Mindfulness Isn’t Just About the Mind
The whole body is impacted by active conscious awareness practice.
Given that it’s right there in the name – mindfulness – it’s easy to presume this is all about the mind. While that’s mostly true, it’s only a portion of the truth.
Everything begins with thought. Thought happens on three levels – unconscious, subconscious, and conscious. The unconscious is how you breathe automatically, digest, blink, and fire the neurons that move the muscles to lift your arm into the air to flip someone the bird, and the like. The subconscious mind is where beliefs, values, habits, and memories live. You can access them, but doing so requires a conscious act. The conscious mind is how you engage with the world within and the world without, here and now.
Another way to think of it all is as a computer, tablet, or smartphone. The unconscious mind is the operating system. Like the Mac, Windows, or Linux environments, the OS is what all else is built upon and dictates the overall function. The subconscious mind is your hard drive, the HDD or SDD that stores everything. That gets accessed by programs, apps, and the like. In mind terms, it’s the conscious mind.
Without all three elements, you have a dead tablet, smartphone, or computer. Likewise, without the unconscious, subconscious, and conscious mind, you have a dead person. (This, FYI, is where AI will ultimately find its limitations, but that’s a whole other topic of discussion).
Mindfulness is how you can access the conscious mind, which is how you access your subconscious mind. But it’s also how you do everything that you do. Hence mindfulness isn’t about the mind alone.
You are physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual
Every person on Planet Earth has four elements that define them. These are the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. Body, mind, emotion, and soul, if you will. All of these make up the greater whole of everyone and our overall health, wellness, and wellbeing.
The three levels of thought – unconscious, subconscious, and conscious, work in concert all the time. They operate whether you’re aware of them, consciously, or not. Sleep is a perfect example of this. When you rest your conscious mind, you still think and feel, which can manifest in dreams. However, you also act, as your blood circulates, stomach digests, heart beats, lungs breathe, and so on.
Your physical being – your body – is the vessel you use to interact with the world at large. Within it, though, are greater depths. That’s where your beliefs, values, habits, and memories live, as do your thoughts, feelings, intentions, and all other intangibles.
This is true for everyone. Nobody lacks any one of these elements. True health and wealth are an equal balance of all four elements, too.
This is where active conscious awareness – mindfulness – is most empowering. We are best able to be our most connected selves on every level, here and now, when the elements of our health, wellness, and wellbeing are balanced.
This is why mindfulness isn’t just about the mind.
Mindfulness and health, wellness, and wellbeing
Since everything begins with thought, applied conscious awareness makes perfect sense. After all, if you aren’t clearly aware of your thoughts, all else will gets muddled.
This is why mindfulness isn’t just about the mind. It is also about the body, the soul, and everything else that goes into making you, you. Without active conscious awareness, you cede control.
This applies to everything physical that you do. From the simple, like typing to the more complex, like throwing a ball, to the challenging, like balancing on a tightrope – thought is the origin of action. When that isn’t controlled, neither is the action.
This is where certain bad habits come in, such as chewing your fingernails, eating when you’re bored, missing obvious tripping hazards, and so on. When these are done by habit, rote, and routine, they’re automations that don’t serve you. Further, they can lead to injury or more long-term troubles.
There is a quote from Lao Tzu that covers this well, but better by this lesser-used translation,
“The journey of a thousand miles starts beneath one’s feet.”
You choose the ground you stand on and the path it represents mindfully. No matter where you go, all journeys begin in this way.
Mindfulness applies to the body and soul because neither can function without the mind.
The sum total of you can be controlled by you via active conscious awareness, here and now. That is mindfulness in action.
Why does being present matter?
You can’t control what’s already happened. That’s because the past has come and gone. It’s passed us by. There is no redoing, undoing, or doing it over.
You cannot go back. Period. What’s more, past recollection gets colored by bias, nostalgia, and wistful memories that are colored by your environment, life experiences, friends, family, culture, and other factors. What you remember might be a long way from the absolute truth of what occurred.
Likewise, you can’t control what’s going to happen. No matter what you plan, set into motion, plot, or prepare shit happens that you cannot control. Extenuating circumstances will change the outcome in unpredictable ways.
There is no crystal ball, oracle, or magic 8-ball you can commune with to know how the future will be. Nobody can foresee unexpected changes in the weather, terrorist bombs going off, traffic messing up your schedule, or a person you’re supposed to meet deciding to stand you up. The outcome is beyond your control.
Here and now, right this moment, in the present, you can choose who, what, where, how, and why you are. Yes, there might be issues and challenges here that put limits on this or lessen how many choices you have, but you still have them.
More importantly, here and now you can choose to change your thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions. That begins in the mind but extends out to the rest of your body and being, both tangibly and intangibly.
Mindfulness is your superpower
Via mindfulness and control of your thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions, you can be, have, or do anything.
No, this isn’t the manifestation process of The Secret where you Ask, Believe, Receive, and just get what you desire out of thin air. Though the concept isn’t without merit, an important element is left out.
You must do the work. Without intentional action on your part, you can’t manifest jack shit.
Yes, you might get lucky and make it happen. Also, if you stick a lump of coal up your ass and squeeze it hard enough, you might get a diamond. Frankly, the chances of either happening are cosmically equal.
Getting what you seek in life is good, but the road from here to there is even better. Why? Because often what you learn in the here and now, traversing whatever paths you choose, makes the end goal even more valuable and worthwhile. Challenging your self to grow, to evolve, to actively change might suck sometimes, but when you meet your goal? It’s even greater because of what you put out to get to it.
Mindfulness, active conscious awareness, is the initiating thought that leads to being the best you that you can be.
Mindfulness isn’t just about the mind. The whole body is impacted by active conscious awareness practice. That superpower is how you can be virtually anything you desire to be. Via mindfulness, you can recognize your options and make conscious, active choices about what paths to walk – or not – to the desired end.
Can you see how mindfulness is so much more than mind?
This is the six-hundred and twenty-fifth (625) 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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