what about those who buy into things like the negativity of “woke”, flat-earth, transphobia, and the like?
Change begins with you
The only person you can control is yourself. You can only change your beliefs, values, habits, and opinions.
What about all those who are out there making terrible choices and believing opinions that are counter-factual? All you can do is lead by your own example.
You cannot change the hearts and minds of those who choose to allow opinion that meets their beliefs and values to rule them. No matter how much they are falling for demagogues or opinions counter to fact, you can’t sway them.
Save in one way. By example. Make your own choices and decisions. Live with active, conscious awareness. Practice mindfulness, be here now, and learn all that you can. Do everything in your power to live your life, and seek out the many wonders, potential, and possibilities the world has to offer.
Lead by example. Actions speak louder than words. When you present a life that’s awake and aware, you show you have control of the only things you can and do control. You become empowered, which raises your energetic vibrational frequency. Like attracts like, but it also turns you into a beacon that draws in those who feel stuck, disempowered, and like the world is moving away from them.
Choose your battles, your words, and your actions with care. Be consciously aware of who, what, where, how, and why you are and what you present. In that way, without pushing or trying to change the hearts and minds of others, you can show (rather than tell) how mindfulness separates opinion from fact. Be the change you wish to see in the world via fact, logic, and reason.
Who, but you, can make the choices and decisions to live your best life, and separate opinion from fact?
This is the six-hundred and forty-ninth (649) exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – applying mindfulness and positivity to walk along a chosen path of life to consciously create reality.
I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world and empower as many people as I can with conscious reality creation.
Thank you for joining me. Feel free to re-post and share this.
The first year of Pathwalking, including expanded ideas, is available here. Check out Amazon for my published fiction and nonfiction works.
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